Liddypod 25 – Paul McCartney’s House; 20 Forthlin Road

Why was 20 Forthlin Road so important to Paul McCartney?… Read More Liddypod 25 – Paul McCartney’s House; 20 Forthlin Road

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to Liddy Pod, Beetle's Panter with Bedford and Beasley.

SPEAKER_02 0:13

Dave, it's uh been a while since we have done what we are gonna do today, actually. Um refraser.

unknown 0:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

I'll tell you what, okay, let's let's start this again. Uh it's been a while since we did a Liddy Pod focused entirely on a single beetle. Uh we started off with Ringo, uh, and I think if I'm not mistaken, Ringo might have been one of the very first ones that we did. And then we did George, and then we took a break because there were so many other things to talk about. But we're gonna get back to that today. Can't help it, can we? So I'm picking up off you, I'm spending too much time with you, Dave. Uh so tell us tell the tell the listeners where we are.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

We're here on uh 24th Inn Road in Allerton in Liverpool, made famous because this is where Paul McCartney spent his Beatle years, really. So uh from the age of what was he about 14 when he got here in 1955. But it's strange for getting here, unlike with with the other guys, um, you could say, watch this one, it's a long and winding road to get to Fourth In Road because this was the seventh house that he'd lived in by the time he'd got to 13. So he was born north end of Liverpool in the Walton Hospital, lived in Sunbury Road, which is by Anfield, home of the mighty Reds, of course. Um they lived over in Wallacey, other side of the River Mersey. They lived out in Knowsley in a pre-fab house, very appropriately, prefab. Um they then lived in Everton, that's a swear word, um, which is why he's partly an Everton supporter. Um, and then by then uh Mike had arrived, his brother, and his mum Mary had gone back to work. Instead of going to be a nurse in the hospital again, district nurse and midwife, ends up on this brand new housing estate that which they were still constructing, which was out in Speak, far south of Liverpool. Uh, lived in Western Avenue there, and then Mary said she didn't want to be a midwife anymore. And first, I mean the house goes with the job, so the health authority said, Okay, you can be district nurse still. Um, and we're a kind and compassionate organisation, you've got seven days to find another house, and so they found another house on the Speaker State in Ardwick Road. But Mary always wanted better for her boys, and so that's how they end up here at 24th Inn Road in 1955, and this was a lovely house, and some of the stories Paul has told, you know, that there's a toilet inside and out. Now, if you go back and if you haven't listened to the Ringo and George ones, you'll understand the full context of that. So they've got two toilets, it's got a bathroom, and the great thing about indoors is that you can do a complete loop and you could run round the inside if the doors were open, which Paul always thought was was fancy. So, uh yeah, this is how we end up here at 24th Inn Road in Allerton.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

So he moved basically seven times in the space of just 13 years, which is phenomenal for anyone. But the main reason behind so many moves was well, in part connected to Mary's job.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Yeah, exactly. She'd obviously uh had worked in the hospital where Paul and Mike were born up in Walton, and then we're in the middle of the war. Jim had a couple of moves linked to do more work because obviously he had to give up being uh the cotton broker that was all put on hold. Um, but yeah, it's really it's when Mary decides to go back to work um but doesn't want to work in a hospital again. That's what prompts all the moves. The last one was aspirational because she's still a district nurse when they moved to here. Um, but it's just going up from a working class area to uh a lower middle class area in Allison. You know, and she did have those aspirations for the boys. You know, they had elocution lessons to lose their Liverpool accents because it was a barrier. Suddenly, obviously in the 60s it became fashionable to have a Liverpool accent, and it it still has mixed results now. Um, so she wanted them to be professionals of some sort.

SPEAKER_02 4:10

We'll be showing some photographs so people haven't seen it and maybe a little bit of video footage about the house as well. But I've gotta say, when people come here, and especially UK visitors come here, and you tell them that this was actually at the time a council house. And just to explain for our overseas listeners, a council is sort of public housing, public housing, which in the at that time was the norm to do for most people. But people are quite surprised, UK visitors, when they find out that this was a council house. You just explain a little bit about the house, Dave.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Yeah, so the the original ones when we were looking at uh Ringo uh and with George. Now, Ringo's ones that they were sort of uh late 19th century, so built solidly. Um, obviously, there was a huge housing crisis before the Second World War. Then when there's thousands of houses demolished during the war, there's a bigger crisis. So they start building these brand new housing estates on the edge of the city, like with Speak. So you've got this different style of local council, local authority housing. So it's quite a nice one, you know, red brick. Um, and it just looks it's a it's a step up when you compare to what Ringo and George were living in as council houses. These are bigger, you know, you're getting three bedrooms and you're getting bathrooms, you know, and that's the big, big difference. And most people still they they rented back then, but that was the thing to do. Um, so the really nice house in a terrace, as we have them, as we call them. Um yeah, it it's just for a nicer area, you can see the difference of those older council houses. And I know it's one of the things that Ringo's um used to argue about when people said uh he grew up in the slums. He said that they weren't the slums. Now Liverpool did have some bad housing, uh, and there was a slum clearance, definitely. Um, these are really nicely built houses um with a garden at the front and the back, which of course those older council houses didn't have gardens. So it's it's it's a nicer house, it's really nice here.

