9 Newcastle Road, Liverpool: for a kickoff.

A number of readahs have written to ask if this nonsense is finally, and not before time, over. The answer is no, but it is on hiatus, as I put what little energy I have into other stuff for a while. When will it re-start? I know not, but rest assured if I receive anything sufficiently interesting in the meantime I'll be sure to post.
In the mean-meantime, here's a little pic of where, for our boy at any rate, it all began: the kitchen at 9, Newcastle Road, near Penny Lane.
I was lucky enough to visit this place when it was for sale recently, tagging along with an interested party (ahem). The house was atmospheric in the extreme - refreshingly unrefurbished, vintage wallpaper, bare floorboards etc. And the kitchen, where one day Fred and Julia utilised the floor for a spot of you know wot, with the result being you know who, likewise.
Anyway, not with a whimper, but a bang, I leave ye for now.
Thanks, as ever, to Mr L for the pic.

Liverpool: Falkner Street, 36 thereof.

Chosen, no doubt, for its chippy proximity, number 36 Falkner Street was Brian's paddy pad pad for his dillying, and, lest we forget, dallying, a pad subsequently gifted to John and Cyn as a wedding pressie pad. Or was it? Mr Lewisohn posits the following intriguing footnote: "It was probably number 36, but no one remembers this with any certainty and no document has surfaced - from Brian's time there or John and Cyn's - to prove it."
Hmmm. In 1995, Cyn returned (or did she?) in order to promote her version of Those Were The Days My Friend We Thought They Would Never End We Would Laugh And Laugh And Laugh And Weep Uncontrollably And Laugh Etc.. The above shows her entering for the first time in over 30 years (or was it?).
She seems fairly sure this was the place in the footage, but does say (suspiciously), "It's all changed, obviously". At any rate, this is the living room/kitchen:

As is this:

As is this:

As, ye guessed it, is this:

But was it? I dunno! Funny if it wasn't though!
Ye can view the footage HERE.
Regulah readahs will know the high regard in which I hold the trade edition of Mr Lewisohn's bewk. But having waded into the extended edition over the last couple of days, I have to say it is of a completely different order to any Beatles book I have ever read. It's a masterpiece, an astonishing werk of social history, and anyone with sufficient nous needs to read it. I can say no more (though I will when I've actually finished it).

Duke Street, Liverpool: Joe's Restaurant.

Joe's Restaurant (or Joe's Caff, as it was known), was one of those pivotal places. Being both centrally situated and open late (10pm to 4am), the Beatles and many others naturally gravitated here following an evening's shenanigans. This was where Brian would sometimes meet his "boys" post-dispiriting-trudge-round-London-record-companies (here too where John made his "Right Brian, try Embassy" quip).
Nothing much remains, o'course, the caff having long since been re-converted into a conventional terraced house.
Back in the day, though, curry and jelly were John's scran o' choice from the menu, and featured as such in an early questionnaire:

Also not quite true to say that nothing whatsoever endures: close inspection of the vintage pic reveals the shop sign for P.F Garnett and Co. Ltd., a couple of doors down, hanging still:

Lots of the old Liverpool may have gone, but here and there, remarkably, etc:

A doff o' the cap to Mr Lewisohn's bewk for enlightenment.

Liverpool: Gambier Terrace, then unt nau.

This famous shot of John plus art school chums was taken in Gambier Terrace, No. 3 of which, as ye will know, was home for a while to the aforementioned (though paying rent was more of a theoretical possibility than an actual event). The former art school itself (about which more anon) can be seen through the gates in the new pic.
There's another photo of John plus further art school pals also taken on this very spot, though it's not in general circulation. This little corner of Liverpool remains remarkably unchanged, give or take the odd bush, Beatle or etc. Lovely stuff.

Saltney Street/Dublin Street, Liverpool: Bonded Tea Warehouse.

