Every writer has influences that somehow find their way into their work. Sometimes they have been living inside us for so long that we don’t realize how deeply they’ve shaped us until years later. For me, one of those influences has always been the Beatles.
Their music was part of my childhood, long before I ever imagined becoming a writer…. well that’s not entirely true, listening to Paperback Writer did get me dreaming! Decades later, a line written by John Lennon would become the title of my book, Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed.
This month, I finally made it to Liverpool.
I originally shared this story on my personal Substack, Moments of Grace, but it felt at home here too, because underneath the Beatles pilgrimage and my complete inability to behave like a normal 55-year-old woman inside John Lennon’s childhood home 😂, this is also a story about music history, creativity, dreams, and the things that shape us long before we know where they’re leading.
So come along with me to Liverpool...
Fair warning, this is a long one. 😂 But I waited about forty years to get to Liverpool, so apparently I have a lot to say. Grab a cup of tea and come along with me. ❤️
Before I even knew who the Beatles were, I knew their songs. Instead of lullabies, my father would sing “When I’m 64,” “Rocky Raccoon,” and on and on. The Beatles became the soundtrack of my life before I was old enough to understand who they even were.
I was only nine when John Lennon died, but his death rocked me. I remember sitting on our living room floor sobbing.
By seventh grade, my best friend, who I am still friends with to this day, used to laugh and tease me, saying, “Kids our age don’t like the Beatles.”
When I was thirteen, I saw Julian Lennon for the first time on MTV, singing “Valotte,” and I was… in love.
My best friend at the time was in love with Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran, so naturally we made a perfectly reasonable plan… when we turned eighteen, we would move to London, find Julian and Nick, and marry them.
How we were going to afford to move to England, locate these two famous men, or convince them to fall madly in love with us were minor details we didn’t bother working out.
Obviously, that didn’t happen. 😂
But the dream of going to England never left me.
In 2010, Curt and I got married. For our honeymoon, we decided to go to Iceland, where his family is from, but I still had that itch to go to England.
I’d had a couple of opportunities to go when I was younger, but something always held me back. Once, my grandpa offered to help finance the trip, but I would have had to go alone, and I was WAY too shy and introverted for that.
Another time, a man I’d met in an online group offered to pay for my trip.
I think we can all agree I made a wise decision turning that one down. 😂
So, since we’d already be relatively close on our honeymoon, we added London, and since we were there, we might as well take the Chunnel to Paris too, right?
While in London, of course we went to Abbey Road. For the Beatles-loving little girl inside me, it was a dream come true.
But Liverpool was still a dream waiting.
Curt is every bit as big a Beatles fan as I am. His record store is named Tangerine Tree, from “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Our son is named Jude. My book is titled Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed, a title I truly believe was given to me by John Lennon, but THAT is another story.
Liverpool had been on our list forever, and yet somehow, after sixteen years of marriage and sixteen years of traveling somewhere new for our anniversary, we still hadn’t made it there.
Last month we had decided that next year, we’re finally going to Liverpool.
Well...
As John sang, “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”
Because Liverpool was about to happen MUCH sooner.
We had just returned from our big trip of the year, Mexico, and absolutely were NOT planning another adventure anytime soon.
Then I read that Boy George was going to be performing as Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar in London.
I’ve been a huge Boy George fan since I was about fifteen, and my mom raised me on Jesus Christ Superstar.
There was just one catch…
Boy George was performing for only three weeks. And only in London.
Curt was upstairs tucking Jude into bed when I read the article. When he came back into the room, I looked at him and said, “Uhm… apparently we’re going to England next month.”
I was only half joking, but even as I said it, my mind was already spinning.
How could I make this happen?
I fully expected Curt to tell me I was crazy. We’d JUST taken a big trip. Our bank account would absolutely disagree with this plan.
Three weeks later, we were in England. 😂
We figured we’d already planned to go the following year. We were simply going a few months early!
And then, while we were preparing for the trip, we found out Boy George had pulled out of the show. 😕
I laughed my little butt off!
Everyone asked, “So… are you not going now?”
Uhm, NO.
OF COURSE WE WERE STILL GOING.
Because somewhere along the way, this had stopped being a trip to see Boy George. This was Liverpool! A place I’d been imagining since I was a kid. And my inner child was absolutely NOT letting me back out now!
We arrived in London late, got to our hotel, crashed for the night, and caught a train to Liverpool the next morning.
I don’t think I fully understood until we arrived that this wasn’t going to feel like ordinary sightseeing. I wasn’t simply visiting places associated with a band I loved.
I was about to step inside the songs that I had been listening to my entire life.
Day One — Liverpool & The Beatles Museum
After a quick stop at the hotel to drop our bags off, we made our way to Mathew Street.
