The Beatles Story

We couldn't go to Liverpool without seeing the Beatles museum on Albert Docks, I would say this was my favourite exhibition of the day, mostly because you could really see the transition through the years that the band made both in style and design.

I wasn't allowed to take pictures in the museum but I managed to sneak a few of the John Lennon "Imagine" exhibit, but more on that later.

Obviously the tour started with an introduction into the lives of the Beatles and moved onto their early influences including Elvis ("Without Elvis, there would be no Beatles") and Buddy Holly. The whole tour is narrated by John Lennon's sister Julia with interviews with influential people throughout their careers.

There was a recreation of the Casbah Coffee shop where the Beatles used to play and also of the Cavern Club where the Beatles played over 490 times. It was a tiny club with a small stage and the narration said that it used to be very hot down there and you could tell who had been to the Cavern club by the way they smelt.

I think my favourite exhibition was of the Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart Club's band album cover. The cover was originally a painting by The Fool which was abandoned and used on the inside sleeve instead. The final design had the Beatles dressed as Sgt Pepper's band playing in a park with iconic figures including Marilyn Monroe, Edgar Alan Poe and Laurel and Hardy. Also included is a waxworks from Madame Tussuad's of the Beatles looking down at a grave with the Beatles name on, it is thought that this is to represent the end of their younger days and a new era in their career was beginning.

I enjoyed all of the exhibitions and the style in which they were done. Some of them to mention were Yellow Submarine, Eleanor Rigby, Strawberry Fields and Abbey Road.



At the end of the tour were four separate pods each containing details of the careers after the Beatles ended, I was interested to see that out of all the Beatles, George was the one who held the title of the best selling solo album, I always assumed it would have been John Lennon or Paul McCartney.

Finally was the Imagine exhibition, which was just a white room with a white piano, a guitar and two pictures of John Lennon. On the walls written in grey were the lyrics to Imagine. I say Sgt Pepper was my favourite exhibition because of the deign aspect but Imagine was the most moving one to me. It was a shock after such colourful and vibrant images to have just a white room and that one be the most effective representation of a song. Behind the room were pictures of hundreds of people of all races and ages with the words "...and the world could live as one" over the top of them.

I really enjoyed visiting the Beatles museum, I loved seeing all of their different album covers and how they changed from the time of Love me Do, where they all seemed to be styled exactly the same to Abbey Road where each of their individual styles were shown for the first time.