Before I can tell you the story I wish to tell you, I have to tell you another story – of a young girl growing up in a suburb of Chicago, whose father also grew up in a suburb of Chicago and played in a rock’n’roll band (this was the ’60s/’70s). Music is one of the things these two could really bond over. Back then, my dad would take out his drum kit, set it up in the living room, put on a record, and play along. These are some of the happiest memories of my childhood. It’s been well over thirty years since I last heard him play – I honestly can’t tell you the last time he did (and not because he can’t).
There is a lot of music from ’60s and ’70s I can still sing by heart, but I don’t know that I could tell you who was singing. Music was a constant – in the car, at home. My dad once blew out the speakers in our car blasting music. Loud noises rarely startle me even these days because, at completely random times, the record player in our house would start blaring out of nowhere. I knew I enjoyed the music he played, and I enjoyed the joy he got from it. But I never usually stopped to ask – “who is that?”
That being said, the most played records in our house were the Beatles. I could not only recognize them in a few notes, I could sing entire albums word for word and tell you which of the four was singing it. I know that the Beatles got in a lot of hot water when Lennon said they were bigger than Jesus, but I have on more than one occasion uttered the phrase “McCartney was like God in our house.” (Our dog even bore McCartney as a middle name.) And taking my dad to see McCartney play at Miller Park in Milwaukee is still my #1 night of music – he was like a kid again, which is saying something because he was sixty-four at the time and it was 91F (32C).
I tell you all that so you understand that the Beatles were a big part of my childhood, and they continue to be in heavy rotation on my record player. (Yes, I have a record player – what can I say? I’m sentimental.) I even have two of their lyrics tattooed on my person. (One is a motto, the other a memorial for someone who has passed.) So fast forward to this last March when my bezzie mate and I took a trip ‘across the pond’ to Liverpool.
I have this thing about history. Touching historical things. Being in historical spaces. I don’t know why. I can’t even really explain what it is. But even knowing this, I wasn’t fully prepared for what I experience there.
I’ve seen the photos of the young Beatles playing at the Cavern Club. I’ve seen the video of them playing there (for the 126th time – though the first time recorded with synchronized video and sound; Ringo had just joined the band). And yet I wasn’t prepared to walk into the club and see it with my own eyes – to stand on the spot where the Beatles once stood over sixty years before.
The club, which is part museum, still has live music, and I sat for a few hours listening to covers of musicians from those days (mostly Beatles, but a lot of other folks, too). I should have anticipated getting emotional – but it still came as a surprise. The amount of history that strange little club holds within its brick walls is astounding. And sitting there, listening to Beatles music – even covers – gave me a taste of what it might have been like.
Another stop was a quick stroll around Penny Lane. I’ve come to learn that some folks didn’t know that this was a real place. But it is indeed. The barber shop still exists, though it was under construction when we were there. (“In Penny Lane, there is a barber showing photographs / Of every head he’s had the pleasure to have known / And all the people that come and go / Stop and say hello”). As is the roundabout (“Behind the shelter in the middle of a roundabout / A pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray / And though she feels as if she’s in a play / She is anyway”), though it now has a second level and has been converted into a bistro with Beatle murals all around it. We did luck out with weather while we were there, so the notion of “Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes / There beneath the blue suburban skies” certainly rang true.
Probably the most profound stop for me, though, turned out to be Strawberry Field. Yes, this, too, is a real place (though interestingly, it was not mentioned in the first several draft of the song’s lyrics – it was a late addition). Strawberry Field was a children’s home near the house where Lennon grew up (after moving in with his aunt at the age of five). There was a tree in the back yard he could climb up and see over into the grounds. He spent a lot of time there, sneaking in when he wasn’t supposed to, going with his aunt to listen to live music.
The mansion that once stood on the grounds is no longer there, but there is a new building serving as both cafe and museum (they have some neat artifacts like handwritten original lyrics of the song and the piano on which Lennon wrote and recorded “Imagine”). The museum is set up with visuals and a handheld device with headphones that allows you to link into the videos playing throughout. The tour includes a walk around the garden (or yard for those of you in the states). At one point, I sat down on a picnic table and found a playlist on the device – you could listen to a number of songs, but of course I picked “Strawberry Fields Forever.” And I’m not at all ashamed to say I shed a few tears.
I’m a sentimentalist, remember?
But also – one of the lyrics I have tattooed, my motto, is from this song. “Living is easy with eyes closed.” The lyric continues with “misunderstanding everything you see.” This feels all the more pertinent these days with everything going on in the world. And to be sitting in that space, knowing that a young Lennon ran around that garden – all that history and the present just sort of came together, and it overwhelmed me. In a good way. This song I’ve sung all my life became tangible.
They have since removed the original gate from the front entrance (which is good, because the replacement is covered in graffiti…because of course people can’t resist [sigh]). The original gate sits in the garden, though. It’s beautiful work.
Liverpool is a lovely city. History, beautiful architecture, kind people, the Mersey River (I also have a thing for water). I loved my time there, and I am eager to return to it someday.
Ami Maxine 