Call it an act of benevolence, or of cultural conscientiousness. Whether you know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall, or you don’t, this is an exhibit you are going to want to see. Several leading Beatles memorabilia collectors have decided to create a travelling show, comprised of never-publically-seen materials. Fab.
There are more than 200 pieces in all, and it is coming to the PNE (August 22 to September 7) this year. It is called “The Magical History Tour, a Beatles Memorabilia Exhibition”, and it promises to please even the most thorough-going, hard-core Beatlemaniacs. It is even richer, since The Beatles did actually play the Fair, when it was 1964.
There appears to be no end to the band’s popularity, or the interest all appurtenances to their, after all, fairly brief career as performers and recording artists, continues to generate. Beatlemania is considered to have truly begun in earnest while the boys were descending the BOAC stairs onto the tarmac in New York, on their way to the first of their two appearances in concert at Shea Stadium. The Ed Sullivan performances turned a brushfire into an inferno that has never really diminished.
Among the items on display: John Lennon’s psychedelic Rolls Royce; The Quarrymen drum set; the “breakup letter”, the legal document that dissolved the Beatles entity; the Double Fantasy album, signed by John Lennon for Mark David Chapman, just hours before Chapman killed him; a signed Please Please Me album from 1963; and the clavichord and reel-to-reel recorder that were used on the Revolver album in 1966. This is your chance to stock up on Beatles trivia, to be held in reserve for your next on-demand party trick.