SPEAKER_02 6:13

Yeah, it is it is a lovely house and would have been fairly newly built at the time that the McCartney's moved in.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Yeah, it certainly would have done. You can see the difference um with a lot of the house building that that's pre-war, post-war. Um, and the difference is is huge, really. When you look at it, it's it's a lovely, lovely house. And I think it's the style of the brick built the way these were done. It just stands out from some of the working class areas. You can just see that little bit of difference.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Okay, so let's talk a little bit, Dave, about uh Paul's time here. So it was 1955 when he moved here. He was 13 years of age, uh, with his mum, his dad, and of course his younger brother Michael as well. Fantastic move for the McCartney family, as you say, aspirational to move from the speaker state into a brand new area, a brand new estate, in a in a quite a middle-class area, Allerton, you know. Um the happiness didn't last very long, sadly, did it?

SPEAKER_01 7:10

No, because it was only uh the following year at uh the end of October 56 that Mary died from breast cancer. You know, Paul's only 14 years old. His world sort of fell apart. And it's amazing that was quite a change in Paul's life because he'd just started learning music. For his 14th birthday, he'd got a trumpet. You know, his dad was a jazz musician and with big, big influence on Paul. There was always music in the house, you know, that lovely Irish tradition of all the family comes around, there's the piano, everybody has their songs to sing. So he'd grown up with a musical tradition. Then his mum dies from cancer, and it's only two weeks after Mary had died that Paul goes to the Liverpool Empire to see Lonnie Donnegan. Sees Donnegan with his guitar and thinks, I want to do that. Goes to his dad and said, Can I have a guitar? Now Jim has so much of an influence in Paul's career, yeah, as an absolute gentleman. I've never heard a bad word said about him by anybody. And so they change over, and trumpet goes in, Paul comes out with a guitar, and it's been interesting with the the lyrics book that Paul's just brought out. The first song Paul ever wrote was I Lost My Little Girl. And he realised over time that's him talking about losing his mum, but he transfers that into a relationship between a boyfriend and girlfriend. Um that's obvious what it was about. And it's one of those big things, and I know Paul's been asked this a few times. If his mum hadn't died, would he have been a musician? Because really she wants him probably to be a teacher, and there were times when he considered that when the Beatles thing wasn't really happening. But how his life was changed by his mum dying, he finds his guitar, and and Mike had said several times, you know, Paul's way of dealing with grief was music. That's what he found, so that's how he he dealt with it. So it was a massive, massive change. And of course, Jim, again, bless him. He's got two teenage boys to bring up. Now he does that with the help of his family, uh Auntie Jin being one of those. And that's another of the houses, the one up in Diners Lane in Highton, that Paul and Mike spend some time at as well. You know, as Jim was working, etc. So Paul was a bit of a nomad, Modram, but had a really, really good family and strong family roots there.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

