The Beatles and everybody else: London

Last Saturday study abroad went on a Beatles walk in London. If you will permit me a little personification, I will offer what I think is an acurate picture of the cities of Liverpool and London: Liverpool is about the Beatles, London is about London. What I think I'm trying to say is that Liverpool tourism centres on the Beatles, whilst London tourism includes the Beatles. When we were in Liverpool all of the tourists were looking for the Beatles. Being in London was different because we were a part of the relatively few tourists watching where the Beatles have been.

Our first stop was Soho square. One of the buildings on Soho square says "mpl" on the front, but is otherwise rather non-descript. "mpl" stands for "McCartney Publishing Limited" and it is the current offices of Paul McCartney's music publishing business. This was a really interesting part of the tour for me because the guide was telling us all sorts of things I didn't know. For instance, mpl doesn't own any of the Lennon-McCartney catalog. Aparently Paul McCartney told Michael Jackson to get into the music publishing business and MJ bought the rights to publish Lennon-McCartney songs. Another thing is that Paul McCartney once had a concert on the rooftop of the mpl building. Also, there is a replica of his favourite recording studio, Abbey Road's studio 2, in the basement of the mpl building.

We went to visit the site of the former Bag of Nails Club, which is now called the Miranda Club. I can see you now, zoning out a bit. So what? you're thinking. I will tell you so what. Paul McCartney met his wife Linda Eastman at the Bag of Nails, which is something I did not know until going there. I know that Linda Eastman isn't as famous as Yoko Ono, but Paul and Linda didn't get up to as many public antics as John and Yoko did, so I think Linda got the better deal.

Going to Abbey Road was like being back in Liverpool because everything at Abbey Road was about the Beatles. Tourists are constantly clogging up traffic by crossing the road and the wall in front of the studio is covered in graffiti. The tour guide says that the cover of Abbey Road is the most copied photograph in the world and I have no trouble believing him.

One of the things I learned about in London was how John got his iconic glasses. You know them, the perfectly round, wire rimmed John Lennon glasses. Well it seems that the songwriter happened upon this style quite by accident. There was once a pretensious club called the Ad Lib club that turned John Lennon away. A comedy group decided to parody this and dressed a public restroom up as the "Ad Lav" club, and placed John Lennon in front of it. They had him wear the circular wire rimmed glasses, and he decided to keep wearing them. A formerly unpopular style of glasses became extremely popular and, of course, iconic of John Lennon.

Visited 3 Saville Row was amazing, I couldn't believe I was really there. For anyone who hasn't been steeped in Beatlemania for the past month, that is the former address of Apple Corps, the Beatles' company. If you're still not sure of the significance of that building; the Beatles very last concert took place on the roof of that building. When we were there I kept looking up towards the top of the building, trying to imagine what it would be like to be walking the streets of London and then hear music from somewhere. At the end of the concert, John Lennon being typical of John Lennon said something witty to the crowd; "Thank you, I hope we passed the audition." Yes John, you passed the audition. Congratulations, you are a part of the most famous band in the world. And now the Beatles are no more. At least they left us their music.

Trying to see the Beatles through the tourists: Liverpool

On Tuesday my alarm went off at 5:47am. It was painful. Why were Kim and I getting up so early? Because we were promised a cold breakfast before we got on the bus for Liverpool. As I am sure everyone reading this blog knows, Liverpool is the city from whence came Ringo, John, Paul, and George. Thusly, our professor thought it would make a good two day field trip. (When is the last time you went on a two day field trip?) Our official field trip work in Liverpool was a walk through the Beatles Story Museum, which is exactly what it sounds like, and a ticket to ride on the Magical Mystery Tour, which is a bus ride past various Beatles locations. My unofficial field trip experience in Liverpool was going to the Cavern Club.

Initially I didn't think I was going to get much out of the Beatles Story Museum. It began with a description of the early Quarrymen and how John Lennon met Paul McCartney at a church festival, a story I have heard multiple times through Beatles Class course work. I was worried that this would just be a rehash of the Beatles biography we read. I continued on through the Hamburg display, listening to the audio guide, hoping to get something new about the Beatles out of the experience.

Then I walked into a room that was designed to look like the office of the Mersey Beat. For those of you stay-at-homes, Mersey Beat was a music newspaper created by Bill Harry, one of John Lennon's friends. I knew about Mersey Beat already. What I didn't realize is that Mersey Beat was actually like a newspaper. I was under the impression that Mersey Beat was similar to Owl in the Hollow, the student newspaper I reported for last year. It wasn't. Mersey Beat was still small, but Bill Harry actually rented an office for the paper (a tiny attic office, but an office none the less) and many many hours of work were put into writing the Beat. Through the audio guide, I heard Bill Harry himself talking about why he started a Liverpool music newspaper. He said that he wrote to the newspapers telling them that they needed to cover the Liverpool music scene. Bill Harry said that Liverpool was to rock and roll what New Orleans was to Jazz, but the newspapers wouldn't listen, so he started his own paper. Now I understand what it was to have the Mersey Beat covering the Beatles constantly; this wasn't a couples of pages of writing hardly that nobody read. Everyone in Liverpool who were involved with rock and roll were reading about the Beatles.

The other thing I learned a lot about at the Beatles Story Museum was the Cavern Club. The Cavern Club was the rock and roll venue in Liverpool during the early days of the Beatles. For some reason I was under the impression of a big empty room with a high ceiling. This was very wrong. We got to visit the reconstruction of the original Cavern Club on Tuesday night. The door is on street level, but to enter you have to walk down the stairs. The first time I went in the cavern club it felt like the steps were endless and I was descending deep into the earth. When I reached the bottom of the steps I was in a fairly smallish room. The walls and ceiling are all made of bricks. The ceiling is low and curved into the walls and pillars break up the room. The stage is small, with a colorful brick pattern painted on the wall behind it. Music is performed very loudly. It struck me that a more apt name might have been The Cave. To me the word "Cavern" suggest a huge underground space. While the Club was certainly underground it was by no means huge.

