Although Penny Lane is a Liverpool
street it's also the name given to the area that surrounds
its junction with Smithdown road. None of the places
mentioned in 'Penny Lane' exists in the lane itself. Indeed
to anyone not raised in this area of Liverpool it is, as
musician and art critic George Melly once put it, a "dull
suburban shopping centre". But to Paul and John, who had
spent their early years in the neighborhood, it was a symbol
of glorious innocence when everyone seemed friendly and the
sun shone for ever in a clear blue sky.
John had been the first to refer to
Penny Lane in song, having tried to incorporate it into 'In
My Life', but it was Paul who eventually picked it up and
made it work. He created a Liverpool street scene that could
have been taken from a children's picture book with a pretty
nurse, a jolly barber, an eccentric banker, a patriotic
fireman and some friendly passers by. "It's part fact," he
admitted. "It's part nostalgia."
There was a barber's hop in Penny
Lane, run by a Mr. Bioletti who claimed to have cut hair for
John, Paul and George as children; there were two banks, a
fire station in Allerton Road and, in the middle of the
roundabout, a shelter. The banker without a mac and fireman
with a portrait of the Queen in his pocket never really
existed. They were Paul's embellishments. "I wrote that the
barber had photographs of every head he'd had the pleasure
of knowing," said Paul. "Actually he just had photos of
different hair styles. But all the people who come and go do
stop and say hello."
Finger pie was a Liverpudlian
sexual reference included in the song to amuse the locals.
"It was just a nice little joke for the Liverpool lads who
like a bit of smut," said Paul. "For months afterwards,
girls serving in local chip shops had to put up with the
requests for 'fish and finger pie'."
Liverpool poet Roger McGough, who
was in the Sixties group Scafoold with Paul's brother Mike,
believes the 'Penny Lane' and 'Strawberry Fields' were
significant because it was the first time that places other
than Memphis, and roads other than Route 66 or Highway 61,
had been celebrated in rock. "The Beatles were starting to
write songs about home," McGugh says. "They began to draw on
things like rhymes we used to sing in the streets and old
songs our parents remembered from the days of the music
halls. Liverpool didn't have a mythology until they created
one."
Today, Penny Lane has become an
important landmark on any Beatles' tour of Liverpool and yet
the success of the song has meant that many of its features
have changed. All the original street signs were stolen and
so those that remain are screwed down tightly and very high
up. The barber's shop has become a unisex salon with a
picture of the Beatles displayed in the window. The shelter
on the roundabout has been renovated and re-opened as Sgt.
Pepper's Bistro. The Penny Lane Wine Bar has the song's
lyrics painted above its windows.
Both 'Strawberry Fields Forever'
and 'Penny Lane' were intended for the new album, but
Capitol Records in America were pushing for a single, and it
was released as a double A side. In America it took the top
spot but in Britain it was kept at Number 2 by Engelbert
Humperdinck's hit, 'Please Release Me'.
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