So this is really a crucial house, Dave, because it was the last house that Paul lived in in Liverpool before he moved down to London. It was the house where he lost his mum, it was the house where he sort of discovered music, and then it was the house where he was living when he met John as well.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Yeah, that's the key thing. So um he loses his mum at the end of October 56, and then obviously 6th of July 57, Paul and John meet for the first time, and this house becomes I mean the National Trust tried to call it birthplace of the Beatles. What? Another one. I mean, they've been born in so many different parts of Liverpool, haven't they? Dear me, it's not quite that, but you know, this is important. The quarrymen rehearse here. Jim is there to encourage Paul with his music. Mike, of course, was joining in initially until he had that bad accident and broke his arm and damaged nerves and stuff. Um, or Mike could well have ended up being the permanent drummer. Um, so the quarrymen rehearse here, but the key thing for the National Trust, why they bought it, and this was back in 1995, um, was that John and Paul would write songs here. And of course, with Jim being at work and house empty, Paul and John would sag off school, and sag off, I'm sure you can guess, we're playing truant. And again, one of those lovely stories Paul tells, that trying to be grown up, you know, he'd have a cup of tea and he'd get his dad's pipe and put tea leaves in the pipe and try and smoke that. Bizarre. Teenage lads, who knows? But this is where John and Paul did a lot of songwriting, and a number of times they've mentioned this. Uh, and again, thinking of uh Paul's lyrics book, you know, they had the school exercise book from the Liverpool Institute, it's another Lennon McCartney original, and they had like a hundred songs. And the great thing with with Get Back is that we actually got to hear a couple of those songs when they were looking for material, they went back to the very, very beginning, and we're performing some of those first songs that John and Paul wrote here, so it's very, very important. Probably the most famous of the songs and the one the biggest influences is She Loves You. I mean, how many times have we seen a headline that has yeah yeah yeah in it? I mean, it's been over you so many times. But when John and Paul were writing that, they would then go into the next room, see Paul's dad, and say, We've got this, what do you think? And they play it to him. He says, It's very nice, but it's all those Americanisms. Can't you say yes, yes, yes? Can you imagine she loves you? Yes, yes, yes. But bless him, it's a generational thing, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 12:23

Um, so so one of the reasons that they would come here was because um sadly Mary had had died, Jim was at work, the house was available, they could sag off, play truant, and it wouldn't be noticed. But also, John's house was not the best place to practice, was it?

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Well, no, because Mimi, as we know, didn't like the guitar. Uh, famously said the guitar's alright for a hobby, but you'll never make a living from it, um, which John had made into a brass plaque and put in her house when he bought her the house down in uh in Dorset. So, yeah, that there was no real freedom to practice uh mendips, but here there was all the freedom, and Jim was doing that to encourage the lads, you know. So Paul learns to play piano, he had you know a handful of piano lessons, got very, very bored and just taught himself. When Mike damaged his arm, he learned on uh Mike's drum kit. So that's why he's so talented musically, because Jim was such an encouragement. You know, he would play songs to Paul and explain, you know, like listen to here, you've got the you've got the melody, you've got the harmony, there's got the brass, the strings, there's the bass. Paul was learning musical theory without studying musical theory because of what Jim was teaching him, which uh why this house is so so important. And the good thing is, you know, both Paul and Mike, they've always always said how important Jim was to them as a father. Because of course we can't forget Mike becomes the scaffold, you know, and the scaffolds have the number one hit with Lady of the Pink, they tore the world, you know, they have a massive career as well. So the two lads who quite possibly would never have had a musical career had their mum survived. I suppose that that's always the biggest sadness, I think, when you get someone who's become so successful. You know, and look what Paul's done. Um not just musically, what he's done for Liverpool as well, you know, with Lippin, you know, he's been such a supporter of the city. How proud his mum would have been to have seen that. Um, and she's sort of she's missed that. But they they've done her proud, and of course, Paul has commemorated her in song. You know, obviously we think of uh of Let It Be uh as the main one, but you know, she's there as an influence all the way through as well, so it's it's a very important place.

SPEAKER_02 14:43

And this house also uh photographically uh is back in the headlines as well, isn't it? Because Mike McCartney, very very keen amateur photographer when he was younger. People will remember photograph on the cover of one of Paul's solo uh albums, but we now have the lyrics, and of course the front cover is that photo. Just explain that, Dave.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

Yeah, so it's um it's one of those great things that with Mike being such a keen photographer, you know, he took some wonderful photos, particularly of John and Paul, working on songs. I think amongst my favourite Beatles photos is John and Paul with this with their songbook on the ground there in the front room of Fourth In Road, working on the song, and you know, the hands are strumming away, and that for me it just it it captures everything and it's brilliant. Um of course got the yeah, the famous photo with Paul sat in a deck chair in the back garden here at Fourth In Road with his guitar, you know, and it's just a wonderful photo. And Mike is a brilliant photographer, he's taken some amazing, iconic images. Um, and he of course has brought out a new book with uh with Genesis, uh book of all of his photographs, which include the very first colour photo of the quarrymen, which uh taken in 1958. So between the two of them, it's so creative. Mike's always had this very zany sense of humour as well, which is what the scaffold were doing. Very dry wit, sometimes very bizarre and stuff, but but funny, funny with it, and yeah, we're just so grateful that the Mike had the forethought to be taking up all these photos, and that really helped when the National Trust bought this property. They wanted to recreate the inside as to how it would have been. But of course, they got Mike's photos so they match up the with the wallpaper, with the furniture, etc. It was harder to do at Mendips because there were very few photos taken in there. Um, but we had Mike's photos here, so the National Trust had done you know a fantastic job. It looks so authentic, and and of course, Paul has tried so many times to come back and visit. And ironically, that song, one of those famous songs of of Let Hem In, it's sort of don't let him in. Because there's not been someone living here as a curator, he's come back on a few occasions, wanted to go inside, and never could. But of course, he got the chance back in was it was it 2018? 2018 with James Corden. Come on, you remember, tell him all about it.

