(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)
This year has been special for Beatles fans. More than 50 years after they broke up, a new Beatles song called “Now and Then” appeared last month. Featuring all four members, it was an unexpected but fitting conclusion to the recording career of this unparalleled band. It was also accompanied by an evocative video that tugged at the heartstrings one last time.
My Beatles journey began in high school, when I discovered my sister’s old Beatles albums. That was 40 years ago, but I’ve remained a fan ever since. And while my collection has expanded to include everything from Antonio Carlos Jobim to Bajofondo Tango Club, the enduring influence of the Beatles is abundantly clear in other favourites such as Crowded House and Jellyfish.
When I look back, I see that a significant amount of my travel has been Beatles-related. The most obvious trip, of course, was a 2005 trip to Liverpool. While there, we visited the childhood homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. But we also visited their early 1960s haunts such as the famous Cavern Club and The Grapes pub. We even stayed at the Adelphi Hotel – the top hotel in town in the 1960s, and the very definition of “faded grandeur” by the time we stayed there. You can read more about this trip in this post from 2015.
Just as memorable was my November 2014 trip to London, England. I attended several great musical events while in London, but I also took an extended tour of Beatles sights. In addition to the Apple headquarters on Savile Row, I saw the Abbey Road Studios where almost all of those great songs were recorded. I even crossed Abbey Road, as you can see at the very top of this post. But I also saw several other places that were less obvious parts of the Beatles story. You can read more about that day in this December 2014 post.
London and Liverpool – those aren’t surprising Beatles destinations. But there’s more. On a trip to New York City, we stopped by the “Strawberry Fields” portion of Central Park and the adjacent “Dakota Building” where John Lennon spent the last years of his life. And, like I have on many of my travels, I also found a very rare Beatles-related record as a souvenir. On this occasion, it was a very elaborately packaged Paul McCartney solo vinyl single from a shop in Greenwich Village.
On a completely separate trip, I found myself at Monmouth University in the state of New Jersey…for a Beatles symposium! My friend (and fellow Beatles fan) Anthony heard about an academic conference commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1968 “The Beatles” album (a.k.a “The White Album”). Well, why not? You can read about that conference in this post from November 2018. Pictured above is a concert we saw at the conference…The Weeklings were brilliant, and played most of The White Album live!
We’ve seen Ringo Starr in concert a couple of times: once at Casino Rama (north of Toronto), and another time (just last year) right here in Kingston. And while I saw Paul McCartney in Toronto when I lived there in the early 1990s, we also saw him many years later in…Halifax, Nova Scotia! We were visiting friends in Halifax but managed to include Paul’s concert as well. You can read about the 2009 concert in this post from 2015.
Beatles connections seem to pop up in the most unexpected locations. Who would have thought that Paul McCartney had a connection to Verona, Italy? Or that we would cross paths with a Beatles event in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec? How about a Beatles tribute in Budapest, Hungary? Or a Beatles link to a rockabilly concert in the Beaches neighbourhood of Toronto?
Unexpected links are a great part of travel. And while this post features previously published photos, I’ve just unexpectedly discovered some “new” photos from prior travels. I’ll be sharing some of those in my next post…coming soon!
