Seeing as we are in England studying the Beatles, it would be a mockery if we didn’t take a trip to the Mecca of all Beatles sites, Liverpool. This unassuming working class city was the birthplace of the members of the band, which would become one of the most well known bands to ever walk the earth. While in Liverpool, we saw many places that were important to the Beatles as they grew up and we saw the effects that their environment, schooling, and relationships had on them as they developed into what we know today.
When looking at the influences on the Beatles, one must first look at the city in which they grew up. The tour guide for the Magical Mystery Bus Tour told us that to grow up in Liverpool, one must develop a sarcastic sense of humor or you wouldn’t survive and that is just what the Beatles did. Though I wasn’t privileged enough to have met the Beatles personally, its possible to see their sense of humor in the manner which the conducted interviews and in other public appearances.
Paul McCartney also displayed this sense of humor many years after he had made it big and even longer from the time when he was rejected from a choir at the Liverpool Cathedral. It was said that McCartney was told that he would never be a successful singer by Ronald Woan, the cathedral director of music, and that McCartney came back to the church after he made it big with the Beatles to check in Woan. Woan still believes that McCartney’s success was due to his rejection from the choir. While McCartney doesn’t quite agree, he still got a shot at redemption when an he came back in 2008 to hear an orchestra there perform a piece he wrote for/about his late wife, Linda.
While a sense of humor can get one through many things in life, john Lennon found that it couldn’t help you cope with the lose of a parent. John had started to mend ties with his mom when her life was cut short when she was hit and killed by an off-duty police officer. This incident led to John questioning authority and retreating for the world for the rest of his life.
One of John’s favorite locations to retreat from life to was at an orphanage named Strawberry field. Strawberry Field was a Salvation Army orphanage where John felt at home and free from the outside world after the disappearance of his father and death of his mother. The location later prompted him to write Strawberry Fields Forever, which reached #2 in the UK charts.
Strawberry Fields wasn’t John’s only place to retreat to though. John also would spend loads of time at his good friend Paul McCartney’s house, which wasn’t to far from his own. John and Paul spent hours over there practicing and writing songs together. Their friendship was one of the main reasons the Beatles stuck together for so many years and were so productive during their time. Despite the kindred spirits love of music, their friendship would of never happened if not for Paul coming to see John’s band play at a church festival in July of 1957.
Before Paul and John started writing music together, John formed a band with some of his mates from school called the Quarrymen. This band was one of the many skiffle groups of its time and became the starting point for a cultural revolution that was and is the Beatles. Though John distained school and preformed poorly in almost all school related matters, the band he formed while at school became the magnet for the likes of Paul McCartney and George Harrison.
The Beatles can’t contribute their success to any one event or influence during their lives, but a perfect storm of influences from their childhood. Whether it was relationships with people who were lost, environments which natured or encouraged growth, or hardships and places used to escape from reality, the Beatles were influenced by many different things while growing up in Liverpool that helped them become as successful as they have been, and in Paul and Ringo’s cases still are today.
