
IF YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW THE HISTORY OF THE EARLY BEATLES: THINK AGAIN!
“This is the best Beatles book for 20 years”, says Bill Heckle, Director of Cavern City Tours and organizer of the annual Beatle Week Festival, Liverpool.
When it comes to The Beatles’ history, Liverpool lore is a bit like Hollywood: the legend seems to get retold and rehashed with scant regard for the truth. Liverpudlian, and Beatles Historian, David Bedford, has penned a definitive book describing facts and truths of the colourful, formative years of The Beatles, starting many years before they stepped out in suits and mop-top haircuts. This gloriously colourful new volume takes fans on a unique magical mystery tour through the Liverpool of The Beatles, while setting the record straight on many myths and legends.
About Liddypool: Birthplace of The Beatles
Growing up in post-1960s Liverpool – or “Liddypool” as John Lennon renamed it – one cannot avoid The Beatles. Much to Bedford’s dismay, authors were writing about The Beatles’ hometown, and getting their facts wrong.
“To understand The Beatles, you have to understand Liverpool,” says Bedford.
It’s Been a Hard Days’ Decade
Bedford spent nearly a decade compiling Liddypool: Birthplace of the Beatles (Dalton Watson Fine Books, Ltd). “Most authors who have written about the Beatles write about Liverpool from their computers in another country. All of my research was done the old-fashioned way: by visiting sites, talking to eyewitnesses first-hand, collecting stories from friends and acquaintances of The Beatles, and viewing hundreds of documents and previously unseen photographs. It was a labour of love.”
Foreword by former Beatles drummer Pete Best
Pete Best certainly believes Liddypool is the definitive book on his hometown.
“Having been a Beatle for two years and not professing to be a Beatle historian, to me this book is totally enlightening.” Pete Best
The First and only Major Book on The Beatles and Liverpool
In a market that has seen an estimated 8,000 books published about The Beatles, Liddypool: Birthplace of The Beatles is unique. It is the first major book to concentrate solely on The Beatles and their hometown of Liverpool. It covers their rise from birth and childhood in the 1940s and obscurity, to their triumphant civic reception at Liverpool Town Hall on 10th July 1964.
Bedford uses local knowledge and eyewitness testimony to chart every band member, name-change and line-up, from The Black Jacks to The Beatles: it is the story of the “Fab 27”.
In Liddypool:
- How did they eventually become The Fab Four?
- Who changed the course of Beatles folklore because she won on the horses?
- Why was Pete Best dismissed? The new theory is proposed.
- Were they really John, Paul, George, Stuart and Norman?
Whether you are a fan, a fanatic or a “fanorak”, this book will tell you how they became the “Fab Four”. It is:
- A history book – the history of Liverpool, plus a chronological long and winding road through the life of John, Paul, George, Stuart, Pete, Ringo, Brian Epstein, The Quarrymen and many more. Bedford has interviewed; Pete Best, Allan Williams, The Quarrymen, Bill Harry, Alistair Taylor, Ken Brown, Julia Baird and many more, to get first-hand, eyewitness accounts.
- A reference book – search by date, Liverpool song connections, venue or geography.
- A guide book – Bedford provides maps and directions for every suburb within Merseyside connected with The Beatles. You can follow walking tours around Liverpool City Centre; The Dingle; the Penny Lane area; Wavertree; Childwall, and Woolton with information and photographs about The Beatles. Discover and explore 59 homes, 24 schools and 103 music venues.