Holy Land

(Buckle up. This is going to go longer than the na-na-na-nas at the end of “Hey Jude.”)

At the beginning of this year, when Laura and I went full-in and spent a massive chunk of our hard-earned pay for a vacation to London and Ireland, I had one request: A day trip to Liverpool. It was a big request. Liverpool could be a huge letdown. Dangerously kitschy. Bad shops selling hokey souvenirs and cringy bus tours with terrible jokes telling stories I probably know better than the tour guide. 

But … they are stories that are engrained into my very being. Stories of four young men who grew up in that working class port city in the north of England — the unlikely location that was the birthplace of four men that changed the world. Changed me.

It’s the Beatles I’m talking about — you know that, right?

Laura, who has endured my obsession with the Beatles for the last forty years with the patience of a saint, was on board. She has come to understand this reverence I have for John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

I was finally going to visit the Holy Land.

Some people study the great masters of the renaissance. Others travel to consecrated lands where generals, statesmen, and soldiers have shaped our lives. Others find fulfillment exploring our natural world, or the science, mathematics, and engineering marvels that transform our everyday existence. And yes, so many more gain strength and comfort from an unshakable faith in their religion. 

(For the religious among you who may believe my sprinkling of religious metaphors throughout this post amounts to sacrilege, all I can say is we all have what we believe is holy, and mine is different than yours.)

My religion is the Beatles. Their message is simple. All you need is love. I want to hold your hand. Take a sad song and make it better. Help me get my feet back on the ground. Take these broken wings and learn to fly. Here comes the sun, it’s all right. It’s getting better. Everybody’s laughing, everybody’s happy. I get by with a little help from my friends. Each of us thinking that love never dies. The love you take is equal to the love you make.

Life is more complicated than “all you need is love.” This I know. But if there is a keystone I can return to when the drudgery, nastiness, and insanity of the world begins to drag me down, it is the celebrated catalog of music the Beatles created from 1963 to 1970. It is undeniable. The Beatles are the great magnet, and I am the magnetized bit of filament. One of millions.

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On day five of our vacation, we would take the train from London to Liverpool. But the day before, we would begin our Beatles pilgrimage walking in the shadows of the most famous footsteps ever depicted on an album cover: The Abbey Road crosswalk. 

I told Laura again and again that I didn’t want to make our vacation be all about me and my obsession with the Beatles, and she would have none of it. “You can’t go to London and not go to Abbey Road.”

 When we got there I didn’t recognize it. It’s a narrow street; the album cover makes it seem much wider. I expected a crowd, but there was none. (Check out the Abbey Road webcam sometime. The place is always jammed with people jumping out into the street to get their picture. It must drive the locals crazy.) 

We reviewed a picture of the Abbey Road album cover on my phone so Laura could get the framing. She jumped into the middle of the street, and I walked my walk. She matched the perspective perfectly. Then I took one of her. (The photo you’ll see below see here shows off my fine Photoshop skills.) I scribbled our names on the graffitied wall outside the Abbey Road Studio where the bulk of their incredible body of music was recorded.

I had come prepared to be underwhelmed — protecting myself from disappointment by treating it as a joke. Now, in the aftermath, I felt quite different. Walking away, I looked back. The empty crosswalk was now jammed with people. I couldn’t get this feeling out of my head. This was no joke.

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At the crosswalk we met a guy from Boston who was ditching a work conference to visit Abbey Road. We told him we lived near Allentown and that we were headed to Liverpool the next day. He’d been there. He scrunched his face in a don’t-get-your-hopes-up kind of way, and said, “Yeah, Liverpool might be a lot like Allentown.”

Number one: I’m not going to let you harsh my buzz, Boston guy. Number two: What conference did you skip when you were in Allentown? And number three: Don’t worry, I’m managing my Liverpool expectations.

So with my expectations managed, the next day we were on a train to Liverpool. Here’s how it goes:

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Laura and I walk down Lime Street from the train station to Albert Dock under blue skies, like the tourists/pilgrims that we are. There’s a “Beatles Story” exhibit that is quite good, even for this self-avowed Beatles expert. As good as it is, it doesn’t replace the real-life experience of standing by the River Mersey, the wind blowing hard into our faces.

Our tour bus is painted like the bus in Magical Mystery Tour. Of course it is. We make friends with a couple from Scotland who are our age and are simply happy to be there, because they’re like us: Many years ago, the Beatles entered their lives, and they decided one day they must go to Liverpool, where it all began. 

On the bus we claim seats in row one, where all the eager students want to sit. We are first off the bus at every stop, so we get unobstructed photos before everyone else.

The tour guide’s thick Liverpudlian accent carries us along. He’s funny; he’s done this a million times. The bus driver bops his head and happily sings along to the twenty or so Beatles tunes that will be played on this tour — the same songs he hears countless times every day. I’ve got to hand it to them both. They’re having fun. 

We stop at the southern end of Penny Lane. The familiar Liverpool street marker at this end of Penny Lane has been stolen and replaced too many times to count. I’m no thief but I want that sign in my house.  

We drive the length of Penny Lane, where it ends at a roundabout, close to which sits a barber shop. Imagine that. (I don’t see a fireman. Don’t see a banker, either. Too bad. If I did, I could confirm the presence of a mac, because it has started to rain.) 

The bus can’t drive down Kimnel Street, where Ringo’s Liverpool home was. It’s too narrow. At the corner is a building is painted top to bottom as if it should be in Pepperland — a bright beacon in the rows and rows of narrow brick homes that make up this neighborhood. We want to stop, but we pass by. 

We hop off the bus to view the tiny row home where George Harrison was born — following our guide down an alley past smelly dumpsters and a small auto repair garage. There are no markers, no plaques of recognition. George was one of a family of six that lived here — two rooms upstairs, two rooms downstairs. 

