With the British Summer not getting any better it was another good day to spend indoor’s which luckily Liverpool has plenty of indoor attractions for such occasions.
Today it was the turn of the Beatles with the new FAB 4 3D visual attraction and the.original Beatles story in Britannia vaults Albert dock. We started at the FAB 4 in the new Pier Head Pavilion. For this we had to wear 3D glasses and we were ushered into a nice new theatrette. Inside we were asked if we minded being filmed as there was a film crew doing a documentary.We were told just to let our legs hang down and not touch the bar in front of us. As the show progressed we were sprayed with water, had bubbles blown around us, smelt fresh strawberries (for Strawberry Fields) and our seats went bump at the appropriate moment. Only about 10 minutes in duration it was very well done. After this we went through the White Feathers presentation which is done by Cynthia and Julian Lennon, John Lennon’s first wife and son. The white feather was symbol of peace given by John to Julian. When John left Cynthia Paul McCartney wrote the song “Hey Jude” which was originally entitled Hey Jules for Julian but was altered to Jude for simplicity. Julian didn’t find this out until 20 years later. It was very interesting and on occasions very moving as Cynthia told her story of living with a legend.
After lunch it was down into the Britannia Vaults for the Beatles story. Unfortunately we had only been in there about 20 minutes when the fire alarm went off and we were evacuated out of the building. Luckily it wasn’t raining and we were back inside within 15 minutes. From the Quarrymen to the Beatles was quite some transformation. The Quarrymen was so named after the school some of the lad’s attended. John already had the Quarrymen up and running before he was introduced to Paul and at first was not too keen on taking Paul on as he could see he was a better musician than himself and he was afraid Paul would take over as king pin but he never did.
There were quite a few changes in the Beatles line up before the final four eventually went on to fame and fortune. The most infamous change was Pete Best who although being a better drummer than Ringo his personality didn’t fit in with the other 3. Quite a few other musicians went on to join other groups or even started their own. During the height of Beatle Mania Merseyside rang out to the tune of many, many groups all trying to emulate the Beatles. Some succeeded but many just went on to enjoy the scene of the Cavern, the Casbah club and the White Star and Grapes pub’s among many other venue’s.
All the top songs were all documented as to how, where they were written and the inspiration behind them. It truly is a magnificent exhibition with many first hand stories from people than came into contact with them. After their manager, Brian Epstein died they just seemed to lose their way and in setting up the Apple Corp they took on friends to run it for them who quite honestly were not capable and within 7 months it’s Apple boutique ceased trading as they were just about broke. Other branches of the corp also came under scrutiny and were eventually managed by the Beatles ex road manager Neil Aspinall. The rest as they say is history and a fascinating history it is.
The final part of the story is of the individual stories of each of the four up to the present day or in the case of John and George their untimely death’s which put an end to any speculation of the Beatles ever reforming as so many other groups have done many years on.
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