Why ours is the real Beatles hotel

Mar 26 2007 by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post

LIVERPOOL'S soon-to-open Hard Day’s Night hotel won’t be the first Beatles-themed establishment to open, as Mike Chapple discovered on a trip to Blackpool

On September 3 1963 four days after the release of She Loves You,  the band recorded Pop Goes The Beatles for BBC radio at Queens Theatre. Transmitted  a week later the show featured From Me To You, I'll Get You, Money, There's A Place, Honey Don't and Roll Over Beethoven.

Two years later the  by then  four most famous men on the planet recorded a one-off live TV show for Blackpool Night Out series from the ABC. It featured  the nationwide unveiling of two of the most lauded of the Lennon and McCartney classics Yesterday and Help! both of which are recorded for posterity along with I'm Down, Act Naturally and Ticket To Ride on the Beatles Anthology DVD.

Such facts are music to the ears of a Beatles fan whose earliest memories  are of happy family holidays with sunshine, donkey rides and trips to the funfair played out to a soundtrack of Beatles charttoppers.

Fast forward to the Blackpool of today and stepping off the train from Lime Street on a windswept rainy winter  afternoon these days of glory seem like a figment of some twisted imagination.

Having cruelly missed out  to Manchester in the super casino stakes and its  chance to become the Atlantic City of the north there appeared  to be a very tangible pall of gloom hanging over the town. On the famous Golden Mile the only sign of life, such as it was, came from the bingo caller at the Coral Island lounge droning out numbers to two grim faced old ladies.

But such melancholy  is part of the reality and  attraction of all out of season British seaside resorts. With this in mind the resolve was made to look on the brighter side of life.

Going walkabout  it was good to find  that although the Queens Theatre was demolished in 1974 both the ABC and the Opera House were still in place albeit  the former having   been transformed into the Syndicate  Superclub, a "bangin' choons" dance emporium.

The girl at reception seemed blissfully unaware of the former ABC's significance in the Beatles story - as to a certain extent were Pete and Trisha at  their hotel  which is mere five minutes walk away.

The purists might sniff but Strawberry Fields is everything you'd expect a Beatles themed hotel in good old Blackpool to be - a little in yer face  bold, a little brash mixed with that homely feel that only the North can provide.

As Trish opened the front Norwegian Wood was  booming out from the front dining room which  was  festooned with Beatles iconography including a framed poster for the ABC gig of July 7 1963 when the Beatles topped the bill supported by the Brook Brothers and Carry On's Mr Twitcher, Jack Douglas.