We drive past Saint Peter’s Church in a section of town called Woolton. Years ago I wrote about this spot, where on a summer day in 1957, sixteen-year-old John Lennon met fourteen-year-old Paul McCartney for the first time. I still believe July 6 should be a global holiday. (Or at least I should be given the day off.) There is no stopping at the church grounds. In fact it comes upon us without a warning; it happens too fast; the bus hits a bump; we’re there and gone; I crane my neck looking back but see nothing. I want to go back.

I don’t let it get me down. How can I? Only minutes later we stop at the gates of Strawberry Field, slathered lovingly with graffiti. The rain stops for us as we are first in the group to see the red painted wrought iron gates and surrounding stone stanchions that are the entrance to this old Salvation Army home — given new life by John Lennon’s masterpiece of 1960s psychedelia.

It is here, having touched the gates of Strawberry Field and traveled the length of Penny Lane, that my “this is just a tour bus” defense mechanism fades to nothing. In 1966 John and Paul each wrote songs about these childhood places that would become the most audacious “Double A-Side” single of all time, the centerpiece of a creative shift that began with Rubber Soul and Revolver, and would be fully realized six months later with Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

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It was probably my brother Lynn that bought the Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane single. I was nine years old. My young ears and brain could not decode what I was hearing, except that it was totally different. Like it was from another planet. A cooler one. 

I was an easy target. Young, naive, and innocent. The rest of my siblings loved the Beatles, so I followed. From February of 1964 when I saw them on Ed Sullivan along with the rest of the collective world, to later that year when we went to a packed movie theater in my little hometown and saw A Hard Day’s Night — the sound of the film drowned out by the screams of delight from the people in the theater — I completely allowed the Beatles into my seven-year old soul. From that moment on, there were the Beatles, and there was everything else. 

Mom and Dad were cool about the Beatles. Encouraging. Even when the music got “different.” Even when they might be singing about, or be under the influence of, certain hallucinogenics. Maybe they saw what the Beatles gave me: Joy and happiness. A love of music and writing. A source of creative energy. A treasure-trove of songs about peace and love on which their young son could take into his heart and hold onto for … oh, I don’t know … the rest of his life?

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Back on the bus we stop at John Lennon’s home, and only minutes later we’re at Paul McCartney’s house — just another small row home on yet another narrow Liverpool street. What I felt back at Strawberry Field strikes me again standing outside the McCartney home on Forthlin Road, L18, City of Liverpool. I am standing on (mock me if you must; I don’t care) hallowed ground. 

I see it like a map in my brain: the paths they walked and the busses they took to the houses and hangouts of their hometown during gooey teenage years. We all have those places we remember, don’t we? Places that solidify into a bedrock of memories that will remain with us until our last breath.

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People love waving at these Magical Mystery Tour buses. I mean, come on. They’ve got to be thinking, there’s another damn bus — but they’re waving, enthusiastically, as our bus makes its way to the final stop. The Cavern Club.

The Cavern is halfway down a narrow alley called Mathew Street, and The Beatles played here constantly until their fame made it impossible. Almost 300 shows. This place could be a nightmare of tourism gone haywire. That’s what I’m thinking as we descend the stairwell to this basement club, the music growing louder with every step. We arrive to a packed house. A performer plays up-tempo tunes on an acoustic guitar, filling the place with sound. Graffiti covers every inch of the brick walls. Pictures of big-time musicians and bands who have played here — not just the Beatles — are everywhere. The Cavern is a working club. I grab a John Smith’s Stout at the bar. I bought a beer at the Cavern. How about that.

I know the Cavern has been rebuilt. In the 1970s, the space above it was bulldozed and the club was filled in with the resulting rubble. Thankfully, the structure was re-built with much of the brick and stone from the original club. If you squint and take in the place with black-and-white eyes, you can imagine scores of young people leaving the club in the early morning hours after a night of loud music, walking down Mathew Street smelling of (as the story goes) sweat, smoke, beer, and disinfectant. 

When we leave the Cavern, the only thing we smell is souvenir shops. I find a t-shirt with that vintage Wings logo I love so much. At the end of Mathew Street we meet some nice women who take our picture. They are from Liverpool and London. They are happy. Everyone is happy. 

I realize, of course, that not everyone is happy. We’re humans after all and there’s always someone ready to spoil the party. But not today. At this moment, all I feel is happiness. Happiness from me, from Laura, from everyone around us. That feeling hits me again. What would this place be without the Beatles? And not just this place, Liverpool. What about this place, the Earth?

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Maybe the best part of my obsession is to know that I am not alone. The pilgrimages at Abbey Road and Penny Lane and Strawberry Field are constant and never ending. Together, we are a community of like minds, yet each of us returns to our own private gallery and marvels at the picture that was painted in our head when we first heard “A Day in the Life” or “Here, There, and Everywhere.” The ability of a song to transport us to a place, or a person, or an emotion, is a powerful, magical experience.

Sitting on the train back to London, I revisit that map of Liverpool in my brain, and the places that shaped four young men who stumbled upon each other — at a church fair, on a school bus, at a club — and who’s only desire was to be in a band, and like any other band, to make it big. They had no idea their music … their songs … would shake the world. Shake me. That’s why it’s my Holy Land. 

I knew I would eventually write about my Beatles experience … blabbering on for thousands of words … so many words that by the end the only reader left standing would be me. But that’s okay. Spending hours banging out my thousands of words makes me happy.

And that’s what we want, isn’t it? To be happy? We want to feel fine, and we want to come out and play. We want our heart to go boom, and a light to shine upon us in times of darkness. We don’t want to regret a single day, we long to be guaranteed a smile, and have the kind of things money just can’t buy. And some of us take a Magical Mystery Tour to help get us there.

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