Earning My Stripes...Again

 

Hanging with the lads at Madame Tussauds

I traveled to London for the first time in 1998.

It was, ostensibly, a celebration of graduating from college, as I recall. I'd never thought about going there and, really, had no agenda at first when the trip was planned.

I had one thing I wanted to see.

One thing.

Abbey Road.

I wanted to see the Abbey Road crosswalk that was on the cover of The Beatles' album of the same name.

Eventually, I immersed myself in planning the trip. I eventually found a few other things of note that interested me and set about trying to pull together a schedule of things to see and do.

A schedule makes it sound too rigid, so allow me to explain. I plotted things and planned to adjust as needed, especially after we hit the ground on that Saturday morning.

From there, it became more like a checklist.

It was a chilly Sunday when we left via the Victoria station on the Underground and, after a few connections, got on the Bakerloo line to St. John's Wood.

I remember walking out of the station, stepping onto a street and walking blindly. In those days, we were guided by these things called "maps" that were printed on paper. I bought one in a visitors info shop the day we landed and lived with that, including a return trip in 2000.

I really wasn't sure if I was on a wild Beatles chase.

After a block or two, we turned slightly to the right and spotted a set of white stripes on the road. While perhaps underwhelming at first, it was one of the most important patches of land in music, to go along with the mythical crossroads of Clarksdale, Mississippi.

Immediately nearby was EMI Abbey Road Studios.

It felt like Holy Land for a Beatles fan. A lot of incredible music was made in that building, to go along with the famous album picture, which was shot literally where I was standing.

I kept looking around for a VW Beetle with a "28IF" license plate. A red double-decker London Transport bus obliged by driving down the road, as if it was standing in for something iconic.

People scrawled graffiti on the wall and nearby signs (I did not).

An actual Abbey Road sign hung high on the side of a building to serve as a true road marker and, thus, couldn't be tagged.

I had my picture taken a few times crossing the road, along with a picture on the steps of the building.

I also thought about walking across barefoot (like Paul McCartney) but decided that probably wasn't my best idea.

Of course, much more has been recorded at Abbey Road (it is a still-active music studio) but there's no question the most famous artist was The Beatles.

By 2009, of course, my life had changed and my marriage was effectively over. While I wound up with many of the photo albums, I didn't get the London pictures, as Sean's mother took them with her since she had created carefully-crafted scrapbooks.

For years, I'd pepper Sean: "Can you take a picture of the Abbey Road pictures?"

For years, there was nothing.

Finally, out of dumb luck, I spotted an app on my iPhone called FilmBox. The app allows the user to take photos of negatives and it processes it.

Well, guess who has the negatives?

The results of the pictures that I thought were essentially lost are sprinkled here on this post. I'm currently not too concerned about the quality.

I was kind of OK with them being gone, just resigning myself to having the memory of being there.

I felt like the walrus. Wait...wrong album.

I remembered that it was a thrill to see it for real. There were plenty of Beatles touristy things to see and buy (as there was throughout London). 

I've never been to Liverpool, for the record. So that's still on my list.

In the process, I fell in love with London.

Another casualty of 2020 is that I was supposed to go back and I very much planned to snag a little time to go back to Abbey Road, among other things.

Perhaps in 2021.

Which I sense is going to be a busy juggling act.

And in the end...