(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)
If you followed my trip to Abbey Road last November, then you can probably guess why we incorporated a visit to Liverpool into our 2005 Wales holiday: to see the Beatles sights in this northern England city. To make the experience as authentic as possible, we stayed at the Adelphi Hotel: it is an ancient place that would have been the top hotel in town during the 1950s and 1960s. Guests have included Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland and Roy Rogers (and his horse Trigger!).
Prior to becoming global superstars, the Beatles gained an intensely devoted following in their hometown of Liverpool. The venue most associated with them is the Cavern Club on Mathew Street, where they played hundreds of shows “before the fame”. It was a damp, dingy and crowded underground venue dripping with condensation that nonetheless attracted throngs to each Beatles performance.
One would think that such an important sight would have been preserved as a tourist sight. Nonetheless, it was in fact “filled in” in 1973 to accommodate an underground rail line. Some say that the Cavern was not saved because there was some lingering resentment over the “local boys who left”. Using the original plans and some of the original materials, a “new” underground Cavern Club was soon built in the same general area and it has been filled with tourists ever since. This is the Cavern you see in the photo at the top of this post.
While it hosts bands of all types, during the daytime almost everybody there is a tourist attracted by the Beatles connection. Not wanting to miss out, we went down there to see what it was like. A passable guitarist sang Beatles songs on the stage. We ordered Cokes, as many of the lunchtime attendees would have done in the Beatles’ day, and (along with a lot of tourists) managed to get a small feel for what it might have been like in the early 1960s.
Before going down into the Cavern, we stopped at The Grapes. This is a nearby Mathew Street bar where the Beatles would sometimes relax before or after shows at the Cavern. Again, most Beatles fans know this. A couple of local patrons offered to take our picture, which we thought was a nice gesture. It soon became clear that they were hoping for some money or drinks for their trouble!
While it was relatively expensive, we then went on a National Trust tour of the boyhood homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. A full-time housekeeper lives in each one and the only way to get inside them is by taking the National Trust tour from downtown Liverpool. Advance reservations are required, as only a limited number of people can visit each day. Indoor photographs are not allowed.
John’s home was first…and it might be a revelation for some. Although Lennon wrote a song called “Working Class Hero” and rebelled against privilege from time to time, he actually grew up in a relatively posh home (it even had a name: “Mendips”) with his aunt. Mendips has been preserved as it would have been in the late 1950s and early 1960s. We saw the front “foyer” where John and Paul would practice their vocal harmonies because the wall tiles resulted in great acoustics.
From there we went to Paul McCartney’s former home at 20 Forthlin Road. This was much more modest – a cramped row house where Paul lived with his brother and father (his mother died when Paul was just 14). We saw the living room where John and Paul composed some of their early songs “eyeball to eyeball”. As with Mendips, the house has been restored to how it would have been when Paul actually lived there. Although it was much humbler than John’s house, it would have been filled with music as Paul’s father had once been a bandleader. The housekeeper here even bore a passing facial resemblance to Paul and naturally had the same Liverpool accent.
If you are interested in the history of the Beatles, visiting the National Trust houses is probably the best way to see “The Beatles’ Liverpool”. The Cavern is also worth a peek but be aware that, out of necessity, the authenticity is just a little more compromised.
