Wapping Pier Head: more MDO.

More MDO reconstruction from Bert Kleersnijder, and further evidence of John "helping" with that pick-axe. Wot a helpful chap.
That's Don McCullin's army jacket, which saw active service in Vietnam:


George, you are spoiling us wis zees stripey trousers:


At one point, the people living in those blocks proffered items for signage, including a copy of Rubber Soul which duly turned up for auction a couple of years back, and sold for a squillion pounds (or something):


Many thanks again to Bert.

Wapping Pier Head: more Wapping.

More from Bert Kleersnijder's splendid MDO revisit. Of most interest, perhaps, are those Then & Nows from the non-public side of the garden (and note too the rarely aired uncropped version of this 'un):


So those buildings on the corner there are new. I'd also never seen a present day shot of this location, until now:


The dockside area of Wapping was subject to massive reconstruction in the '80s and '90s; note how the big colonial warehouses behind are all gone now (though some buildings on the other side of the Thames seem to have survived):


Getting all this reconstruction off to a flying start were John and Ringo...:


...who, ever helpful, booted things off via the medium of smashing things with pickaxes:


Many thanks to Bert for sharing these, and yet more to come too.

Wapping Pier Head: 6↑2, part 1.

It can't still be there, can it? But apparently, it is. These new "nows", courtesy of Bert Kleersnijder, show 6↑2 very much in-situ. But what is 6↑2? What means 6↑2? No doubt something to do with Faul related nonsense. Or not.
Still, these are great:


The location is now a private garden, usually locked, of which the old filled-in Pier Head is part. Surprisingly, much remains as was:


Bert, having gained access, spent an hour meticulously capturing "nows" for all the MDO shots from this locale. He's promised to send the rest as soon as they have been edited:


Many thanks to him.

A Brief History Of Violence part 1: MDO.

The eagle-eyed (and probably long-term unemployed) should be able to spot at least six Mad Day Out locations in the above St Pancras panoramathon, though I wouldn't recommend it. Better (and more pointless) to indulge in a bit of cud-chewing on the subject of the Mad Day Out itself, and its themes.
There are at least two (and possibly as many as ninety) themes running through the pics, the most obvious theme being the theme of the fighting theme:


Various people (but mainly lazy magazine editors) have noticed one or other of these pics before ejaculating thus: "Aha! An accidental but useful visual metaphor to illustrate the dissolution of the Beatles!" Maybe so.
However, it seems these pics were really a calculated move on the part of the Fabs: they asked Don McCullin to be principal photographer on the shoot precisely because he was best known for his war photos. Then, as now, as ever, war splatters on, to the horror of 99% of the human race (the ones not doing the fighting). Quoth Macca: "Don's a very cool guy. He is one of the great British photographers. We thought we've got to be the war. We'll provide the battlefield and it'll work. He'll just click into action."
Another theme, clearly related - John, "dead", twice:


(The same spot as above on the left, 43 years later, looking remarkably, and appropriately, like a barrow mound):


They pose outside the Coroner's Court (as above, except for the barrow mound bit):


John "pisses" on the church (and Paul's expression is funny - "Has he learnt nothing?!"):


And so on, and so forth. It seems from Paul's comments, and from what's there to be seen, that the Mad Day Out may have been another attempt to say something about their times, the times in 1968 being particularly dark, both intra and extra-personally (and I'm not sure if that's even a word... but you get the idea). How much more interesting if so (and it was pretty interesting to start with).
Thanks to Joe Baiardi and Tammy for "an" pic.

Mercury Theatre: then & now.

Above squats The Mercury Theatre as it was in the 1950s, and how it looks now in its present guise of unaffordable housing. Opened in 1933, the place was a small but venerable thesp-cranny, frequented by the likes of Eliot, Auden and O'Neill. But you don't care about all that, do ye? Oh no. And, I'm afraid to say, neither do I, because the most interesting thing about this place is, of course, that the Beatles fannied about with a parrot here during the Mad Day Out:


Having bade the bird and its wrangler a teary farewell, they proceeded to go berserk, smashing a sign off the wall and taking it outside, for some reason (or something):


The drainpipe remains:


...as do one or two other things.