SPEAKER_02 17:07

Well, that was famously the day when uh Paul McCartney returned to Liverpool for the carpill karaoke. And you will remember as well, Dave, that um there've been rumors about somebody coming into Liverpool. But to be honest, Dave, for those people who don't know, Liverpool now is a hotbed for filming, and there are film stars here with with regularity. So, you know, it could have been anyone. And also I recall seeing the philomonic dining rooms in town with uh film crews setting up uh in the week prior to. This is where he gave the concert at the end of Carpoo Category, but again, it was just another film set. You know, you you drive past them and almost through them sometimes every single day in Liverpool, so nobody again thought about it. And actually, I got to know uh of that day because one of my guiding colleagues, Jackie Spencer, was finishing off a private tour down at the Beatles statues at the waterfront uh with a family of four from America, and she said she recalls these two cars pulling up out of one of the cars, out jumps Paul McCartney and James Corden and walks over to the statues. Well, of course, her group thought we didn't pay for this, is this is this part of the tour? So she put that onto Twitter and then it exploded, you know. And obviously, one of the places he was he was down to visit, and he did, uh, was here at 24th Lynn Road. And also uh there was a magical mystery tour that arrived uh at the same time. So again, those people were thinking, Wow, is this the VIP tour? You get to meet McCartney as well. Uh so yet he did come back, didn't he? And it was a really lovely piece of people who have not watched it, yeah. They should look at uh that pit in particular.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Well, he should do, and you know, it's one of those I started getting messages from all over the world, you know, sort of, are you there? What's happening? Have you met him? And here's one of those ironies, okay? So while Paul is in Liverpool, I was in Dublin, right? And because one of the things that I've done a number of times is I've been flown over to Dublin, I then get on a cruise ship.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

I give a talk in the evening all about the Beatles and Liverpool, and then we sail into Liverpool the following morning and I get off. So while Paul was here, I was in Dublin waiting to get on a cruise ship to tell them all about the Beatles and Liverpool. When there's a Beetle in Liverpool, and I'm not.

SPEAKER_02 19:24

Well, but I was slightly closer day, but but so close and yet so far. I was on the Wirral on the other side of the river doing a job, and you know, there was no way I could just drop drop the job and come back. So I was watching all this Twitter traffic, and I was like 10 miles away on the other side of the river and didn't get a sniff. So so that was it. But he did come back here, he went into the house, uh, obviously all pre-arranged with the National Trust. He spoke to James Corden about, you know, all those things you've just been talking about. Uh, it was really nice for him to uh to recall that, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 19:55

It was, and you could just see the enjoyment as he goes back in, particularly because it's not just like visiting an old house, it's visiting his former house that looked like it would have done when he lived here, you know, with the wall, baby, the furniture and the way it's been done. Um, and you could see that enjoyment, and there's those little stories coming back. Yeah, I loved a bit when in the back garden, because one of the things Paul and Mike would do if they were out late was shiny up the uh the drain pipe and in through the window, and he sort of hints that shall I give that a go now? I think no, don't don't kill McCartney on a drain pipe, please.

SPEAKER_02 20:32

Yeah, so so yeah, for lots and lots of reasons, this is a very special house. Um, you know, it's it sits alongside certainly Mendips where John lived, and we'll we'll cover Mendips in a in a later Liddy Pod. But in some respects you might argue that, you know, because of the music writing here, that it really stands out uh amongst all the Beatles houses and indeed within British contemporary music, you know, one of the places where where you know significant music writings take place. So Paul left here in 1963, uh, along with the the other four Beatles. What happened to the house then, Dave?

