Sixty years ago the Beatlemania began
On Saturday, October 28, 1961, around 3 p.m., a young man named Raymond Jones walked into the NEMS music store in Liverpool. He asked the store manager, Brian Epstein, if the Beatles’ single My Bonnie was on sale. The answer was no. But the young man’s question was the first link in the chain of events that changed our world and turned Liverpool into the city of The Beatles.
There are places I remember.
If you fly into Liverpool, your plane will land at John Lennon International Airport. Walking out into the city, next to the cab stand you will see a large (15.6 meters long, 4.6 meters high) yellow submarine.
I, however, arrived in town by rail. But I also encountered the Beatles theme immediately – in the men’s room at the station there was a picture of the memorial to the band members on the Liverpool Promenade hanging over the toilet.
Having sailed the Sea of Time, the Sea of Science, the Sea of Monsters and other seas, the yellow submarine ended its voyage at Liverpool’s John Lennon International Airport.
Having sailed the Sea of Time, the Sea of Science, the Sea of Monsters and other seas, the yellow submarine has completed its journey to Liverpool’s John Lennon International Airport.
There are plenty of places in Liverpool connected in one way or another to The Beatles and their songs, or simply using the Beatles theme for marketing purposes. The Revolver and Yellow Submarine hotels and the Rubber Soul and Revolver pubs, for example. But the most important, most authentic memorable places are in the Matthew Street area.
A hotel room after a hard day
The most affluent Beatlemans stay at the Hard Days Night Hotel. The difference between the name of the hotel and the name of the movie and The Beatles’ 1964 music album (A Hard Day’s Night) is minimal, just an apostrophe before the “s.”
The category of the hotel is four stars. The pathos is all five, but the fifth star is apparently not really needed for brand reasons. “A four sounds better. On the facade of the hotel instead of some caryatids or atlantes there are four sculptures. It is not difficult to guess whose ones. The photos of the Liverpool Four and personal belongings of the band members are used in the decoration of the interiors. The best rooms are not some “presidential” or “royal” suites, but the “Lennon” and “McCartney” suites. The range of room prices is from £100 (if you are very lucky) to £350 per night.
Strategically the hotel is ideally located. It has a side facade facing Matthew Street. Right on that corner in the hotel building is a Beatleman’s store with the boring name The Gallery, but an interesting range of merchandise. The seller is a Beatleman (a non-Beatleman would hardly be able to listen to the same songs every working day from dawn to dusk). Like everyone else associated with the city’s “Beatle” tourist industry, the salesman complains about the pandemic and lockdown. He also says something interesting. But he speaks in Scouse (Liverpool dialect of English), so it’s not easy to understand what he says.
The store has everything a visiting Beatleman might need as a souvenir. T-shirts, baseball caps, pillows, board games, magnets, cups, badges, plastic figurines (at least ten times more expensive than on eBay).
Pedestrian Matthew Street is Liverpool’s most Beatles street. If you call it Beatles Street, you’ll be understood in Liverpool. At 31 Mathew Street there’s another Beatles souvenir store, the Beatles Shop. It differs from the first one in that it has a big antique bias. Every year the store organizes auctions of souvenirs and memorabilia related to Liverpool’s most famous natives. Plastic and wooden figurines of the Liverpool Four, plates and glasses with their portraits, puzzles, old entrance tickets to the Cavern Club, issues of the Mersey Beat newspaper from the early 1960s, photographs, autographs, sheet music and vinyl discs. The hit of the 2021 auction was a sculpture of the goddess Aphrodite, which could be seen in the background during the live televised world premiere of All You Need is Love from the Abbey Road studio on June 25, 1967. The Goddess of Love went under the hammer for £8,400.