More guff to follow, at some point (some of which may even be related to the ostensible subject of this blog).

St Pancras Church: yet more MDO.

A couple of less often seen MDO shots, together with their then & nows, above & below:


Self-explanatory, so I'll spare you:


This, however, may be of slightly more interest; a shot from 1941 showing not only the effects of the Luftwaffe on buildings directly opposite the church, but the plinth, then lacking its obelisk, also in place in 1968 and 2010:


These bombed out buildings were, of course, subsequently razed, to be replaced by the rather splendid art-deco tower block known as Cecil Rhodes House - which later loomed pleasingly in another favourite MDO pic, and continues to do so to this day:


In an impressive feat of incompetence, I managed to cock up the Coroner's Court shot for a second time, so once again that will have to wait (not that it matters).

Wapping Pier Head: then & then (& now).

There's little doubt that the (then) crumbling post-colonial splendour of Wapping Pier Head served the Beatles well; as (albeit unintended) visual metaphors go, this one is hard to whack. So I was happy to discover, with the help of Julian Carr, that the London Metropolitan Archive is stuffed with vintage images of the area; the most relevant ones have been cherry picked here, but they are all fantastically evocative.
Anyway, above and below is the concrete bed, at which the waters of the "mighty" Thames lap, and upon which John played dead that July evening in 1968 (the LMA image dates from 1981):


This area used to be the Wapping Entrance, missus, to London Docks, but was closed and filled in sometime in early 1968; several vintage images of its "pre-Fab" incarnation are to be found online; for example HERE, and here in this shot from the 1890s showing Victorian river rozzers at work:


John, of course, was shortly to have his own spot o' bother with the land-lubbing variety, for reasons that possibly explain his posture in this one:


Just along the road is the t-junction where Sampson Street meets Wapping High Street; the first location used during this portion of the Mad Day Out. The LMA have the Colonial Wharves warehouse from 1971, and a photo of Sampson Street from 1949, presumably showing the effects of the blitz. Whether this building was still there in 1968, I don't know, but Sampson Street is to the right of Ringo:


...and the same spot today, the warehouses long since demolished; all that now remain are the cobblestones (and possibly the lamp-posts) on the High Street:


Back to the Pier Head itself, and two shots from 1968, with the West Quay in the background:


Again, the wall of the West Quay, at the foot of the concrete bed, was where Paul famously arsed around with the chains previously used to close the dock entrance; this LMA photo also dates from 1968 - but the chains (not to mention Paul) are nowhere to be seen:


Finally, a picture from 1971:


The whole area, though a little bushier (and weren't they all?), pretty much unchanged in the intervening period:


So, there we have it. Grateful thanks are again due to Julian Carr for his picture research, to the good offices of the City of London: London Metropolitan Archive for permission to use their pics; and to The Beatles' London for detailed Mad Day Out shizzle.

Wapping Pier Head: 1968 & 2009.

Now a (very) private garden (I did consider shinning over the fence, but thought better of it), the old Pier Head on Wapping High Street was a piece of waste ground surrounded by imposing colonial warehouses when the Beatles rolled up towards the end of their Mad Day Out in July, 1968. The warehouses are now long gone, largely replaced by obscenely expensive apartment buildings. The Pier Head, however, is still recognisable as the venue for some of the most distinctive photos of the Fabs.

Old Street Station: 1968 & 2009.

Braving the, frankly, quite remarkable quantities of urine in the stairwell, I managed to get up to the central island at Old Street this morning, and found...the structure the Beatles stood on as part of the (so called) Mad Day Out is still there. I once saw someone ejected from a pub next to the station for ordering a Coke (I'm sorry, Sir, if you aren't ordering beer or spirits, then I'm going to have to ask you to leave). Impressive stuff. More in this vein to follow.