"Liddypool" reflections

[bluespckr]

At the height of Beatlemania back in my high school "daze", a DJ named "Small Paul" Fredrick on WPTR (an AM station from Albany, NY) used to air the names and addresses of British teens looking for American pen pals. I wrote to a girl in Liverpool, and about two months later received a letter back, saying she'd gotten something like 110 responses ... and had chosen mine to answer. Several years later (in 1969), and in the Air Force, I was stationed in Berlin, Germany, and had the chance to meet her in Liverpool. I went there two more times between '69 and '73 ... saw a local folk group called The Spinners at the Liverpool Phil (did a fun song titled "In Me Liverpool Home"); took a real "ferry 'cross the Mersey (The Royal Daffodil) from Liverpool to Birkenhead; bought some guitar strings and a Simon & Garfunkle LP at NEMS; damn if the Cavern wasn't closed and bricked up. .... but more importantly I gained an understanding about where that grit came from that was so much a part of The Beatles and so many others. Even in 1969, the city could best be described as depressed, and not fully recovered from the effects of the war a quarter century removed. My pen pal's family still had the remnants of their backyard bomb shelter. The house next down had gotten hit in the blitz, and her dad had been a volunteer firefighter who had gone down to the docks to fight the fires as the Germans bombed the city. But, oh, the music that came from that experience. I was too dumb or ignorant back when the British Invasion first hit to know that much of the stuff I was drawn to and that the groups were playing was our own American blues. And of all the places for that "invasion" to be launched from, why Liverpool? Years later, I finally figured out that young Liverpudlian rockers, like John Lennon and the rest, used to wait eagerly for the British merchant mariners to retrurn from the States with the latest blues records. These young Bristish "Teddys" cut their musical teeth learning our blues licks and music and then returned it to an unsuspecting, and mostly white, American youth. But in 1969, there wasn't all the commercialization and touristy things in Liverpool. My pen pal's dentist had been Paul McCartney's, as it turned out. Everyone knew somebody connected to one or more of the Beatles. It was an exciting time for a guy just barely 20, to be walking such hallowed ground.

[beatlefan]

...OH...to have been in your shoes!!

Great story Paul!! It must have been magical to experience this....

[bluespckr]

Absolutely ... and the magic still lives on.

[admin]

Paul! Thanks so much for taking the time to post this great story. Truly a "time-capsule."