SPEAKER_02: 0:00

Mr. McCartney was fifty-four years of age. He has a full-time job in Liverpool as a cotton salesman. Now he's got a job at home. Paul asked his father's permission. Can I go into Liverpool with you, Dad? Take a trumpet I got for my birthday. I don't want to play trumpet, Dad. Elvis doesn't play trumpet, Elvis plays guitar. Paul goes into Liverpool, rushed waiting Draper Music Store and came home with a Zenith 17. He still owns this guitar today, the Zenith, and with that guitar, he sat in that little bedroom and he wrote a song, I've lost my little girl. The first song you can talk about is a song he wrote. Did he write about his mum? Who knows? But it's called I Lost My Little Girl. He met John Lennon and he knew George from school. These three will spend all their spare time, as much as they can in that front room writing songs together. And Paul had a younger brother Michael, and Mike McCartney was an amateur photographer. He didn't play a musical instrument, but he started taking the pictures around the house. Here's a selection of Michael's work at Paul at Work Rest and Play. Paul walking up the front door, the brickwork is perfect. Look at it today. Look at the vandalism that's been done, chipping away. Now that picture was taken through the garden at the back of the house, into the garden underneath the washing line. Paul loved the photo so much, he used it on a solo record in 2005. Chaos and creation in the backyard. That was the front cover. How many members of the Beatles? What's the four? John, Paul, George, and Pete, but you never see Pete. Pete will play the drums, Pete goes home, he has his own friends, he had his own girlfriend, he had his own situation. He didn't mix with the boys off stage. That's why John Lannon said, getting rid of Pete wasn't such a big deal, he was never one of us. This picture's in full. September 62. On the floor, the song with it, I saw her standing there. Same day, John's in glasses. He would never let anyone see him in the glasses in the early days. He pulled them away, he put them in his pocket, and then he posted beetle photos. Front room, history. In the kitchen, refreshment. Paul drinking the pot of tea, and John, Paul, and Georgia drinking cups of tea down in the back garden at the side of the house down here. Paul would talk to his father on a Saturday afternoon, asking the question I'm going out tonight, dad to play a gig in Liverpool. I'm going to the cabin. I need a door key. You keep locking the door on me all the time. Paul will sing about this in the song When I'm 64. Ever been out till quarter to three, would you lock the door? Yes, he would. Paul would go down the back entrance at the crack of dawn, throw a stone at the back window, and the waiter shimmy up the drain pipe. Paul would do that up the drain pipe. Standing here, 1963. Paul is in front of the house, as you can see. The window in the background looking identical today, you can see with tanks of the National Source.

SPEAKER_03: 2:39

Who took the picture of him crawling up the drain pipe? Michael Carter, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 2:43

He took all these cool pictures. And after Paul, I was about to jump into his car, Paul's car will be here in 1963. And after Ford Console Classic, and looking up there, you can see nothing has changed hardly at all. Just the cars get more modern. Paul bought a house for his father in 1964 across the river in Heswell across on the Whittle. Now, this lady here that moved in the house was a lady and her name is Sheila Jones. Sheila's home from 64 until she decided to let the house be sold. The family sold the house of the National Trust as you've just been speaking to Andy, and Andy, who you just spoke to, is now in charge of the houses. This house and John Lennon's house are both owned by National Trust. When you walk in the bedroom upstairs, Paul's bedroom looks like this today. It's a complete replica of how it looked back in the day with the help of photographs. And that's a replica of Paul McCartney's teenage bedroom. That's where Paul sat on his bed and wrote his first song. Paul's been invited to come to the house over the years, but he's told everyone who'd listened, I don't want to go to a house where I lost my mum. I don't want to go to a home where my father couldn't cope with the situation. Apart from John and George coming, it's not a great house to remember. But Paul did knock on that door in the early 2000s. He knocked on the door a couple of times. Like now, the driver's gone home, the guide's gone home. Paul's driver was here, the guy's gone home. Paul stopped with the neighbours in the street. And he still refused to come to the house until you know when James Corden TV special, Carpool Karaoke, 9th of June 2018, and he knocked on the door.

SPEAKER_03: 4:18

So here he is, he comes and knocks on his door, the neighbours happen to see him after and they go mad and take a call. He seems like such a gracious man.

