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Beatles News Extra

 

Day Tripper

In Liverpool, all their troubles haven’t seemed so far away since they discovered the pulling power of The Beatles.

 

Dave Kenny samples the Fab four experience.

Legend has it that Pete Best, former member of the Fab five, once released an album entitled "Best of the Beatles". Apparently it sold like hot cakes, before the public copped on.

 

This fascinating little piece of trivia flung itself into my brain as I was wandering down a street in Liverpool. I had just been to see The Beatles Story exhibition, and was feeling vaguely dissatisfied.

 

Permit me to explain. I am the biggest Beatle fan in the world. I love them, in fact. Throughout lunch I am so gone with excitement, that I forego the pork pie and pasta salad, and instead spent an hour attempting to outdo my Scouser host with Beatle trivia. The contest ends all square, but only after I empty a bottle of wine over him, and punch him viciously in the teeth, before being dragged off by sixpolicemen.

 

Actually, that’s not true. Anyway, as we walk down Albert Dock I am as high as a Mr. Kite. I descend the steps with rising excitement. On the way in a number of people blocked my passage, in a manner of speaking. There were white ones, and black ones, and yellow ones, and little brown ones with cine cameras. Some of the white ones were Norwegian. I know this because they wore T-shirts with "Norway" written on them.

 

A group of them were babbling and pointing - almost animatedly - at the exciting Beatle mugs. One of them was so excited, in fact, he actually forked out £5.00 for one. Well, a Norwegian would, wouldn’t he? Moving not so swiftly along, I found myself staring at a series of photographs and captions designed to conjure up images of Pre-Beatle days in post war Liverpool. OK, says I. Fair enough. Now let’s get on with it. Moving down the passageway we arrived at the next exhibit.

 

Again there were photographs and captions. This time they were of the boys as teenagers, and dirty looking gits they were too. Getting warmer, I thought and we moved on again. Next we came to the replica of a famous Liverpool shopfront. There were more pictures and captions to read, and still I waited for "it" to happen. What ‘it’ was I didn’t know. I just felt that something’ had to happen.

 

Again we moved along, passing a huge cardboard cut-out representing the Sergeant Pepper cover sleeve. We then passed across a metal submarine floor, while Ringo’s voice bubbled all around us. We even walked through a ‘scream chamber’ which was quite an experience.

 

Still I hadn’t found what I was looking for. A little French girl caught my eye at the Abbey Road Studios recreation. I suppose I should have been paying more attention to the waxwork dummies of the lads playing Love Me Do, but she was a serious babe I smiled, hoping to get by with a little help from my French. But she just ignored me, the stuck up cow.

 

" Something in the way she moos I crowed, thinking I was very clever. Again I digress, but, although it was fantastic to be with other fans on a Beatle Pilgrimage -something I had anticipated for years - the whole thing felt strangely soulless. There were no real relics on display, nothing tangible to link four of the five most popular men in history to this bargain basement journey through their lives.

 

This is all wrapper, and no Mars bar, I thought at the time. That was, until I came to the penultimate exhibit. Around one of the many corners, a knot of people were peering through a wide glass window, into a sitting room we had all seen dozens of times before.

 

The room radiated light. It streamed through the bay windows, gently caressing the cobweb curtains. It leaned against the white baby Grand, turning swirls of dust to smokey columns. It glowed on the faces of all present, turning even the brownest ones a spectral colour Right on cue, those distant cloudy piano chords rolled over us again, wistful and dignified The group was totally silent, reflective, bar the occasional sniffle. Someone broke wind, but nobody moved. We were all too engrossed in the memory of a November day in 1980. I felt a weight in my stomach. ‘Imagine’ always has that effect on me.

 

I realised at that moment that it wasn’t really necessary to come to Liverpool. You can listen to their music anywhere and still feel the same sense of awe. I didn’t need to be here. Besides, I was dying for a leak. The white room at The Beatles story is the final word in the exploitation. I’m glad I saw it, and I’ll visit it again. Not least to replace The Beatles mug I dropped on the way home.

 

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