In the Beatles Story Museum I got to hear first hand stories of what it was like to go to the Cavern Club. It was not an alcohol serving establishment; the Cavern Club was truly a place for teenagers to go to experience music. That experience was getting squashed against the bodies of other teenagers, being enveloped by their body heat, and soaked in the odor of the Cavern Club. It smelled like sweat, disinfectant, smoke, and the hotdogs that were sold instead of beer. Out of this emerged the Beatles. They were teenagers when teenage girls started yelling at their concerts, but at that point in time the girls were their peers, and the girls were yelling for the other Liverpool bands.

After Paul was invited into John's band, the Quarrymen, Paul invited George into the band. This is basic Beatles knowledge that I've learned at least three times now, but the Beatles Story Museum gave the story more depth by describing to me how George and Paul met on the bus on the way to school. One of them was carrying a guitar, which must have caused the other to start a conversation about their commonly held instrument. (Later the magical mystery tour took us past George and Paul's bus stop, which is next to the barber shop and bank that Paul wrote about in Penny Lane.) I had heard numerous times before that John initially didn't want George in the band because he was three years younger. But three years younger seemed awfully abstract until I learned that John was seventeen at the time and George was only fourteen. As someone who has just recently been seventeen, I can tell you that fourteen does indeed seem a whole lot younger.

This class has taught me more about the Beatles then I ever thought there was to know, so I came to Liverpool knowing a good deal about them. But I left Liverpool with many more rich details about the band, and I feel as if I've got the third dimension of their lives as Liverpudlians and musicians. The whole time we were in Liverpool, even when we we're doing strictly Beatle-related activities, I was thinking that this was their city. Paul might have walked these streets and John got married behind that door (just a few steps from our hostel). Ringo went to the Lime Street train station that I am now quite familiar with, and George probably laughed at the statue of the naked man. But Liverpool has changed so much since they were lads there. For one thing, Liverpool is now the city the Beatles are from. Go into any gift shop in Liverpool, even the one in the Anglican cathedral, and Beatles merchandise can be purchased. What was the McCartney, Harrison, Lennon, and Starkey Liverpool really like?

I wonder.

Experiencing British Music

On Wednesday we went to the British Music Experience, a sort of high tech museum housed in the sea urchin of London, the O2.






















Walking around amongst the yellow pillars feels like you're at the circus. The white walls and ceiling are made out of some sort of cloth, which strongly reminded me of a circus tent, and the contents of the tent was quite a bit like going to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. The O2 has a central arena for musical performances which we did not go into, but our bus driver told us that Michael Jackson was going to perform there before his death interfered. Around the central performing space are shops and restaurants (Erika and Katia were excited to find two different Starbucks) and on top of the venue is the British Music Experience.

(photo credits to myself)

Before I started reading Can't Buy Me Love for the Beatles class I didn't realize how much drug use influenced rock music. I remember hearing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds for the first time, and remarking to my father how wonderfully random it was. He informed me that it wasn't written to be random, it was written about LSD. At the time I assumed that Lucy was an anomaly, not a representation of a major trend in music. I really liked seeing the evolution of album covers through the sixties. In the British Music Experience, at the beginning of the sixties, all of the album covers were pictures of the musicians. Then the Beatles album Revolver, came out. On the cover was a drawing of George, John, Paul and Ringo, by Klaus Voormann. At the end of the sixties none of the album covers were photographs at all, much less photographs of the musicians. There were some beautifully colorful LP sleeves on display, in the style that is called psychedelic. If drugs had not been such a focus of the music, album artwork probably never would have gone in that direction. After the psychedelic album covers, there was a black one with a triangle, and a Rolling Stones LP sleeve that was a picture of pants decorated with a zipper.

After spending the whole British Music Experience watching the musicians much the way a fan would, albeit watching the musicians more closely, I thought the final show posed an excellent question. The room had three huge screens; one on the left, one on the right, and one in front of a central standing area. Prof. Roos described it as being similar to a sound stage. The video was basically a concert montage, piecing together films of what I'm pretty sure was Coldplay, what Dennis told me was the Stones, and several other bands. The volume was concert-loud and then cranked up an extra 7 notches. The final show began with film of the bands playing their music and then transitioned into just the roaring of the crowd, as seen from the stage. Because the roaring was so loud and the crowd so all encompassing, it felt as if we were on stage. There was no subtitles or voice over, and this made the question even stronger. What was it like to be a rock star? What was it like to be the focal point of all that craziness, or crying girls and screaming people? That was probably the closest I'll ever get to being at the front of a mosh pit, so I think this final experience of the British Music Experience was both a question and an effective answer. Being a rock star, being a Beatle, must have been crazy. This music you made, this creation of yours, this thing outside of yourself, is the obsession of so many people. And you are the embodiment of that music for those fans, so their obsession with the music extends to you. It's no wonder the Beatles gave up touring for recording.

Happy June 1st

Well everybody, welcome to June.

Despite the heat, I've always loved the month of June. There are two main reasons for this. One is that my birthday is in June. The other is that June is the beginning of the summer. In June, a whole year of school is behind me, and the summer stretches out before me, full of possibilities of ice cream and swimming and books. This year, I'm even more excited for this particular month because it is in the month of June that we leave for the UK. To tell you the truth, I'm kind of surprised that June is here. I've had a long process of preparing for this trip; I've been thinking about it since November. And in November it felt like June was just a story I was telling myself, not something that would actually happen.

But here we are.
Happy June 1st, everybody.