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Liverpool History 800 years2007 is Liverpool's 800th birthday, marking 800 years since King John signed the city's charter in August 1207. Liverpool has come a long way since then, evolving from a tiny fishing port - the Dee was the predominant river of the time - to second city of the Empire.King John's interest in Liverpool was as a departure point for Ireland. He built Liverpool Castle - on what is now Castle Street - although it wasn't completed until 1237, twenty-one years after his death. Overlooking the Mersey, the castle stood for more than 400 years; it was partly destroyed in the Civil War, before the area was levelled and St George's Church built and re-built on the site. The Victoria Monument was erected there in 1902, and the area sustained blanket bombing during the Blitz in 1941. Somehow, the Victoria Monument survived, albeit surrounded by rubble - today the area is Derby Square, home to Liverpool's Queen Elizabeth Law Courts.Discover the areaJust a short drive from Liverpool is the classic seaside resort of Southport, with its award-winning family beaches and superb shopping, as well as a fantastic annual line-up of events that can't fail to keep you entertained.Just over the water from Liverpool is the Wirral peninsula. Surrounded by the River Mersey, River Dee and the Irish Sea, its bursting with an array of coastal and countryside attractions, and it's unique coastline gives you the perfect opportunity to escape the hustle and bustle of urban life.Located midway between the cosmopolitan cities of Liverpool and Manchester, the thriving borough of St Helens has an eclectic mix of glorious countryside, fascinating heritage, vibrant nightlife and quality sporting events.Whether you enjoy delving into history, indulging in thrill-seeking sports or getting away from it all the great outdoors, you'll find it in the towns and villages of Runcorn, Widnes, Hale, Daresbury and Moore in Halton.Just eight miles from the centre of Liverpool, Knowsley is rich in exciting family days out. Famous for its safari park, it's fitting that the borough is best known for its wildlife, as it's one of the greenest places in the UK.Initiation to Liverpool还是利物浦的历史,还有音乐。JAZZ和BEATLESTo be able to put it over properly, I'll have to initiate you to this place called Liverpool. I don't know whether any of you have been to England, but in order to put it in its correct category, Liverpool is a very big sprawling city. In comparison to Saint John, Liverpool has a population of maybe one million people. And, because it happens to be on the river Mersey, Liverpool on this side and Birkenhead on the other side, it becomes known as either Merseyside or Liverpool. Here you have Provinces, but in Liverpool we have outlylng districts. It's a very sprawling city and the fact that it is a big port with shipping means that it is very cosmopolitan. So In Liverpool you meet all sorts of nationalities. And in Liverpool itself there are big areas which are purely Chinese and in Upper Parliament Street is a dense Black population. You get all different people that are living in Liverpool.Early Liverpool ClubsBut we're going to talk about Beatles really. We're going to talk centralized Liverpool. While a lot of names I come up with are beautiful to you, to me they were just streets like Lime Street and Upper parliament Street and various places like that. Well, the whole area of the "Beat Scene" was centralized Liverpool. Now I want to tell you how the whole thing started. I've seen one of your questionnaires from this club and I can't answer one of those questions. I don't remember dates and things like that but I was there at the time. So, I'm really going back to the War in Liverpool to start with. As you may know, Liverpool was very badly bombed. That meant a lot of open areas or bomb sites as we called them.I'm going to start in the 1940's. I was a student at the Liverpool School of Art for five years. Then I went to Paris on another scholarship for painting. When I returned to Liverpool, things were changing. Instead of practicing fine art in those days I had to make some money. So I took a job and I became a display artist in a very big shop in Liverpool-- Lewis's Limited. Now I'm 10, 12 maybe 14 years older than the Beatles. But when I was 27 years old, I met two fellows aged 20 in the shop that I was working in. And I think that you all know that I'm deaf. This is rather strange. I haven't heard music since I was fifteen years old. These two guys were very interested in something that was beginning to go on in Liverpool. They approached me and asked if I would he willing to come to a place with them and have a look around. They told me that it was only a hotel in Liverpool where there are some people getting together and playing.Bob Percival's employer Lewis & Co. in the Early DaysThese were the Jazz days, not the Beat, in Liverpool. We went to the Exchange Hotel on Lime Street. I think you all know about the Lime Street Station. From Lime Street Station you go to Hamburg if you want to. This is a long time before your time, but Lime Street was a hell of a place. Most of the girls around Lime Street were prostitutes and you couldn't walk five yards without being asked If you wanted to have a good time.Bill Harry comments 'Lime Street wasn't full of prostitutes at all. It may have been the case at the turn of the century when Liverpool was still a major seaport, as depicted in sea shanties like 'Maggie May', but of the period Bob talked about, this was no longer the case. Lime Street had the main station, a few pubs, cinemas like the Forum, Futurist, Palais de Luxe and Scala (where Bob Percival actually painted the designs on the outside of the cinema) and was a main thoroughfare for respectable people, families with kids, courting couples going to the cinemas and so on.'So we went down Lime Street and we went to the Exchange Hotel. You went upstairs in an elevator and there was a dreadfully depressing room. It had old-fashioned wallpaper and it had a photograph on the wall of the Queen. It had a little stage with a few people knocking around. A sort of group got up but they weren't playing guitars. They were playing saxophones, clarinets, piano and drums. I couldn't hear this but I was looking at the atmosphere. The atmosphere was dreadful. I had just come back from Paris and I had seen a lot of music clubs and jazz clubs. I had even been in the Existentialist Club of Jean-Paul Sartre. Clubs where there was a lot of atmosphere. I told these fellows that we'll try to do something better than that.In Liverpool as in all England, the main entertainment was in pubs. There were thousands of pubs in England. But the pubs had entertainment with a piano and someone singing or someone doing something. Clubs were sophisticated, drinking clubs or gaming clubs. There was nothing for the young people. Now I have to divert from that for a minute and explain England. |
