Press Reviews

Printed by Reuters: Thursday 22nd July 1999
2nd July FEATURE - Get Ticket To Ride on Magical Mystery Tour
By Paul Majendie

LIVERPOOL, England, July 2 (Reuters) - Get your pink ticket to ride, step right up on the psychedelic charabanc and the Magical Mystery Tour is waiting to take you away.

For die-hard Beatle fans, this truly is the ultimate nirvana - a two-hour bus trip round the birthplace of the world's most famous group.No detail is spared at each Beatle shrine. Take notes and you could be winning Beatle trivia quizzes for the rest of your life.
Tour guide, Eddie Porter, has the Beatle patter honed to perfection and the tourists -this time from Mexico, Belgium, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, Britain and the United States - lap up every anecdote in reverential silence.For the Beatles are big business to this feisty northern English port where the Magical Mystery Tour passengers get picked up at the renovated Albert Docks after visiting the Beatles Story museum. They are whisked - in fact it's more like a grinding rattle 'n' roll - around the Beatle heritage trail in a 33-year-old tourist coach done up in vibrant colours. The original bus from the Beatle film was sold to the Hard Rock Café in Miami.

"I am a self-confessed Beatle nut," says tour guide Porter. "It's such a joy. This is a great big family from all over the world you just share stories with."

"We once had a group from Nepal who had never even heard of the Beatles and wanted to know what they boys are all about."

Porter certainly knows his stuff, reeling off everything from Beatle birth dates to the days their mothers died.  He also has the "street cred" of someone who saw second-hand some of the legend rub off on him.
"My mum and John's mum Julia were both waitresses at the Adelphi hotel in Liverpool. I worked as a waiter at the Oddspot Club where John's stepfather was the restaurant manager."
"They would come in with their manager Brian Epstein. I was hooked then," he added.
The tour builds momentum slowly from the department stores where George Harrison was a trainee electrician and Paul McCartney a van driver.  We pass the place where John Lennon's parents were married and John wed Cynthia, his first wife.

There beneath the blue suburban skies is the first photo opportunity stop for the day trippers - Penny Lane.  But the road signs have been stolen so many times that the council has now painted the name on the wall.  Beneath the shelter in the middle of a roundabout where McCartney wrote the song now stands . . . The Sergeant Pepper Bistro. But at least the barber shop is still there.
Nothing surprises Porter. "A group of Russians kneeled outside Lennon's house and sprinkled vodka on the ground. At first I thought it was holy water," he recalled.

One obligatory stop is the red-gated entrance to Strawberry Field, the 60-year-old children's home that inspired one of Lennon's most famous compositions.
"Yoko Ono often phones and keeps in touch," Porter said of Lennon's widow, "She came and gave the home 100,000 pounds ($158,000) after John's death and said she hoped it would help Strawberry Field(s) forever."
A neighbour hastily bicycles off down the street as the tour bus decamps to admire the red-brick terrace house where George Harrison was born "all those years ago."

But there are genuinely poignant moments too.

Up swells the song "Woman" that Lennon dedicated to his mother as the bus passes the spot where she was knocked down and killed by a drunken driver when Lennon was just 17.
"Mother Mary comes to me singing words of wisdom," sang McCartney of his own mother who died of breast cancer when he was just 14.  Now breast cancer has killed Paul's wife Linda and the tour group pauses reflectively outside McCartney's childhood family home which has now been bought by Britain's National Trust preservation society.  But then as the tour finishes at the site of the Cavern Club where the Beatles played 292 times, Porter ends on a light note.  He echoes Lennon's words when the Beatles last played together on the roof of their London Apple headquarters: "I'd like to say thank you. I hope we passed the audition."