Ladies and Gentlemen, The Beatles!

One of the earliest memories I have of my parents revolves around music. They loved Neil Sedaka, The Platters, The Beatles, Elvis. I remember them dancing at parties, lighter the second the music started. My dad played guitar and he sang, my mom never really had a singing voice, but she was a great dancer and her smile lit up any party we were at, especially when there was music.

I don’t remember a lot about my childhood, but I do remember that. So I can’t tell you the exact moment I started to love The Beatles, but I can tell you that I’ve never known a time when I didn’t, and they belong to me and I belong to them.

There are all kinds of Beatles fans out there. Some can tell you the date that a German printing of a record came out. I’m not that one. But I know my way around their catalog, and I know the arcs of their story better than my own. Most importantly, I know what their music means to me. My connection isn’t about collecting facts. It is about how the songs live in me, define moments, are an emotional time machine, and an anchor to who I have come to be. I can go months without pressing play and still run a track in my head start to finish, every word right where it belongs.

Which is why you can imagine what it felt like for me to finally make it to Liverpool. That’s where I’ve been and, in a way, still am.

The whole thing happened because a friend of mine needed help with a trip. She just needed someone with stronger English. When I asked where she was going and she said Liverpool, there was no way I was staying home. The flight from Barcelona is only two hours. Suddenly I was planning out visits to all of the places I had dreamed of seeing.

And this weekend, I walked down Penny Lane. I saw the barbershop, I saw the corner with the bank — and thankfully enough, there was a blue suburban sky because it didn’t rain a drop. I stood in Strawberry Field, leaned on the walls John looked over when it was still an orphanage, now a museum with the piano that he wrote Imagine on. I stood outside their childhood homes, Brian Epstein’s house, saw bus stops they wrote about. I walked the same earth that they did — and sometimes still do. I recognized corners I had never physically seen.

I went down, down, down the stairs into the Cavern Club, stood under that arched brick ceiling, listening to new musicians play their songs while I drank lager and sang along with strangers. It felt surreal that I was actually standing there. The place is history, yes, but it is also alive in a way that recordings and documentaries can’t touch. The guitars bite a little harder in that room. Voices bounce off the walls cleanly. The floor vibrates. Man, I wish I could have stayed longer, it was magical.

And while I was visiting these places, I was also somewhere else entirely. I was carrying my parents with me. I was remembering my mom’s singing voice, heavy with her accent, my dad strumming his guitar and bobbing his head up and down, and even my brother, who I haven’t spoken to since my mom passed but who was as big a Beatles fan as I am. His tastes leaned punk, mine leaned deeper into the sixties — the Stones, the Byrds, the Association, the Mamas and the Papas. But for all of us, The Beatles were the through line.

Everywhere I turned, I ran into some piece of what I had been carrying for decades. Penny Lane wasn’t just a street sign, it was the chorus that has been looping in my head since I was a kid. Strawberry Field wasn’t just a landmark, it was a reminder of every story I had read about them and every time I leaned on a song for strength. The Cavern wasn’t just a bar, it was proof that if you hold onto a dream long enough, you walk straight into it.

Liverpool is only one anchor point in this map. London holds chapters, too. New York holds a piece as well, where I left flowers at John’s memorial in Central Park. The geography is wide and I have lots more to see – but THIS place! This place holds a piece of my heart and I won’t let it go.

So, if that was my one and only trip to Liverpool, if I never make it back, then I can say I did some pretty incredible things there. I stood in the places. I felt the music in the air of the city where it was born. I felt the wind come off the Mersey as I strolled the historic docks. That is not a bad way to check a dream off the list.

Because the truth is, sometimes I look at my life and the mistakes try to take center stage. The wrong turns, the near misses, the could-have-beens. Then I remind myself of the other column, the choices I fought for and the dreams I carried until they were real. Since I was a teenager I dreamed of leaving the United States to travel and build a life somewhere new. I checked off Paris, Florence, Venice, the Harry Potter sound stages. I dreamed of Liverpool, and I made it. That is not such a bad life.

And there are places I’ll remember all my life, though some have changed. And when I was younger, so much younger than today, I started falling in love with them. And I made it to Liverpool with a little help from my friends.