Highlights from my UK Legends of Rock tour: Liverpool, part 1

After a full five days in London, our group of 22 music explorers hopped on a coach and headed to Liverpool for the second leg of our journey through the UK Legends of Rock tour. So Beatles it was, then, starting with our base of operations at the Hard Day’s Night Hotel, the only Beatle-themed hotel in the world.

All the rooms are decoarted with Beatle stuff. Beatles music is always playing in the public spaces.

The lobby had this cool jukebox.

Right around the corner (and I mean right around the corner) was Mathew Street, the location of the original Cavern Club, the rebuilt Cavern Club, Eric’s (the club that gave us bands like Echo and the Bunnymen, OMD, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood) and a bunch of Beatles stores.

This is where the door to original Cavern Club used to be,

The maternity hospital where John Lennon was born. It’s now student housing.

The pub where John used to drink. Son Sean stops in for a pint whenever he’s in Liverpool.

Ringo was born down this road. Our coach was too big to make the turn. Besides, the locals hate all the tourist coming by all the time.

But at the end of Ringo’s street in The Dingle is this buiilding.

See the blue plaque? It’s on a house on a private street that inaccessible to the public. But that’s where George was born.

Next. we went to the church where John and Paul first met on July 6, 1957. The stage would have been here.

There is no known photo of the day John met Paul, but the hall does feature a painting imagining what it might have looked like.

Across the street in the cemetery is a headstone for one Eleanor Rigby. The woman in the song? Probably not, but when in doubt, always go with the legend.

John’s house, which was off-limits to us. They were shooting the Sam Mendes Beatles biopics the day we were around.

Paul’s house.

More to come!