SPEAKER_02: 4:26

You know, he he does his thing. He comes to Liverpool, you don't even know he's here most of the time. When he does come to Liverpool, he does with his university in Liverpool, and sometimes he's just going about his private business. And because he drives a normal car, he doesn't have all the fanfare that follows him, he just does his own thing. Andy, you've just seen there, he came out one day when I rolled up in the street and he said, he just drove up the road, he's in a Mercedes black car, he's just come here, spoke to me, he took a couple of pictures with his family, and then he's just driven off. You just missed him as you come driving in. I caught the message twice. I missed him by two seconds. As I drove in, he drove out. We were lucky nearly. We were lucky again. Almost.

SPEAKER_00: 5:11

And Andy, you uh uh tell us about your role. You work for the National Trust.

SPEAKER_01: 5:16

I do. Um I'm the uh well, I guess the custodian of the property is why I deliver the tours here. Um I look after both Paul and John's houses with a dedicated team. And it's our final shift of the day, hence why I was just locking up and I thought this fine chap just wants a pitcher by the door while at him go on.

SPEAKER_00: 5:36

Well, we appreciate that, Andy, because I know we had bad timing as you're trying to get out of here and go home, but it's it's much appreciated. And now, since we don't have time to go in the house, just quickly, what can you tell us uh about uh what what remains after the McCartney family lived here?

SPEAKER_01: 5:50

Well, the McCartney family here from 56 to 64, and they left this house to go over to Heswall in 1964. Uh, you see, Paul had bought his dad Jim a house. It's called Rembrandt, and the McCartney still uh McCartney family still owned that house. And then the Jones family moved on in. They had it for many years until 1995, and then just around 1995, we were given the opportunity to purchase this house uh for the National Trust. And what we've done is we recreated it using Paul's brother, Mike, and his photographs that were taken in the property during the time here. And so that's what we have.

SPEAKER_00: 6:25

So the full recreation.

SPEAKER_01: 6:26

Is that the same with John's house? John's house, we didn't really have to do a great deal. The family who moved there after Mimi left in 65, they didn't alter anything. Not a great deal anyway. The windows, the interior, the doors, they were all as it was, and uh that's how it's remained. How about the furnishings? You know what? It's a fascinating fact about the the estate when Mimi passed away in 1991, it went back to the family. And the family, on given the gaining the knowledge that we'd uh purchased it, had been given the property by Yoko. They came forward and uh they said, Would you like this back? And so we put it back in the situation to where it belonged. So a lot of the larger pieces of the furniture were actually there when John was there.

SPEAKER_00: 7:09

Well, the one question I definitely want to ask you, Andy, is what does it mean to you to have such a responsibility? Because I mean it seems uh you know, somebody who isn't a fan like us might think, oh, this is silly, they were just some musicians, but they meant so much to so many people. What does it mean to you to not only work for the National Trust, but to carry the trust on your shoulders?

SPEAKER_01: 7:31

Thanks for that. You know, we've all got our backstory, our own Beatles history and story. Me being from Liverpool, I've got mine. I remember growing up with them, uh listening to them with my mum and dad, and then to be given the opportunity to become uh a tour guide and then later the the the manager for the team. It's it is a responsibility, but it's a legacy. You're taking on a story of someone's life and then presenting it to the public. The Beatles, unlike anything else for pop culture, we've not we've not seen anything like what they did. And I I don't think we ever will. It started with Elvis, they just took that batter on and they did what they did throughout the 60s, 70s with Wings and John, and the boys wing along with George. The story that's enduring is going to go on forever. And of course, with the uh the new movies that uh hopefully will come out in the next uh few years, that'll be the next generation. So the kids who are coming with their parents who are my age that'll be okay, the beautiful and it'll be them because they'll take that further. It's just a story that's going on.

SPEAKER_00: 8:41

So Andy Jones, the National Trust, you got a big job. Really appreciate you taking a minute.

SPEAKER_01: 8:46

Thanks for uh turning up in Liverpool and uh looking at this.

