Get Back: A Beatles-themed London walking tour

Argghh, I forgot to swing my arms,” I say, “... and, really, one of us should have taken our shoes and socks off.” It’s a windy April day, however, and I don’t fancy a chilly rerun.

My friend Sean and I are at the world’s most famous zebra crossing and have just made the ubiquitous recreation of the Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover outside the studios where the band recorded some of their biggest hits.

Like so many millions of others, I love the Sixties supergroup and I’ve been recently re-immersed in their music thanks to Peter Jackson’s remarkable Get Back documentary film series on Disney+. So, when I’m choosing a ToursByLocals excursion in the capital, the one titled London Beatles draws my eye.

Our guide, Peter, is also a London cabbie so for the first half of the tour we’re jumping in and out of his electric taxi. Our “ticket to ride” starts from the suitably Beatles-themed Helterskelter cafe at St John’s Wood tube station, and we notch up photo stops in front of a number of sites around local streets and into Marylebone.

TRIVIA PURSUIT

One of 52 London-based ToursByLocals guides, Peter is a magpie for odd facts and six-degrees-of- separation- style connections. “You’ll find I do things a bit differently,” he warns us at the outset as we sit in his cab watching footage of 33-1 outsider Lester Piggott winning the 1954 Epsom Derby.

It’s Peter’s contention that without the huge sum that the mum of the Beatles’ original drummer Pete Best won on that race she would not have created the Liverpool nightclub where the band first played, nor might they have had the cash to get to London. An early tour highlight has a different kind of irony. Peter is allowed to lead us through the labyrinthine corridors of the former Decca studios to glimpse the audition room where, in 1962, the Beatles were famously turned down.

Because it’s a private tour, our guide is able to adapt the itinerary to people’s level of fandom or particular interests. Sean’s Fab Four knowledge is deeper than mine, so soon musical connections are flying thick and fast. We see the flats where Ringo, John and Jimi Hendrix all lived in rotation and how Paul’s house was virtually opposite Billy Fury’s.

PICTURE PERFECT

The Abbey Road crossing is not the only photo opportunity of the day. Peter videos us running down Boston Place near Marylebone station to recreate the opening titles to A Hard Day’s Night. “One of us needs to fall over,” laughs Sean as we dodge lampposts. “They did in the film and kept it in.” I decide we can swerve this level of authenticity.

The recent Get Back film series was created from 60 hours of mostly unseen footage of the Beatles at work. It’s an astonishing insight into the writing of tracks that made it onto the Abbey Road and Let it Be albums and it culminates in the band’s last live performance, on a rooftop in Savile Row. Naturally we stop to peer up at the spot and I’m frustrated to learn that, pre-pandemic, Peter had been allowed to take people right there.

When we reach Soho we do the last hour on foot. Despite having spent plenty of time here over years living in London, I’m amazed to discover the little alleyways that I’ve missed, with hidden recording studios and blue plaques noting musical milestones.

“If you stop learning, you stop living,” Peter says as we take a break at Bar Italia, opposite famous jazz club Ronnie Scott’s. He points between the two and claims without these locations the Beatles would never have taken off internationally. The hint is The Ed Sullivan Show and their landmark first performance in the States. “Ah, TV!” I say triumphantly, pointing to the blue plaque over the cafe. John Logie Baird first publicly demonstrated television in the room above. Across the road and some decades later, it turns out, Ronnie Scott was instrumental in negotiating reciprocal deals that enabled British acts to play in the States.

MAKING CONNECTIONS

“I can relate everything back to the Beatles, no matter where we’re going,” Peter claims. Sometimes it’s a “long and winding road” to the connection but by the end, I’m joining in. “See that restaurant?” I say, pointing at Masala Zone as we cross Marshall Street. “My husband and I were once heading there when a friend persuaded us to join him for a cheaper curry off Soho Square...”

“Ah, the Hare Krishna cafe – George Harrison helped to fund that,” Peter says. “Yes,” I reply, “so in a round about way he gave me the trots!”

We end up in prison, or at least the cells of the former Great Marlborough Street Magistrate’s Court. They now form part of the bar of the Courthouse Hotel, and you can have a drink in one dedicated to John Lennon. The Beatle appeared here on an obscenity charge after he exhibited erotic drawings nearby.

“You couldn’t make it up,” Peter says often as he introduces one strange fact after another. To prove the point, after his tours he sends everyone various sources for his stories. Sure enough, as Sean and I sit in a pub reflecting on a rather bonkers afternoon, ping after ping on my phone heralds the arrival of a new YouTube clip or batch of photos. Like millions of “daytrippers” before us, we laugh at snaps of our windswept march across Abbey Road. You have to do it, don’t you?

BOOK IT

The London Beatles two-and-a-half-hour private tour costs £220 for up to four people. A more leisurely five-hour version is £440. The taxi is wheelchair and buggy accessible. • toursbylocals.com/LondonBeatlesPrivateTour

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• Travel agents earn 5% commission when booking with ToursByLocals, rising to 10% when they have booked tours worth over £5,498 (US$7,500). Tours can be tailored to clients’ needs. Refunds are given for cancellations up to the day of the tour. • toursbylocals.com/agency_join