Live and breathe Beatles in Liverpool
Tour a thrill for any fan, from Fab Four fanatics to casual listeners
When I suggested to my Beatles-obsessed husband that we should go to Liverpool, England, I won points for the rest of our marriage. What I didn’t realize until later, when I was standing on a certain lane behind the shelter in the middle of the roundabout, was that I would actually enjoy myself. Very strange.
I had wondered if, in making such a pilgrimage, there would be a place for the nonreligious. But when slanted sunbeams fell on Eleanor Rigby’s headstone as if on cue, I shivered a little and smiled.
My husband, Ricky, knows all the answers (at least when it comes to the Beatles), so I let him engage in trivia contests with our tour guide in Liverpool. Freed from the tug of minutiae, I was able to marvel in the phenomenon of the Fab Four: how one band united the world, and continues to do so, 50 years after the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Everyone loves a good origin story. Even better — at least for me — was the epilogue.
Where does one begin the story of the Beatles in Britain? At the crosswalk, of course. Last summer, we headed to Abbey Road in London just hours after we stepped off the plane at Heathrow Airport to recreate the scene on the eponymous album (minus the Volkswagen). A few hundred people were doing the same.
Since Abbey Road Studios is still a working recording studio, it was closed to the public. We had to settle on visiting the modest gift shop in the building next door. There, we posed in front of the wall painted with the Sgt. Pepper album cover and Brazilian tourists took our picture. My husband bought some guitar picks for his guitar teacher. That was the extent of our entire Beatles souvenir purchases, purists that we are.
Outside, we met Shari and Richard Stegman, from San Diego, who were in England celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary. Like us, they were on their way to Liverpool. Not like us, since we were looking to save money, they would be staying at the Hard Day’s Night Hotel in Liverpool.
They snapped several pictures of us crossing Abbey Road and we did the same for them. I learned that their wedding song was “Here, There and Everywhere.” They equated the Beatles, Richard Stegman said, with “a lifetime of love.”
Ricky, who first started playing the Beatles on his guitar at age 13, approved of their choice. “That’s a very beautiful song,” he told me. “The lyrics are very romantic and if you pay attention to the chord structure, it’s cyclical. The ending is also the beginning, it’s very clever.”
The next day, we stopped in the men’s fashion district to see the former headquarters of Apple Corps, the Beatles’ multimedia operation. The band bought the building at 3 Savile Row in 1968 and played their last public concert there on the roof on Jan. 30, 1969. Two guitars in memorabilia display cases just inside the building are the only signs of the band’s former home. Around them, salespeople bustled. It is now an Abercrombie & Fitch Kids, and salespeople bustled by, indifferent to history. I yearned for authenticity. In Liverpool, Beatles tourism brings in about $146 million a year, according to a 2016 study commissioned by the city council. I didn’t know whether to expect depth or Disney. We got the latter the first afternoon, glimpsing our first Magical Mystery Tour Bus, and, along the dockyards, a Yellow Submarine houseboat for rent. Outside the Beatles Story museum, Sgt. Pepper, himself, stood hawking tickets. His buttons looked worn.
The museum was actually a decent primer for the uninitiated, showing the musical roots of the band, with replicas of the Casbah Coffee Club and the Cavern Club. It prepared me for the next day’s show: the Fab Four Taxi Tour. I had reserved months in advance, informing the company that my husband was not their average tourist.
They sent Gareth Byrne, 57, in a black cab with the name “Michelle” on the side. We were soon treated to his deadpan humour, encyclopedic memory and an accent that begged for subtitles. He considers himself a “Scouser,” a true native of Liverpool. Don’t call him a Liverpudlian, for that sounds too high-class. A Scouser is named for the city’s lamb stew, “lobscouse,” that sailors used to eat on the docks, he explained.
Throughout the next three hours, Byrne would be part college professor, part standup comedian and full-time wedding photographer who insisted he knew how to capture the best angles, taking multiple shots to be sure. We really weren’t in a position to argue. (Turned out, he was right.)
On a cool, cloudy early afternoon, we started slowly by vis- iting the registrar where John Lennon’s parents got married, the outside of the hospital where John was born, the pub that he first frequented. From there, we saw Ringo Starr’s first home, a row house boarded up and still slated for renovation by the city with other empty houses in the Welsh Streets neighbourhood, but stalled in bureaucracy.
In contrast, Paul McCartney’s brick childhood home was wellpreserved from the outside. The inside was off limits unless you reserved a different tour with England’s National Public Trust, which owns the home. The same with Lennon’s childhood home. Outside of the Menlove Avenue house where John lived with his Aunt Mimi since he was 5 years old, Byrne told us about the day when his mother, Julia, visited. After years of not hearing from her, following his parents’ divorce, John learned she had lived only a few blocks away. They began repairing their relationship. But one day after visiting him, Julia was crossing the street when she was hit by a car. Byrne gestured toward the corner and I felt the chill.
George Harrison’s childhood home was still a simple, private house, partially blocked by bushes out front. A soft yellow rose burst from one of the bushes, and it felt just right for the most spiritual Beatle.
No Liverpool tour is complete without a stop on Penny Lane to see the lyrics come to life. Byrne showed us how the Beatles played with the map, since not all of the verses correspond to places on Penny Lane. Rather, the song “Penny Lane” describes a neighbourhood.
The tour was winding down, finishing in the parking lot of St. Peter’s Church where Paul first heard John and his Quarrymen skiffle band play a Sunday picnic on July 6, 1957. In the cemetery across the street was Eleanor Rigby’s tombstone.
Beginnings and endings. We had come full circle.