Come Together: From Liverpool to the World

5th July 2024. 3:08pm

The park across from 34 Montagu Square in Marylebone is being guarded by a hawk-like Golden Retriever from a top-floor apartment balcony. Our eyes met as I lit a Marlboro, and I couldn’t help but feel that although it was just me on that park bench, in that moment, this Golden Retriever is no stranger to a loitering music fan. I’m sitting across from John Lennon’s London flat doing very little other than observing a spectrally interesting scene, trying to recover evidence of a vanished man, a time of old and a world long gone. So, it’s just me and the dog, and in some ways, John.

I’ve always been someone that is infinitely moved by a significant place and this particular site was having profound effects on my spiralling mind. I recall it trying to retrace 60 years of faces and moments in a desperate attempt to absorb and maybe understand all or some of what the walls of this flat had seen. Truthfully, this was a failed endeavour but the significance of what I was looking at was anything but lost on me. From the mid 60’s, the flat at Montagu Square housed Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and John Lennon all at different times, as well as Jimi Hendrix and no doubt saw countless other figures of historical interest in its halls. Hendrix reportedly wrote “The Wind Cries Mary” there and it is said McCartney wrote “Eleanor Rigby”. It’s impossible to know how many genius ideas were spawned there, The Beatles were hanging around in the height of their fame after all.

This sparks a sense of wonder in me that some 60 years later, the significance of this property has not diminished in the slightest, and yet it stands but a tiny piece of the puzzle of the greatest band there ever was. The Beatles were not just a band, they were a gargantuan force of nature that changed popular culture forever whilst blazing a trail that others would heedlessly follow for decades to come. In fact, it could be argued that this encapsulates the impact of The Beatles without the music. Listening to their catalogue all these decades later is almost comparable to being given all the pieces of the pop culture history puzzle and being tasked with picking out the corners. It feels as if everything I’ve heard in modern music can be traced back to these songs. Not only can they claim responsibility for the majority of modern music ideation, but they still stand head and shoulders above the rest. The joy of The Beatles is in the timeless nature of their work, and the ability of a line to make you feel like you knew all there was to live in those times. This impact spread across the world like wildfire, and across the rest of my European travels this was abundantly evident:

The Iconic site of the last ever Beatles performance on a soho rooftop.

A poster in Florence, Italy.

The Lennon wall in Prague.

All memories of four Scousers that changed the world, forever.

What felt like 12 hours sitting by that address was probably more like 10 minutes. But in that moment, I felt such a wave of oblivion that all the shoes that had coursed the footpath I stood on, might as well have been standing with me. As if oblivion was a perfect place to be by yourself. 60 years and me.

I think this is the effect The Beatles had on a lot of people, and evidently continue to have. A force we will never see the like of again. Whenever I reflect on my time in London, I think of that Golden Retriever and wonder if it guards 60 years of pure and unbridled joy. Or it might just enjoy some fresh air and a view.