This is a long overdue account of my trip to Liverpool. Enjoy:
Wow, I had a very eventful trip to Liverpool. There are so many things to talk about, starting with the fact that I arrived much later than expected because of my mobile phone ordeal and the train took forever to get there.
I made it to the Liverpool train station at about 4:30, and had to walk about 20 minutes to the hostel because I didn't want to get a taxi and was a little confused about the bus system. Once I had arrived at the hostel, I was met by a very nice man named Kevin who sat me and another visitor down, had a cup of tea and told us about the good sites around Liverpool. Apparently I found out later that Kevin had been in a local Battle of the Bands in the 1950s and his group had placed higher (3rd place to 5th place) than John Lennon's original skiffle group, The Quarrymen. Pretty cool.
I didn't have much time to do anything else that day because most places were closing, but I heard that the ferry that goes across the Mersey river had its last round trip at 6, so I had to run about 15 minutes to the docks to make it just in time. If you haven't figured it out by now, this is the ferry that Gerry and the Pacemakers immortalized in their song 'Ferry Across the Mersey.' It's a nice trip across the river, and a good way to relax and get fresh air (especially after running a mile to get there). The PA system tells about the buildings along the river and Liverpool's history as a big shipping port, especially for immigrants. And of course they played that song; how could you not? I kind of wondered if Gerry Mardsen (and possibly his Pacemakers) gets compensated every time the ferry plays that song, because he probably did more to boost their business than anything else.
After the ferry ride, I stopped in a pub just in time to see the end of the FA Cup semi-final football match between Liverpool and Chelsea. Chelsea (a borough in West London) is the top team right now in the country, but Liverpool were up 2-0 in the match before Chelsea scored in the second half and then almost scored in the tension-filled final minutes. The whole pub was elated after the match, and sang two songs that I thought were quite interesting choices.
The first was Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire," and the second was "You'll Never Walk Alone," which I think first appeared in Carnival but was covered by Gerry and the Pacemakers. I can understand why they chose "You'll Never Walk Alone," both because the popular version was done by a local band and it has a good message. Only later did I find out that "Ring of Fire" refers to a few years back when Liverpool was in the European Championship match against a team from Italy. They were down 3-0 at halftime in Istanbul, but managed to go back into the 'ring of fire' and tie it up by the end of regulation time and win the match in a penalty kick showdown.
After clearing out of the pub I stopped by the famous Cavern Club where the Beatles played almost 300 times and stopped into a pub nearby for a drink.
Back at the hostel, I thought my evening was over and planned to wake up early the next day to see everything, but then I met a scuzzy guy from Quebec who was planning to go out with a few other people at the hostel. It took about an hour to get everyone rounded up, and in the meantime I was hit on by a really drunk Irish girl who no one could really understand.
Once we finally made it outside, I talked to a few nice people from British Columbia, Japan, Seattle and Australia. The city centre is pretty well pedestrianized, and there were loads of dressed-up drunkards walking around, much like State Street in Madison on a weekend night. We planned to go to the Cavern Club, but when we got there they wanted to charge £2 for admission, which didn't satisfy the Quebeci.
So then we walked around trying to find a place, but none satisfied the Quebeci because either
A) The drinks were too expensive
B) There was a cover charge
C) We weren't allowed in with our 'trainers' (aka sneakers)
D) There weren't enough young people or women in the place
I didn't really care, and I was used to spending a lot on drinks coming from London. It probably would have been easiest to just pay the £2 to get into the Cavern Club. Oh well.
I woke up early the next morning to get some tea and toast for breakfast, only to find one of the workers in the lounge with his guitar playing Beatles songs. I struck up a good conversation with him about the Beatles, their musical technique, etc., though at one point got him a little riled up when I mentioned the Rutles' parody songs. "You can't copy something like that," he said.
"If someone did that today they'd take them to court for all the money they've got."
I didn't want this to get into an argument, so I didn't mention the fact that I really enjoyed the Rutles or that George Harrison appeared in the Rutles film. Sometimes you gotta laugh at yourself, even if it's something as serious and remarkable as the Beatles. Needless to say, he didn't like Oasis either.
He did mention a very good Beatles tour guide who was more thorough than the Magical Mystery Tour and cost 8 pounds less. He gave the guide a call, and at first it was a little up in the air whether he could give me a tour that day because he was planning to give a group a private tour. But because he could fill his van with me and another person whom he later found, I was able to go on his tour. I had to wait anxiously for an hour or so to get the thumbs up.
The tour was spectacular. We went to virtually all the birthplaces, childhood homes (often where they wrote some of their earlier songs), churches, schools - you name it, we probably saw it. Highlights were Penny Lane, where I got to see the places mentioned in the song: the shelter in the middle of the roundabout, the barber shop, the bank, the fire station... very cool. We also learned that John and Paul's girlfriends lived down the block, and that "a four of fish and finger pies" is a naughty reference to the four of them going out to dinner, and then, well, I don't think I have to go into detail. Needless to say, no one in America caught the slang term.
I also got to see Strawberry Field, where nothing is real, and which is basically a field next to an orphanage owned by the Salvation Army where John used to hang out. We also saw the church hall where John and Paul first met, and across the road was a cemetery holding the remains of John's uncle George and, of course, Eleanor Rigby. However, her gravestone is not where they came with the idea for the song's title character, as we learned, but came from two parts: 'Eleanor' came from a famous actress whose last name escapes me, and 'Rigby' comes from a local pub, Thomas Rigby's. In fact, there are a lot of Rigbys in the area, so it was a mere coincidence that one of them would be named Eleanor. The Beatles were actually looking for a good old lady's first name, and when they found Eleanor, they needed a two-syllable last name to go with it.
Needless to say, I learned a lot on this 4.5 hour trip around the city and it really left me satisfied that I had just about seen everything notably Beatles-related in Liverpool. It also left me with little time to see much else, and so I had to book it through the Tate Liverpool, Merseyside Maritime Museum and the Beatles Story museum.
The Tate Liverpool and Merseyside Maritime Museum were pretty cool. Tate Liverpool is a smaller version of Tate Modern in London, with modern sculptures and paintings. The Merseyside Maritime Museum had a good display on the shipping industry in Liverpool, especially dealing with immigration, and a very good exhibit on slavery. It was much more interactive than the National Maritime Museum that I saw in Greenwich, and much more open and apologetic about the slave trade, probably because Liverpool was one of the major slave trade ports.
I didn't get to see everything because the museum was closing, so I headed over to the Beatles Story museum, which is an audio-guided tour through the Beatles' history, with replicas of the Cavern Club, Brian Epstein's record shop and the recording studio, as well as a big yellow submarine and a blown-up display of the Sgt. Pepper album cover. I was less impressed with this museum, mostly because I didn't have time to hear everything on the audio guide and because I really didn't learn much that was new.
Overall, though, I was satisfied with my trip and made my way back to the hostel, but first decided to stop in the big Anglican cathedral on the way. Built in 1904, it's the biggest cathedral I believe in Great Britain. It looks much older just because of the style, but its inside was definitely the biggest open space of any cathedral I'd been in.
Liverpool as a city has its ups and downs. There are some parts of the city with great architecture that you can look at and think, "Wow, that looks really nice," and other run-down parts that you can look at and think, "Wow, that's absolute s***." It does seem to be a city on the rise, with a big shopping centre being built that may revitalize the inner-city. The suburbs actually seem like a nice place to live, and I think the city gets a bad rap because, as my boss put it simply, "Lots of poor people live there."
For a Beatles fanatic such as myself, though, it was a dream come true.