A street that I had grown up reading stories about. I’m pretty sure I was doing more jumping up and down than walking with any semblance of composure. 😂
I honestly had a hard time wrapping my brain around the fact that I was really there!
Our first stop was the Beatles Museum. I figured it would be cool, but I was unprepared for the jaw-dropping three floors of Beatles history we encountered!
Everywhere I turned was something I’d seen in photographs, documentaries, or read in books, except now it wasn’t on a page or a screen, it was right there in front of me!
That dress! Seriously. I WANT THE DRESS. 😂
Day Two — The Magical Mystery Tour, The Beatles Story & The Cavern
Curt and I were talking just last night about how neither of us has completely processed everything we saw and experienced.
There were so many moments when we’d look at each other with that same expression:
Are we really here? Are we really doing this?
Day Two started with the Magical Mystery Tour.
Is it a little cheesy? Yes. 😂
Did we absolutely HAVE to do it? Also yes.
And I loved every minute of it!
We drove through the Liverpool neighborhoods where John, Paul, George and Ringo grew up, passing their childhood homes and places we’d heard about in songs and stories our entire lives.
And then we went down Penny Lane.
Penny Lane.
There was the barber shop, the shelter in the middle of the roundabout. We both felt like we were suddenly inside the song, or as our guide said… living a day in the life of Paul.
And then we arrived at Strawberry Field.
“Strawberry Fields Forever” has been one of my favorite songs since childhood, and now a line from that song is the title of my own book: Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed.
Standing at those famous red gates felt almost like two versions of me had suddenly met each other.
The little girl who grew up listening to John Lennon and the woman standing there decades later, with words he wrote now sitting on the cover of a book I had written myself.
That day we only stopped outside the gates. We’d be coming back the following morning to actually visit Strawberry Field, so for now we climbed back aboard the bus and continued our Magical Mystery Tour.
Next came The Beatles Story.
And once again I find myself thinking...
How do I explain this without simply saying OH MY GOD, BEATLES EVERYWHERE?! 😂
And then, of course, we had to go to the Cavern.
Because really...
How do you go to Liverpool on a Beatles pilgrimage and NOT go to the Cavern Club?
Technically, the Cavern we walked into isn’t completely the original club. The original was closed and filled in during construction work in the 1970s, and the Cavern was later rebuilt nearby using thousands of bricks recovered from the original site.
But honestly, I didn’t care.
You walk down those stairs into that dark, crowded cellar with the brick arches and music playing, and you can almost feel what that world must have been like.
This was the place where the Beatles played over and over again before the screaming crowds and stadiums. Before America. Before they became THE BEATLES.
I’d spent my whole life loving the Beatles, but Liverpool was introducing me to the boys.
John. Paul. George. Ringo.
Four young men walking these streets, playing tiny clubs, writing songs, teasing each other and dreaming about what might happen next.
They couldn’t possibly have known what was coming.
Well... maybe John did! 😂
Because if there was one thing we kept hearing throughout Liverpool, it was that John always insisted he was going to be famous.
Day Three — Strawberry Field & The National Trust Homes
“Let me take you down cause I’m going to…”
The day before, we’d only stood outside those famous red gates.
This day, we went inside.
Strawberry Field today is very different from the place John knew as a child. The children’s home itself is gone, but the grounds remain, along with a museum dedicated to its history, John’s connection to it, and the song it inspired.
John’s childhood home, Mendips, was just behind Strawberry Field, and as a boy he would climb over the wall to play there. Aunt Mimi was NOT pleased with this and was always after him to stop.
John’s response to her was essentially, They’re not going to hang me.
And suddenly a lyric I’d heard my entire life took on an entirely new meaning.
“Strawberry Fields. Nothing is real. And nothing to get hung about.”
All I could think about was that little boy climbing over the wall. Before he was John Lennon, just a mischievous kid hopping a fence to visit a place he loved, knowing full well Mimi was going to have something to say about it when he got home. 😂
And then, later that afternoon...
I walked into the house where that little boy had lived.
Mendips — John Lennon’s Childhood Home
We didn’t enter through the front door because the family rarely used it themselves. It was reserved for “company.”
Instead, we went around the side of the house and entered through the kitchen... the way John would have.
The moment I crossed the threshold, my breath caught. My eyes immediately filled with tears.
I was inside John’s house!
Even now, sitting at home writing this, I feel like I need to pinch myself.
I was standing in the rooms where John was just John.
Before the Beatles. Before Beatlemania. Before stadiums, screaming fans and photographers. Before the entire world knew his name.
