Post by bluemeaniepaul74 on Dec 11, 2014 2:27:58 GMT
So Monday saw the 34th anniversary of John Lennon's death and for me a chance, or an excuse if you like, to get down to Mathew street and celebrate the life of my favourite Beatle and one of Liverpool's most famous sons. So with camera in hand and a few pennies in my pocket I moseyed on down to the place where it all began, or just a few doors down anyway, to see what was going on...
Cavern
The weather was absolutely awful on Monday night which meant when I arrived on Mathew street I was soaked to the bone and not in a very good mood, add to that the fact the barman diddled me out of 50p when I bought my first bottle and you can imagine how I was starting to feel. Inside it was fairly busy but I couldn't work out if that was down to people remembering John or if they were simply avoiding the vicious downpour outside. There wasn't really much going on in the way of music when I arrived so I decided to drink up and head over to Lennon's Bar.
Lennon's Bar
If you were to bet your life on one bar being open on the anniversary of John's death, it would have been Lennon's...Nope, it was closed, so I continued on walking through the wind and the rain and the puddles until I reached the relative warmth of the Grapes!
The Grapes
Again, there wasn't much going on in the way of Lennon entertainment in here, in fact I was beginning to think that I'd got my dates mixed up and I'd arrived a day early, nevertheless I bought another drink and camped down at a table near the window.
The only things that caught my eye in the Grapes were the strange window paintings which were, and still are, a mystery to me.
Window Goblins
Cavern Pub
Having left the Grapes I decided to take a walk up to the Cavern pub to see if there was something, anything going on in there that would make my visit worthwhile, well I got it in there. I'd come to Liverpool in search of John but instead I got Paul...
Paul
I made a new friend down in the Cavern Pub on Monday night, his name was Paul and he introduced himself to me by telling me he'd been arrested the day before for GBH. He was totally innocent of course and blamed it on a mixture of heavy handed policing and being given the wrong tablets when he was a kid. Anyway, as the evening wore on we, or rather he, discussed in great length the Illuminati, Nazi's in UFO'S, the assassination of JFK, disused railway lines, shopping in Farm foods and smelling vinyl records, and all in a very lucid manner might I add, considering he'd been drinking since 7am that morning.
The place started to fill up after a while and I got talking to a few other people, including friend of the forum Wilfried Haag who'd just popped in for a couple of pints. I was telling Wilf about the evenings events and he reckoned there'd been nothing planned in the way of Lennon tributes because it was a Monday night and the anniversary wasn't a landmark one like a 40th or 50th,......great!!!
Bust of Lennon In The Cavern Pub
Cavern Club
Back in the Cavern Club I was pleased to see Jimmy Coburn on stage performing an acoustic set of Lennon songs...
Jimmy Coburn
Jimmy Looks and sounds like Lennon so it was fitting that he be performing that night. He did a really great set and even let one of the regulars, Mike, get up and sing 'Yesterday'. I had a little chat with Mike a short while afterwards and he told me he was from the same area of the Dingle as Ringo and in fact had been present when camera crews were filming George Harrison picking up Ringo in his car outside of Admiral grove, the one where the fans are hanging off the back.
Mike
While I was talking to Mike, Steve Howard who plays Paul in the Mersey Beatles came over for a chat and he told me he'd been 8 when Lennon was shot and, in a story similar to mine, had found the Beatles more or less because of Lennon's death. He hadn't known who John Lennon was up until that point but started to get into them when his brother started playing 'Please, Please Me' all the time. He also spoke of being from the same city as the Beatles, which he described as a source of great pride for him and his fellow band members (of which one of them is his brother!)
Steve and Mike
The evening was coming to a close for me and what had started off as a pretty disappointing visit had gradually turned into a great night. By this time Steve was on stage performing his set and I'd bumped into Wilf again. All in all it had been a pretty low key night with not a great deal going on in regards to celebrating John's life. I would liked to have seen a more organised event somewhere, Lennon tributes etc but I suppose I'll have to wait until 2020 for that!
Steve Howard
Wilf
A Blurry Me
Cavern
The weather was absolutely awful on Monday night which meant when I arrived on Mathew street I was soaked to the bone and not in a very good mood, add to that the fact the barman diddled me out of 50p when I bought my first bottle and you can imagine how I was starting to feel. Inside it was fairly busy but I couldn't work out if that was down to people remembering John or if they were simply avoiding the vicious downpour outside. There wasn't really much going on in the way of music when I arrived so I decided to drink up and head over to Lennon's Bar.
Lennon's Bar
If you were to bet your life on one bar being open on the anniversary of John's death, it would have been Lennon's...Nope, it was closed, so I continued on walking through the wind and the rain and the puddles until I reached the relative warmth of the Grapes!
The Grapes
Again, there wasn't much going on in the way of Lennon entertainment in here, in fact I was beginning to think that I'd got my dates mixed up and I'd arrived a day early, nevertheless I bought another drink and camped down at a table near the window.
The only things that caught my eye in the Grapes were the strange window paintings which were, and still are, a mystery to me.
Window Goblins
Cavern Pub
Having left the Grapes I decided to take a walk up to the Cavern pub to see if there was something, anything going on in there that would make my visit worthwhile, well I got it in there. I'd come to Liverpool in search of John but instead I got Paul...
Paul
I made a new friend down in the Cavern Pub on Monday night, his name was Paul and he introduced himself to me by telling me he'd been arrested the day before for GBH. He was totally innocent of course and blamed it on a mixture of heavy handed policing and being given the wrong tablets when he was a kid. Anyway, as the evening wore on we, or rather he, discussed in great length the Illuminati, Nazi's in UFO'S, the assassination of JFK, disused railway lines, shopping in Farm foods and smelling vinyl records, and all in a very lucid manner might I add, considering he'd been drinking since 7am that morning.
The place started to fill up after a while and I got talking to a few other people, including friend of the forum Wilfried Haag who'd just popped in for a couple of pints. I was telling Wilf about the evenings events and he reckoned there'd been nothing planned in the way of Lennon tributes because it was a Monday night and the anniversary wasn't a landmark one like a 40th or 50th,......great!!!
Bust of Lennon In The Cavern Pub
Cavern Club
Back in the Cavern Club I was pleased to see Jimmy Coburn on stage performing an acoustic set of Lennon songs...
Jimmy Coburn
Jimmy Looks and sounds like Lennon so it was fitting that he be performing that night. He did a really great set and even let one of the regulars, Mike, get up and sing 'Yesterday'. I had a little chat with Mike a short while afterwards and he told me he was from the same area of the Dingle as Ringo and in fact had been present when camera crews were filming George Harrison picking up Ringo in his car outside of Admiral grove, the one where the fans are hanging off the back.
Mike
While I was talking to Mike, Steve Howard who plays Paul in the Mersey Beatles came over for a chat and he told me he'd been 8 when Lennon was shot and, in a story similar to mine, had found the Beatles more or less because of Lennon's death. He hadn't known who John Lennon was up until that point but started to get into them when his brother started playing 'Please, Please Me' all the time. He also spoke of being from the same city as the Beatles, which he described as a source of great pride for him and his fellow band members (of which one of them is his brother!)
Steve and Mike
The evening was coming to a close for me and what had started off as a pretty disappointing visit had gradually turned into a great night. By this time Steve was on stage performing his set and I'd bumped into Wilf again. All in all it had been a pretty low key night with not a great deal going on in regards to celebrating John's life. I would liked to have seen a more organised event somewhere, Lennon tributes etc but I suppose I'll have to wait until 2020 for that!
Steve Howard
Wilf
A Blurry Me