Sunday, August 29, 2010

Day 13: Liverpool Beatles Tour


We had an excellent Beatles Tour today with Jackie Spencer, a Blue Badge Tour Guide and Official Liverpool Beatleguide. She has spent years researching her facts and showed us all the important places in the Beatles lives, including the hospitals where they were born, schools they attended, places they worked, where they grew up and where they met.

One very interesting and surprising place we visited was the Casbah Coffee Club where Rogue Best, half brother to Pete and Rory Best, gave us an excellent overview of the early years of the Beatles and where they got their start and how his mom was a big force behind them. We were just blown away at the place. As we were leaving Rory stopped by and we got to meet him!



Casbah stage
Notice the low ceilings- which by the way were painted by the performers
Entrance to the Casbah


Another very interesting stop was the church where Paul and John met and Paul auditions and is invited to join the band. Everywhere we go everyone we met knew Jackie, so while we were in the church hall where John & the Quarrymen performed a man who was there when John and Paul met gave us copies of the program for that day in 1957. We also saw Eleanor Rigby’s grave in the cemetery behind the church.



A rendition of the audition


We visited Strawberry Fields, the nearby orphanage


















George’s two up/two down childhood home

Liverpool is in a renewal phase with lots of new construction going on everywhere and is a very modern looking city. Jackie takes us to the place Ringo lived and the whole block is boarded up and scheduled for demolition this October. Someone left a box of chalk, so Tim left his message along with the many others there: “Let it Be”


Today is Diann’s birthday and Jackie plays the Beatle’s version of Happy Birthday for her. After we visit the barber on Penny Lane, she also plays that song as we drive on down the street. We see so many places mentioned in their music and Jackie always plays the song mentioning it as we drive around. It is just amazing to see the inspiration for so much of their music. At the end of our tour we went to the Cavern Club where the Beatles performed 300 times in 2 years. It is still a very popular place today and they are gearing up for Beatles week which is starting today/tonight.




Huge mall in Liverpool

After watching a beautiful sunset, it’s time for Diann’s birthday dinner.


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