Time, finally, to share pics and memories from a period of 48 hours that will indelibly rate among the greatest experiences of my life, on a myriad of levels.
Warning: if you're not a fan of the Beatles, or even remotely interested in their fabled story of success, the next few blog posts are not for you.
Time to cut away from London proper for a couple of days and head northward, all the way up to Liverpool, where once upon a time, four lads formed a band that would forever changed the landscape of rock and roll music.
This excursion was made possible with the support of viewers like you, but most especially, our driver, Paul Askew, United Kingdom music aficionado. The music trivia contests he participated in while driving north and listening to radio broadcasts will forever remain one of the more accomplished and astonishing bits of nigh-unto Rain Man trivia prowess that we've ever witnessed.
A light mist awaited us on arrival to Liverpool, but the Rain didn't matter, because we were heading to Albert Dock, and the Beatles museum that resides there.
Albert Dock on the River Mersey opened in 1846 and was the first structure in all of Britain to be built from cast iron, brick and stone, with no structural wood.
During World War II, the dock was requisitioned by the Admiralty and served as a base of operations for boats in the British Atlantic Fleet. It was damaged during air raids on Liverpool, and never quite recovered economically, closing in 1972. Redevelopment began in the 1980s, though, and the dock was reopened, evolving into the tourist attraction it is today. (It's also a fun place to log some running miles, but more on that in a later post)
Heather captured the start of our tour, and yes, she was quite correct in her observation.
The Beatles Story is the largest permanent exhibition in the world devoted purely to recounting the Beatles' story from their modest start in the nearby neighborhoods of Liverpool through their meteoric rise to the top of the charts. Music guru Paul Marion, not to mention my brother Jimmy, are sure to already know all of the information provided within the walls of the tour, but damn, for this diehard Beatle fan, it was a glorious immersion into immortal music.
You can wander through the tour at your own pace, using an interactive electronic system along the lines of an iPod that takes you through audio narratives of their careers - sometimes in their own words, sometimes in that of their loved ones.
The Star-Club was a music club in Hamburg, Germany, where many of the giants of the music industry played, including 13 historic performances by the Beatles in April, May, November, and December of 1962.
We'd see the real (or reconstructed version of the Cavern Club the next day, but for now, the facsimile provided a colorful backdrop for Heather and I.
As blog readers know, we had already hit the authentic Abbey Road crosswalk and Abbey Road studios down in London itself, but the recreation was a nice brush with history.
Fast forward to 8 p.m. on Sunday, February 9, 1964 (I was still being baked at that point), and 73 million people tuned in to hear Ed Sullivan shout "Ladies and gentlemen....the Beatles!" leading the foursome into All My Lovin' and television folklore.
Beatlemania had arrived.
In 1966, the Beatles released Eleanor Rigby as the B-side of Yellow Submarine. It remains, to this day, one of my favorite Beatles songs ever, but it took on new poignancy and even greater gravity when I took to running and exploring the streets of current day Liverpool, seeing some of the many homeless that still dot the landscape and shelter in doorways to escape the cold and rain.
Paul McCartney was often asked who was Eleanor Rigby, and the answer might reside in St. Peter's Graveyard Woolton, where Rigby's name can be found on a tombstone in a cemetery near where Paul and John Lennon first met one another and that served as a shortcut for the pair on some of their buddy walks. Paul has often said the name was implanted into his subconscious from one of his many pass-throughs of the cemetery, and it stuck with him.
All the lonely people - where DO they all come from?
And our friends are all aboard
Many more of them live next door
And the band begins to play
Waiting to take you away
The most prolific writing tandem in music history
One of the most powerful scenes in the museum comes at the end, with John Lennon's New York piano, and Imagine playing soulfully overhead.
You may say I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one.
Outside the museum still stands the stone arch at Salthouse Dock
I could have spent even more time just absorbing the recordings, the recollections, hell, just listening to the music that accompanies you through the corridors. It was an unforgettable remembrance of an historic stretch of time When We Was Fab
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
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