Mathew Street Beatles - New Artwork Linking Liverpool and Memphis GOES WRONG 

She is incredible!

This is Mathew Street, home to the Cavern, so it is right where it needs to be!

But back then there was no Cavern, no entry to John and Paul's childhood homes, the Casbah, two Beatles museums, private tours with local experts and no way of getting to find anywhere. Not really better. Plus Liverpool was in an economic depression with high unemployment and nobody apart from a small group of fans, wanted to know about the group who left the city in 63, last played here in 65, and split up in 1970. As a Beatles fan who lived in Liverpool in the 1970s, trust me, it was not better.

@@BrightmoonLiverpool Both J&P homes were of course there in the '70s, & their access nowadays wasn't a Liverpool initiative, so there's a real question of whether Liverpool is the best custodian of its own past. Liverpool backlash to The Beatles moving on was WHY the *original* Cavern was lost forever. Successive Liverpool Councils on both sides slowly destroyed Beatles relics street-level... but in the '60s-70s the operative word was 'slowly,' & 'slowly' was its saving grace The blessing-in-disguise of a slump was that property developers were not as fired up to wreck essential landmarks such as NEMS - - Liverpool European City of Culture (& what a curse that was) took care of that while it ripped out the centre of the city & wrecked the 3 Graces skyline. Ringo made the faux pas of speaking his mind about it twice & got roasted for it, so he's more careful now. But it's pretty obvious which side of this debate Ringo aligns with, & the Liverpool 8 he sings about is a reconstruction of his imagination. What Liverpool mistook for a lack of local patriotism was grief over ongoing destruction, & soon all that will be left are the statues, which are the least authentic part of the streets. Ritchie wanted to show his son around the old haunts in 1992: “and mainly all I could say was, Well, what used to be here was… ” In the new millennium there's even less of it: now the difference is that Ringo wouldn't need to qualify what he said with "mainly." Were it not for Paul McCartney's initiative, you don't think for one minute anything would remain of Liverpool Inny. He'll get behind any celebration because he's Mr Positive & loyal to his roots, but PM is on record about what he thinks about the destruction of the Cavern. Tourist exploitation is part of the problem. Monuments subtract from the authenticity of how the place looked to the band that's 'celebrated' & the time & place that tourists like to feel they are connecting with. Some tourists are so out of touch that they cannot tell the difference between what's authentic & what's plastic, what's genuine street-level & what's fake. Revamps are equivalent to a digital remix of a Beatles record passing itself off as restoration. Museums? Museums were a concession to salvage while historic reality was taken off the streets. This isn't an improvement; it's part of the same problem Joni Mitchell wrote about in respect of short-changing the environment in 'Big Yellow Taxi.' And you charge the people a dollar & a half just to see 'em. Grade Listings won't save the few buildings left in future: they will be delisted as soon as the price is right. Short-termism has won out over the long-term in Liverpool for 50 years, *increasingly* . The writing would be on the wall for all to see but there's a big 'art celebration' of The Beatles-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-The-Beatles blocking the wall. This spin culture cannot distinguish between encountering something & encountering the name of something. 'Strawberry Fields' is not Strawberry Fields. 'The Cavern' is not the Cavern. There's something to be said for making do with what we've got as a necessity, but it doesn't stop here. I don't believe in a free pass to this level of destruction & fakery. As long as criticism isn't voiced, there's nothing in the way of those bulldozers & 'make-overs' & god-awful unveilings. There was far more of Beatles' Liverpool street-level to witness in the 1970s than is there now, & no fakery.

I went to Liverpool in 1984 on my Beatles ‘tour’ and there was virtually nothing compared to now. There was Beatle City and that was it, which was actually excellent. It’s far better today for Beatles fans in Liverpool. Admittedly, it was a farce that the Cavern was demolished in 1973, and it wouldn’t happen today. Liverpool Council was slow with the legacy of the Beatles.

@@ukadventures5660 absolutely right. So much has changed for the better for fans visiting our lovely city.