The Cavern Club, Liverpool, England

It was a bit silly, I admit, but I had to go. I’m a musician and I might not have been if it hadn’t been for the Beatles, so I had to go and see where it all started. So on Wednesday, December 10, my friends Mario and Bev McDonnall, Sue Elton and I all piled into Sue’s car and made the journey from Leeds to Liverpool. The main destination was the Cavern Club, famous for being the place where they first played as a band.

It didn’t occur to me til later that the date was a bit auspicious. You may remember better than I did that John Lennon was murdered on Dec. 8, 1980. And on December 10, 1980 I was drawn to be with thousand of other people outside the Dakota apartment building where John lived and died. We stood out there for hours in the cold, burning candles, singing his songs, sobbing as disbelief collided with bitter reality.

And now, 28 years later, I descended the stairs and entered the famous basement club where it all started. An amazing experience, let me tell you. It felt like what a Catholic might feel entering the Sistine Chapel, or the way Derek Jeter described first entering Yankee Stadium. The place is very much as it was back in 1962 and I tried to imagine what it would have been like to have been there then.

Historically, America in 1964 needed something like the Beatles. After JFK was assassinated in 1963 the country was fearful and depressed. The Beatles’ arrival in the spring of 1964 set off an explosion of popular excitement that was virtually unprecedented.

In my life, I persuaded my parents to buy me a $14 guitar from The Montgomery Ward Catalog and tried to teach myself to play. I didn’t get very far so I took a few lessons but that didn’t stick cause I couldn’t see how learning to play Camptown races got me closer to playing rock and roll.

But I never gave up on the dream and later, when piano lessons did stick, I learned to play classical piano and taught myself rock, blues and jazz. I majored in piano at college, spent a year at the Guildhall School of Music in London, and ultimately performed at Carnegie Hall in April of 1980. Then, in late October of 1980, I loaded my electric piano into a van with my band mates from college and moved to New York City to play Rock n Roll for real. After a month of sleeping on people’s couches, I finally found an affordable apartment in December of 1980. Eight days later John Lennon was killed in front of his New York apartment.

So I had to go to Liverpool. Leeds is so close. After the Cavern Club we went over to the docks where there is an interactive Beatles museum filled with personal artifacts of their lives and careers. It’s very well done. I think the most moving item in the whole thing was right at the end. They had John Lennon’s orange-tinted wire rimmed glasses in a wall mounted glass case that allowed you to peer in at them right at eye level. Being that close really brought home the humanity of the man.