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Well, as um they all made some money in 65 and 66, um, all four of the Beatles then bought houses for their parents. And Paul bought Rembrandt, which is over in Heswell, on the far side of the Whittle Peninsula, opposite Liverpool, looks out over the D estuary over to North Wales, um, gets this lovely big house for Jim. Uh, so Jim could retire from work, you know, and he'd worked hard all his life, as most people did back then. You know, he started work at the age of 14. So he had this lovely garden, he was a very keen gardener. Um, and Paul bought him in this lovely house to retire in, spent a lot of money putting in all the central heating, doing everything that his dad could ever want. And he had a very happy retirement over there. Um, and of course, later meets um Angie and gets married again. So uh Angie McCartney, who's still going in the 1990s. Legend down in LA. So yeah, all the beautiful craft of their parents, it's one of the first big things that they did. So that was it. 1965, fourth in, that was it, the McCartney's left for the very last time. And it wasn't until 30 years later that the National Trust then buy the house. And it's almost exactly what you were saying just now with looking at Mendips. You know, people said, oh, you know, if there's a National Trust, we'd buy Mendips, and they wouldn't. You know, they said we've got a Beetle House. And for them, this was important not just for McCartney, but this is important for the Beatles with the songwriting, with the rehearsing, and all that kind of stuff as well. This was the important one to have. And it would be hard to argue that there's a more important house in Britain, particularly when it comes to you know contemporary arts, contemporary music. This was the place.

SPEAKER_02 22:57

Yeah, it it really was. And uh I recall it when the house 95, as you say, Dave, it was bought, and at that time it didn't look like it did today externally, because the as you would do, people had had renovated the house over the years, they'd modernised it. So the National Trust, and for again for overseas businesses, the National Trust is a huge charitable organisation that looks after properties of historic value all over the country, and they they own lots of properties, lots of coastline and countryside, very, very uh wealthy organisation, but it is a charity, everyone can join the National Trust, but they do things very well and very meticulously and properly. And so, what they did, as you say, Dave, they set about renovating the house internally and externally to look exactly as it did at the time, and that includes the the windows, because uh my understanding is having spoken to the national trust, the windows were taken from a house in the next road, they bought them off the the residence uh because they were the same windows, put them in and then matched up the colours as well of maroon and magnolia uh for the front of the house, which is one of the colours that that was used by the the city council at the time. So that's why, probably, as you say, even more so than Mendip's, we can say that this house looks exactly as it did at the time.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Yeah, it's really authentic. The other way to tell which one it is, you look up for the television aerials, and it's the house without the television aerial. Yeah, um, but yeah, it is ironic, isn't it? That when a house has been modernised, you have to un-modernise it and take the double glazing out and put the originals in. Yeah, um, but yeah, National Trust has done a fantastic job with it. It's always a pleasure to come here to visit. And that's the great thing with the National Trust is that you can go on the tour and it's it's an amazing tour to go inside Paul's house but go inside Mendips as well. And it's great, they've done such a fantastic job. And because it's a small tour, Maximus was about 15 people to a tour. So it's quite a personal one as well. You get a chance to walk around the house and see what it would have been like. Um, and it's a real nice glimpse into 1950s Liverpool of what it was like.

SPEAKER_02 25:04

Yeah, absolutely, Dave. And it had the garden, you know, they put a privet hedge back in and created the garden, so to broadly speaking, the way it would have looked at the time, and it is fabulous. And if you uh have not done the National Trust tour, do book in advance because as Dave says, it there's only 15 seats on the minibus. Can't say at the moment what next season's tour programme will look like because it is closed for the winter at the moment, as we speak here, just before Christmas. But you do need to book in advance. If you don't book in advance, you may well be disappointed uh on the day. So, Dave, that's uh Falkland Road, uh, number 20 Falkland Road, the third of our uh focuses on on a single beetle. The next one, maybe not the next Liddypod, but at some time in the future we will go to Mendips and we'll we'll do Mendips as well. But we are gonna post uh a few photos and a little bit of video on Liddypod as well. If we if we can get to grips with the technology, we're gonna we're gonna give it a go, aren't we, Dave?

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Look at us getting all into the 21st century. How technical is this? No, and the problem is, as we've always said, we have the perfect faces for radio, so um we may regret going on to video, but what no? Let's scare the listeners, why not?

SPEAKER_02 26:08

We will, we will definitely regret it. But Dave, thanks very much. It's been good to see you again. We are obviously standing outside today, so there's no breakfast in sight. So the next one has definitely got to be a breakfast.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

Well, actually, I'm I'm close to passing out at this moment. You know, how can we get to this time in the morning? And I've not had a full English breakfast, especially not on the Liddypod day, anyway. Dave, good to see you. Speak to you again. And it's a happy Christmas, of course, by the time this goes out. It's uh we're just before Christmas, so happy Christmas, everyone, happy new year. We've got lots more plans for Liddy Pod in uh 2022.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

You've been listening to Liddy Pod, Beatles banter with Bedford and Beasley.