On the way to Liverpool, Oct 20 2023

We started in London, visiting the museums, the Denmark Street music shops, and taking afternoon tea on Saville Row.  We walked to Abbey Road studio with a slight detour past Paul McCartney’s house in St. Johns Wood.  It was a cool wet day.  I love London no matter the weather, it’s like New York but more beautiful.  I think the city parks are unparalleled and the Victorian architecture makes everywhere you walk picturesque.  Trouble is, it’s all just so damn stupid expensive. 

Beers for our table by the fireplace at Victoria Pub

The one bargain for me is going to a neighborhood pub for some fish n’chips and a pint of cask bitter.  Take in lunch with the friendly locals and get off the tourist paths.  To that end, I recommend The Victoria Pub at 10a Strathearn Place just a few blocks from Paddington Station.  If you wander around London you occasionally can stumble into (and out of) pubs like this just by chance.  The food there is very good and the beer is perfect.  London isn’t a new trip and we’d done it a few times, mostly “pre-blog”.  Aside from the better restaurants and pubs (which I’ll take the time to share) it’s secrets aren’t hard to discover.

Abbey Road Studios

The world’s most famous cross walk

Paul’s house, still, in St. Johns Wood

The other little side trip of Britain we took in on our journey was Conwy in Wales.  Which is just an hour or so train ride out of Liverpool on the north coast of Wales.  It was our first visit to the welsh countryside and this was a small enchanting seaside village with a large castle looming above.  Built in the 1200’s by Edward I, they say it’s one of the best examples of a medieval fortress in Wales.  Spared from the wars and mostly in tact, it is large and easy to explore.  We had a nice lunch in town and thoroughly walked the small grid of streets in just a few hours.

View from the castle

Now, that out of the way, the real focus of this trip and this blog post is centered on our finally making the pilgrimage to Liverpool.  Yes, the sacred birthplace of the Beatles, the nest along the Mersey river that hatched not only the fab four, but Gerry and the Pacemakers, Cilla Black and of course served as the launching point for the British invasion.

We arrived by train from London at the Liverpool Lime Street station and stayed nearby at a Doubletree that was comfortable enough but mainly well located.  It was a short walk to Mathew street and to the pier on the Mersey river.  I can say straight out that if not for an appetite for music nostalgia, this city has little to offer.  Just another well established industrial port.

On February 13th 1967, back when new music arrived in a little vinyl 45, the Beatles released a double A side record which was in itself unusual.  Most extraordinary was that the two songs  included were arguably each songwriters best.  This record of Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields was intended to make a big impact.  It had been six months since their last album, which in those days was an eternity.  That combined with the fact they were no longer touring generated rumors of a break up, or at a minimum that their best days were behind them.  In that setting, Brian Epstein wanted to make a statement and set things right before their next album Sgt. Pepper would arrive that Summer.  These two new songs would explode onto the radio, and by the way neither would be on the coming album.  Their management felt that it was sort of cheating their fans to include previously released music on a new studio album.  Its incredible to me that they were that prolific, they had so many songs, that they could release several new albums a year and not even include the singles they made in between.

I remember hearing these songs the first time on a winter afternoon on WLS Chicago riding in the car on the way to my grandparents house on the South Side.  It’s hard to describe to the next generation what their music meant to us in those days; had to be there I guess.  My best attempt is to ask someone what song they ever heard that the first time played, they knew they’d just experienced something extraordinary, something that any new music would be measured against.  Fresh, infectious, beautiful songs that you had to listen to again immediately.  Every album they released had that impact, but on the 13th of February they reached a new level.  These songs were of course about their home, their neighborhood.  They were not just some new pop songs, they were art, painting the picture they wanted to share.  Memories of two local suburban boys raised in a city not too unlike Chicago who were now conjuring up their emotions and memories.

Cilla Black statue in front of the original Cavern entrance

In Liverpool Beatles tourism is everywhere and everything.  Shortly after John Lennon’s death the city realized what it had and has made its best marketing effort ever since.  Our first morning there, we walked a few blocks down to the pier area and took a tour bus. The tour was one of many offered, covering a route out into the burbs and past the lad’s homes and neighborhoods.  Now the bus line was nothing special but our guide was.  He had first hand stories and was truly an authority on his subject.  He talked about his mother seeing the Beatles over a hundred shows at the cavern club, her girlfriend Cilla Black a waitress there would get her in the door for free before she herself hit it big.  He described at length the city as it was and how it now is, which to my surprise hadn’t changed all that much.

Seeing the bandmates childhood homes and neighborhoods you could imagine the times of their youth.  Liverpool was recovering from the war, music was being discovered by the city’s school children and everywhere emerging in skiffle groups.  Everyone wanted to experience and explore American rock and roll. These fledgling musicians could walk or take a bus to school and each other’s homes. Places like Penny Lane where connection points along the way and into the city.

Penny Lane

John’s playground

In our own youth we all had a park or field to play in.  John’s was Strawberry Field, a short walk from his home.  He and his friends would sneak into the private park and spend hours there.  His Aunt Mimi, who raised him and who he called almost weekly the remainder of his life, would tell him he’d better stay out.  It was private and he could get hung for sneaking in.  He would reply to his aunt that it was only just for fun and besides, there was nothing to get hung about.  Paul and John’s houses were only a mile apart.  John grew up in a large beautiful home in the affluent part of town.  The other three in small working class row houses.

John’s house, his bedroom behind the window upper left

Ringo’s working class street

Back in the city center we saw where Epstein’s record shop and office was.  Just a block from the Cavern Club.  Then across from the club on Mathew Street the spots where the boys would have a beer after the shows and grab a bite.  I didn’t expect much of the renovated Cavern Club but was surprised to find it was essentially in the same spot, rebuilt with the same bricks and perhaps captured much of the feel of the original, albeit without the packed sweaty humanity and smoky air of it’s peak years.

A statue of Epstein in front of his then office

You can read every book and biography about the Beatles, but I think you don’t fully understand their world until you visit their origins.  Even just a few days in Liverpool takes you back and brings it all familiar.