Paul McCartney Read Online Free

Lennon and McCartney’. On its side are two cartoon faces, outlined in the vaguest black and white yet still as instantly recognisable all over the world as Mickey Mouse. By now, perhaps even more so.
    For many years, Liverpool was strangely reluctant to capitalise on its most famous sons. But no longer. At Albert Dock, the Beatles Story museum recreates the whole saga so realistically, one could almost think one had shared in it. Mathew Street, renamed ‘the Cavern Quarter’, is a teeming boulevard of souvenir shops and themed bars, with a near-as-dammit replica of the Cavern a few metres from the site of the original. In North John Street, the luxurious Hard Day’s Night Hotel has both a John Lennon and a Paul McCartney Suite, each costing around £800 per night and always reserved for months ahead.
    In addition, there is a huge choice of Magical Mystery Tours around the city centre’s main Beatle landmarks–the Pier Head, St George’s Hall, Lime Street station, the Empire Theatre–then out to the suburbs, where the most sacred shrines are located.
    This one by blue minibus is a cut above the rest, being operated by the National Trust, a body normally dedicated to preserving and restoring Britain’s ancient stately homes. The two homes for which we’re bound are neither ancient or stately, yet between them attract as many paying visitors, proportionate to their size, as any Tudor palace or eighteenth-century Palladian mansion in the Trust’s care.
    Here, for once, the two names’ fixed order of precedence didn’t apply. Paul’s childhood abode, 20 Forthlin Road, Allerton, was the first to be acquired by the Trust and, in 1996, opened to public view as the place where Lennon and McCartney’s songwriting partnership began. For some years afterwards, it was felt that 251 Menlove Avenue, Woolton, where John was brought up, did not qualify as a national monument because no specific Beatles track could be proved to have been composed there (even though Paul and he used to rehearse endlessly in its glassed-in front porch). Finally, in 2002, John’s widow, Yoko Ono, bought the house and presented it to the Trust, together with an allowance for its restoration and upkeep.
    This Sunday morning’s blue minibus contingent are the mix of nationalities and ages one would expect. A group of four from French-Canadian Montreal is led by broadcasting executive Pierre Roy, a ‘Paul’ person to his manicured fingertips: ‘I’m a Gemini like him, I’m left-handed, too, and my first girlfriend’s name was Linda.’
    A pair of young women in their mid-twenties hail respectively from Dublin and Teesside (the latter rather shamefacedly admitting she actually prefers George). Bernard and Margaret Sciambarella, a married couple in their forties, have merely crossed the Mersey from the Cheshire Wirral, bringing their 21-year-old student daughter. Despite both being hardcore Beatles fans they’ve taken this tour only once before. ‘It’s always the same if something’s right on your doorstep, isn’t it?’ Margaret says.
    We head off along Liverpool’s revitalised waterfront, passing on one side the old dock basin, now ringed by espresso bars and boutiques; on the other, Victorian commercial buildings now transformed into desirable river-view apartments. At the corner of James Street is the former headquarters of the White Star shipping line where, one day in 1912, a company official stood on the balcony, reading the Titanic’s casualty-list through a megaphone to the stunned crowds beneath.
    Broadcasting technology a century ago turns out to have been rather more reliable than today’s. ‘Guys, I’m sorry…’ is our driver’s opening announcement. ‘The bus only just came back from a service and the CD player isn’t connected up yet. That means that unfortunately there won’t be any music to go with the places you’ll be seeing on the tour.’
    So out of Beatle City in silence we go: through gangster-haunted