This was where he ate breakfast. Where he laughed and cried. Where he got yelled at by Mimi for hopping a fence! 😂
It was also a place that held heartache and grief. His mother, Julia, was killed just outside, after leaving that very house when John was only seventeen.
I thought about that too as I stood there, the grief those walls had witnessed, and the boy who had to somehow keep growing up inside them.
I stood in his bedroom. I walked the hallway he walked. I looked through the windows he looked through.
And I kept thinking about the boy who had lived there. The boy whose music would eventually travel across an ocean and somehow become part of the soundtrack of my own life.
There are places you visit and think: Wow. This is incredible.
And then there are places you feel.
Mendips was one of those places for me.
I wish I could explain the enormity of what I felt standing inside that house.
I don’t think I can.
20 Forthlin Road — Paul McCartney’s Childhood Home
Next we went to Paul’s.
Just as it had when I entered John’s house, the emotion bubbled up and spilled over when I crossed this threshold.
Paul used to refer to Mendips as “the posh house,” but while Aunt Mimi wasn’t always thrilled about John’s friends hanging around, Paul’s dad, Jim, encouraged the boys and their music.
So they came here.
Eventually, all four Beatles walked across these floors.
And knowing that, knowing that I was now walking across them too…
This wasn’t a replica in a museum.
This was Paul’s house!
This was where teenage boys sat around with guitars and started creating songs without knowing people would still be listening to them more than sixty years later.
Standing there, I couldn’t help thinking about another Paul moment I’d had a few years earlier.
Curt and I had splurged on third-row seats to see Paul in Seattle. Before the concert, we happened to be standing on the corner when his car pulled up!
And Paul waved at us.
PAUL. WAVED. AT. US. 😂
I have video evidence of this moment, which unfortunately also means there is video evidence of me screaming, “I LOVE YOU, PAUL!” like a 16-year-old girl in the middle of Beatlemania! 😂
I wrote about that experience at the time and shared the video, so if you’d like to witness me completely lose all sense of dignity, you can see it here. 😂
And now, just a few years later, here I was standing inside the house where he had grown up. Where many of the songs I’ve listened to my entire life were written.
Our guide told us that Paul wrote “When I’m 64” here when he was only fourteen!
“When I’m 64.”
One of the songs my father used to sing to me when I was a little girl.
That one got me.
He wrote “Michelle” in this house. My middle name is Michelle because of that song.
So learning that a song that had literally become part of my name had its beginnings inside the house I was standing in...
Yeah.
That got me too. ❤️
Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take many photographs inside Paul’s house, but that’s okay. Some of my favorite things from that visit aren’t things I could have captured in a photograph anyway.
Because just when I thought the experience couldn’t become any more special, our guide gave us one final surprise.
He played us an audio message from Paul himself, a message that can only be heard while inside the house.
So there I was, inside Paul’s childhood home, after walking through rooms where John and Paul had played and written together, listening to Paul’s voice speaking to the people who had come all this way to stand where their story began.
I don’t think my brain had caught up with my heart all day.
I’m still not sure it has yet.
Day Four — The Casbah Coffee Club
Being inside John and Paul’s childhood homes was absolutely the emotional highlight of Liverpool for me, but the Casbah was a very close second.
For those who aren’t giant Beatles fans like me, The Casbah Coffee Club was created by Mona Best—“Mo”—the mother of Pete Best, who would later become the Beatles’ drummer before Ringo.
Mo decided to turn the basement of her family home into a club where teenagers could gather and listen to music. It was where the Beatles would perform together for the very first time.
They became her “house band.”
But first, she needed to get it ready.
John, Paul, George and their friends helped paint and decorate the walls, turning an ordinary basement into a club where they could play.
Long before the Beatles became THE BEATLES, this tiny basement was part of where it all began.
Most people associate the Beatles’ beginnings with the Cavern or Hamburg, and of course both played enormous roles in what they became.
But the Casbah was truly where it began.
Paul has even said, “We helped paint it and stuff. We looked upon it as our personal club.”
And their handiwork is literally still on the walls.
Stars. Dragons. Rainbows. Silhouettes.
And then there’s John…
Because apparently John Lennon could not simply help decorate a wall without also carving his name into it. 😂
He carved JOHN into the wall, Mo caught him doing it and gave him a whack and a good scolding.
Did he learn his lesson?
Nope!
After returning from Hamburg, John decided the wall needed an update.
JOHN I’M BACK. 😂
Mo caught him again, and this time she confiscated his knife.
The Casbah isn’t large. You can see that a bit from the photos, but being there is something entirely different!
Roag Best told us there were nights when they packed as many as 1,200 people into the club, literally shoulder to shoulder.
Eventually Mo had to move them to a larger stage, and even then there were times the lads were playing with their backs practically against the wall because the crowd was pressed right up against them.