SPEAKER_02: 8:50

And Alistair said, Paul said, Shall we have a game? He goes, the game of what? He said, the word game. He gave me a notepad, he had a notepad, and he wrote down what he was and I said, write down the opposite, or vice versa. So we started off with white, black. Yes, no, go, stop. After a couple of weeks, Paul McCartney followed up Alistair Taylor. He said, Hey Alistair, remember when we had that game in our home? He said, Yeah, he said, Well, have a listen to this. It's a clean machine. I'll just stop the music there because for some reason we had every single obstacle in our way there. You know, school letting out, it always happens, people don't know how to drive cars on the road and taking the children home, even though the children can quite easily walk home. But never mind. I walked home in my day. 9th of June 2018. Palmer Party's in Liverpool with CBS TV Carpool Karaoke with James Corden. Paul came here, signed his name. Now he's not going to sign his name on them ones because they'll be taken off the wall and sold on eBay. He ain't gonna do the same up there either because they're the same. This one he can sign because this one has been chipped away, but he can't steal it. There it is. That is 1000% Paul McCartney's signature. It's faded now with the weather, getting to it. You can see it there, Paul McCartney. Now I will send you via email a photograph I took of that five minutes after Paul signed it. I met Paul at the top of the road, and as Paul got in the vehicle beside me, he looked at my cab, he nodded, gave me a thumbs up and said, Your cab's great, it's a real bonus. That was captured on CBS TV. I was looking to be in the right place at the right time. As Paul got put in the car and got whisped away, security for CBS came up to me. I went, Driver, go down the bottom, he's just turned the wall. So I took pictures of that five minutes after Paul. So he mentioned you in there and we give it away. He just said to me, he said, Your cab, yeah, so you'll see him walk past on the screen and you see him look at me and do this. Don't forget his left-handed. And he went, Your cab's great like that to me. So luckily I had I got a caught on TV on TV. So this sign has been painted on the wall because the original ones were made of cast iron, they were just ripped off the wall by souvenir hunters. Liverpool authorities got fed up to the back teeth of replacing them. Then they hit upon the idea, just paint them. If you paint them on the wall, it can't be stolen. So this is one of the ones that were painted from the 70s and 80s. But now they've got plastic signs for people on a GPS, let them see that they've driven into Penny Lane from Seftham Park. But we're gonna drive up there soon, and everything what he sings about up there is there. Come back with that. I said psychedelic, rainbows, flowers, you put it on at the fourth face, you've got to be Sergeant Pepper face, and with the colours of Sergeant Pepper's suits down the door. Beautiful. Start with the obvious. Here we go. Back on the day, it looked like that. That is my former carpet remembered. That's 1967 when the video was made of the shot. Barber shop over the barbershop, back on the day. Violetti, the Italian barber, he cut the hair of all the bullies in the neighbourhood. And that barber shop he gave the Albus Pas the haircuts to teenagers. 17-year-old John, 15-year-old Paul, 14-year-old George. Them rock and roll haircuts came from Violetti over there. Now, on the carpool karaoke, Paul walked in the barber shop and he sat on the barber seat. And Paul, as he walked past me, he gave me the thumbs up, and that is the moment I met Paul. That's Paul and James Corden, and I'm here. I wish I was there, but I'm here and I asked the question do you like the cab? And that's when he went, it's great, it's a real bonus. Don't know what he meant, don't care. That's what he said to me, that's his answer. I was happy with that. Bank on the corner is a duct of surgery. Bank on the corner is a hotel and gestos. Bank on the corner is going to be a line up. So one, two, three banks. Fire station down the road. All the party would go past the fire station on the bus, just down here. We're going to see it soon when we leave here. The bus in them days to stop here. The local artists have done the uh the lucky work on the door to make it look a bit more beaten. And that's what you got. That is literally Penny Lane today, as it is, just a shopping area. If someone got in a vehicle as a taxi driver and said, Take me to Penny Lane, you bring them here, but they'll have to ask you, I want the quiet side down the bottom.

SPEAKER_03: 14:17

So this is something, as many of us know, I've always imagined the term. Exactly. I can't believe I've been on every time I think about this stuff, but that's all I'm down here. I'm gonna think of you, and I'm gonna think of this.

SPEAKER_02: 14:31

Same thing later when we get to see Eleanor Ridgeby and you get to see Stope Fields, it all fucked it. Ah the way I do it, I just call it colouring the pictures. What I'm doing for you is colouring the pictures. You've read about what you've listened. I'm just colouring the pictures.