Oh, wot a statement: the four of them pitched up on a patch of wasteland in front of a derelict warehouse, and a very odd sort of glamour, even now. Having made a few desultory attempts to track down this locale, I'd long since given up. Surely it had gone the way of much else immediately north of the Pier Head? Amazingly enough, no. It's still there - the Bonded Tea Warehouse on Dublin Street.
The adjacent Saltney Street was, according to Mr Lewisohn's esteemed tome, the very place where John's Irish ancestors had been domiciled in what were fairly appalling conditions (cholera etc). The housing is long gone, but the arrow marks the warehousal spot: tea, Indian tea, but no biscuits:

So, co-incidentally, here they appeared in late September 1962, and the warehouse has not changed one little bit half a century later:

In the interim, the patch of scrubland (formerly cholera-ridden housing) has been re-built upon, and currently accomodates a motley collection of wholesalers, car part suppliers et al, thus making it impossible to obtain an exact Then unt Nau, but the spot must lie roughly towards the back of this yard:

His Very Bobness also pops up here in 1966, around a fortnight before being captured on film talking shite with John in the back of a car (possibly coming from Kenwood) for Eat The Document:

Note the Brown Cow pub:

The building still there on the corner, next to the warehouse:

There are quite a few great pics of Bob on Dublin Street (a Google search will reveal several more), and one wonders how co-incidental this was. Bob has form, even turning up on a National Trust tour of Mendips a few years back, sly little Beatlemaniac that he is.
Anyway, I was very pleased to discover this not so little relic remains.

50 Pubs Associated With The Beatles: ...

No. 40: The Old Dive, 12 Brythen Street, Liverpool.
The return of the profoundly pointless 50 Pubs Associated With Etc. feature, and where better to restart than The Old Dive on Brythen Street.
This hostelry is mentioned in an amusing anecdote in Hunter's Beatles biog, as recounted by then landlord Danny English.
Ver lads, it seems, used to frequent this place on a regular basis, due to its proximity to Mathew Street, which made it a handy spot to waste a few hours between lunchtime and evening engagements.
Being perennially skint (or possibly just a bunch of tight-wads), they would pull the old trick of ordering a single beer, and then using that as an excuse to sit in the warm for hours on end staring into space.
Eventually, said Mr English advised our heroes that it was high time they stood the barmaid a drink. Quoth Danny: "After a lot of discussion, they asked me what she was drinking. I said stout. They said how much was that. After more discussions, they produced 4 and a half d. each and bought her a Guinness."
The only illustration of the interior I've been able to find is the following rather wonderful pic from the pages of the Catholic Herald:

It dates from 1957, and shows the then Archbishop of Liverpool, accompanied by the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress, plus a bevy of nuns (that shurely can't be the collective term for nuns, can it? Isn't it a gaggle of nuns? Oh dear, I am talking to myself again), inside the Old Dive, getting bladdered.
I jest. No alcohol was imbibed by the group; rather they were there to pick up a collection - Liverpool's tallest column of pennies, no less, destined for a local hospice.
Sadly, this pub together with the whole surrounding area was levelled a few years later, and nothing now remains.

Ye Crack: Liverpool.

Pubs. A subject close to my heart. It is just about possible to construct a Beatles-related pub crawl in central London: The Devonshire Arms off Manchester Square still exists, and the Beatles drank there on quite a few occasions due to its proximity to the old EMI House. The Shakespeare's Head in Carnaby Street is another - John used to drink in that establishment with Tony Bramwell, and it's still there too. The trouble is, the Beatles didn't go to the pub very often after they moved to London - the prohibitive effects of extreme fame. They did most of their drinking in private clubs - the Ad Lib, The Bag O' Nails, The Scotch of St James, the Speakeasy et al. These premises are now either changed beyond recognition, or else purvey mammary gland centred entertainment. Plus ca change, some might say. Up in Liverpool, however, you can still find no-nonsense pubs where the Fabs used to imbibe - principally the Grapes in Mathew Street (which has a pic of them doing that very thing there on the wall) and, in John's case, the splendidly named Ye Crack. A short stagger from the Art College, John spent a great deal of time here in the late '50s, drinking, arguing, taking the piss, and chatting up Cynthia. The second pic dates from the mid-80s, the last from this year.

Liverpool: 3 Gambier terrace.

The first place John lived independently was an archetypal student flat at 3 Gambier Terrace in Liverpool, overlooking the splendid neo-Gothic Anglican Cathedral. He shared this place with Stuart Sutcliffe and another student, Rod Murray. Funnily enough, British tabloid the People chose to illustrate an article exposing the then current "Beatnik Horror" with a photo of Gambier Terrace. The above pic shows several people gathered in the room there, including Allan Williams (heavily bearded) and what may (or may not) be John with his back to the camera. Note the poster.