Finally, she brought in garden fencing to use as “security gates.”
Standing there, I honestly couldn’t figure out HOW they fit that many human beings into that tiny basement! 😂
I tried to soak it all in, taking myself back in time…
The heat, the noise, the bodies packed together. The music bouncing off those low ceilings. John, Paul and George playing with the crowd practically on top of them.
Oh, how I would have loved to have been there!!!
Day Five — Back to London & Jesus Christ Superstar
Eventually, we had to say goodbye to Liverpool.
We still had Jesus Christ Superstar waiting for us.
Side note: the Beatles made a famous appearance at the London Palladium in 1963, which was watched by around 15 million television viewers.
So yes, even on Jesus Christ Superstar night, I managed to find a Beatles connection. 😂
Jesus Christ Superstar has its own history in my life. My mom introduced me to it when I was young, and I’ve loved it ever since.
I’ve seen several productions over the years, including one with most of the original film cast. That performance will probably always hold the number one spot in my heart.
But this one came in a very close second.
Sam Ryder absolutely took my breath away.
When he sang Gethsemane, the response was electrifying.
If you’re familiar with Jesus Christ Superstar, you know.
If you’re not, the entire show can hinge on this song.
Jesus has to be able to take you there… the fear, the anger, the pleading, the resignation, the humanity of knowing what is coming and asking whether it really has to happen.
If your Jesus can’t pull off “Gethsemane,” something is missing from the entire production.
Sam Ryder didn’t just pull it off.
He absolutely freaking NAILED it.
When he finished, the Palladium erupted.
The applause was thunderous.
And it just... kept going!
I’ve seen Jesus Christ Superstar enough times to have very high expectations for this show, and I don’t say this lightly, Sam Ryder was phenomenal!
Sitting there in the London Palladium, I couldn’t help thinking about how this whole trip had happened.
A few weeks earlier, I’d been sitting at home reading an article.
Boy George.
Herod.
Three weeks only.
London.
“Uhm... apparently we’re going to England next month.”
😂
And then, Boy George never even made it to the stage!
And yet because of that one article, we’d ended up having an adventure I’d dreamed about for most of my life!
And now I was sitting inside the London Palladium watching one of the best productions of Jesus Christ Superstar I’d ever seen.
All because the thing that originally brought us there... didn’t happen.
There was something wonderfully fitting about that.
Day Six — Abbey Road
We had been there before, 16 years ago, but how many times do you get a chance to visit Abbey Road?
Of course we went again!
And Now I’m Home...
Well, I’m home in body anyway.
I think my heart is still somewhere in Liverpool.
And as I’ve been writing this, I’ve realized something.
It wasn’t just 55-year-old me who took this trip.
That little girl whose father sang Beatles songs to her was there.
So was the nine-year-old sitting on the living room floor crying when John Lennon died.
And definitely the thirteen-year-old who was absolutely convinced she was moving to London and marrying Julian Lennon someday. 😂
And then there was me now, a writer who somehow ended up using John Lennon’s words for the title of her own book.
Maybe that’s why the houses affected me as much as they did.
I wasn’t thinking about John Lennon and Paul McCartney, THE BEATLES, when I stood in those rooms.
I was thinking of two kids, John and Paul, who had no idea what their lives were going to become.
Okay, John apparently thought he did. 😂
But standing in John’s bedroom, Paul’s living room, and that crazy little basement they helped paint, I kept thinking about beginnings.
About being young and having these huge dreams when you have absolutely no idea where life is actually going to take you.
I certainly didn’t.
At thirteen, I thought I was going to move to London, find Julian Lennon and marry him.
That didn’t exactly work out. 😂
But that little girl DID make it to England!
It took her about forty years longer than she planned, and Julian was nowhere to be found 😂, but she got there.
And I think that’s what I love most about all of this.
I had one idea of how that dream was supposed to happen when I was thirteen.
Life had a completely different one.
Hell, I had a completely different idea of how this trip was supposed to happen!
We booked the damn thing because I wanted to see Boy George, and he didn’t even show up. 😂
And somehow, it became so much more than the trip I’d originally planned.
Which makes it pretty hard not to come back to John one last time...
Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. ❤️
A Little Beatles Connection
If you’re wondering about the book I mentioned above, Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed takes its title from “Strawberry Fields Forever.”
It’s a meditation book written especially for people who struggle with traditional visualization—including people with aphantasia and ADHD—and somehow that title feels even more special to me now that I’ve finally stood at the gates that inspired the song whose words ended up on my cover.
Available in English… Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed
and now available in Spanish here… Vivir es Facil con Los Ojos Cerrados