ER - The Emotional Rubric Presents 'Lennon 4, McCartney 4: A Liverpool Panorama.' 

Never Really England. For a dozen or so streets, Liverpool belongs in the first tier of world cities. It has the advantage of geography, the most spectacular cities seem to be built by spectacular rivers, and the benefaction of some of the Victorian age's greatest builders. The bling of the St. George's Hall and William Brown Street comfortably outpoints that of all other English cities, save London.

It was never really England. Liverpool sat at the intersection of Lancashire, Cheshire, Wales and Ireland. Meanwhile, the industrialised world poured down its throat. There is a human story behind the finance of every great building in the world. For Liverpool, for the years up to 1833, that story, very often, was slavery. And it really was a brutalism and excellence in trade that made Liverpool. It was a Hong Kong. It would never match the scientific genius of Manchester, its neighbour and rival. It would never get anywhere close to the genius of the word and literary that rose from within the whispers of Dublin bars and houses across the water. Liverpool's game in its formative centuries was at the great casino tables of trade, of economics, of capitalism. Liverpool. Capitalism.   

In the Lonely Planet 'Cities Book', Dublin is one place below Florence, achieving a deserved 28th in a top 200. Manchester is a healthy number 126, sandwiched between Zagreb and Antigua. Liverpool does not make the list. It is all subjective, of course, and Lonely Planet would only aim to stimulate debate. Nonetheless, the comparison with its neighbours is stark. It will take much more than the often ham-fisted 2008 City of Culture celebrations to restore Liverpool to the map. It has struggled with its identity for a long time. Beyond those dozen or so streets, beyond the waterfront, it declines with a rapidity not much seen outside of Eastern Europe. Its urban profiles have parallels with Moscow or Poznan or Lwow.  Urban stock cheapens rapidly and a sense of desolation can seem to greet the senses. This is not set aside by any amount of sad hedonism. Manchester might face a similar accusation, but its place in the top 200 is probably deserved by virtue of the fact that in the late 20th Century it started moving again, it began to weave history towards future. Liverpool, the once mightiest force, is stirring, but not yet really woken from the deepest, and perhaps the most disturbed slumber in the west.

A wonder still awaits. A reborn Liverpool will very comfortably grace the catwalk of the world's greatest cities. It may never have really been England, but it is still England's greatest potential star.

Lennon 4 McCartney 4. In a difficult, sometimes disturbed 20th Century, Liverpool's cultural salvation rests solely, absolutely and gloriously with The Beatles. London may have had the sophisticated Jagger, the arty Townshend and the thoughtful Davies, but the Fab Four dripped authenticity. Whatever stars burned in London, or New York, San Francisco, Memphis or Detroit; Liverpool's 'four lads' burned brighter. This seems evermore the case with each year that passes.

At the time of his death at the age of forty in New York, John Lennon had lived a turbulent life of superstardom, two marriages, family dysfunction and the early death of his mother. Always edgy and inventive, in death many commentators have been inclined to afford him the greatest significance in the ten-year, musical innovation called The Beatles. To do so is to miss the point of their creative structure. What Lennon did, McCartney bettered. What McCartney did, Lennon bettered. At once friendship, and increasingly a rivalry, The Beatles fought themselves to a musical score-draw. It was a high scoring match, the all-time classic; Lennon 4 McCartney 4. As a case-study of a creative team it tells us much. For one thing, it helps to be at or near the front of a technological revolution (electrical instrumentation, the 45 single, the music industry). Secondly, innovation comes where odd cultural streams or innovations are suddenly interwoven; skiffle, rock 'n'roll, English musical hall, a thread of the Irish folk-song. A third point is that the enjoyment of the participants really does not matter that much. Lennon may have invented the idea that rock 'n' roll's great exhortation was to "be here now,' but The Beatles can rarely have lived the moment. There was always a bigger goal to aim for, something intangible and elusive. There was always the next task, the next tour, the next song, the next turn of the rival's hand. At the end, in acrimony and law-court, The Beatles went blinking, exhausted and hurting into their several ways. None of them would ever be the same again, nor of the same power, for great innovation can also depend on luck. The luckiest thing was that they found each other, a manager called Epstein and a producer called Martin. That cast-list of six really was enough, for another thing we know is that great innovations spring from small teams. The committee and its earnest consensus do not apply.

The City As Narrative. When last I visited New York, the World Trade Centre still had one year and five days to stand. New York, of course, is magic.  It is the great  testament of liberty: the world's unwanted and unregarded built the place.  It is flawed, of course, as each year passes the world's next unwanteds and unregardeds have to enter at a higher point in the curve, but it is nonetheless a hugely intoxicating story of talent and liberation. Paris too is a story; a masterpiece across blood, revolution, the new codes of brotherhood, and romantic expression of people. It too is flawed. Its great inclusive ideals sit on a key paradox. The city's other concern is the development and sustenance of French-ness itself, necessarily something exclusive. 

Cities are complex. Their stories are complex. Light and dark, bitter and sweet; all optics and flavours merge in the great urban recipe.  

So, if great cities are also great stories, what is Liverpool's story? I think this is the problem. I don't think Liverpool has discovered its story yet. I don't think that story will have much to do with the fabled Scouse wit and humour, for that would be to pass over the city's many troubles much too lightly. Instead, I think trade might be part of the story, and the coming of ethics to trade. It seems to be uniquely well-positioned for that debate. I also think that nurture and family are part of this city's story, of its difficult finding out of itself in the 20th Century. Light and dark, bitter and sweet. The rights of nurture. All you need is ...?

Clock Tower Diary.  This Liverpudlian theme is inspired by the necessity of my revisiting of the city for the pragmatic need of replacing my lost passport. It is a wee ironic little twist that I lost it on the very trip when I complained about its use. I must say though, that the Passport Office was a marvel. I had a 08.30 appointment on the morning that I was due to fly from Liverpool to Derry (passport unnecessary for that one, but I need it for next week's trip to Madrid). I found no queues, I encountered no problems, and I left the building at 08.30. I was £114.00 worse off, but my replacement passport was being made that day. 
 
You Are What You Tube. 'Our World' was one of the most significant broadcasts of the television age. It was the first, live international satellite television production and was watched by 400 million people on its broadcast in 1967. As an interesting foreshadowing of Web 2.0, this connecting of people over the globe disallowed any involvement of politicians (i.e. intermediaries).  The story of the broadcast is well-told by Bob Geldof who watched it from his boyhood home in Dublin. Absorbed by the possibilities of mass communication, Geldof would later develop Live Aid as a more elaborate interpretation of the Our World concept. But back then, in Dublin, the young Bob had no such ambition. In front of the family t.v. set, he watched various national folk-singers, fiddle-players and so forth represent each of their nations. Then the satellite contacted London, George Martin pressed 'go', and a young Geldof was on his way to England.  This is The Beatles.