In Liverpool: A Striking Tribute to the City
In Liverpool was released in 2004 as an extra feature on the DVD released of The Liverpool Oratorio.
The song was recorded live (with simple acoustic guitar accompaniment) inside McCartney’s former high school, The Liverpool Institute.
The performance is hauntingly atmospheric and he covers a number of scenes from his remembered from his childhood and youth.
He describes a man on the upper deck of a bus who talks and laughs to himself while”listing names of old comedians”. McCartney’s attention then moves to the city’s Pierhead, where he recalls the fervour of rival Protestant and Catholic preachers, both “giving us his version of the book”.
Like the man on the bus, they too suffer from a level of delusion, “each of them, his own imagined crowd”.
Dungeon Lane
Aside from these personal portaits, the song has a strong geographic element. McCartney mentions “the boys of Dungeon Lane” and the “Cast Iron Shore”. Funnily enough, John Lennon also sings about the same Cast Iron Shore on the Beatles’ White Album:
Standing on the cast iron shore, yeah
Lady Madonna trying to make ends meet, yeah
Looking through the glass onion
Childhood Homes
When the McCartney family lived in Speke at 12 Western Avenue and then at 12 Ardwick Road, Dungeon Lane was only a short walk (or even shorter bicycle ride) from the family home. In 1955 Jim and Mary took their boys to the now-famous Forthlin Road address in Allerton.
Dungeon Lane leads to down to the Oglet Shore, which is a small beach on the wide banks of the Mersey Estuary. Although it’s hardly a tropical paradise, the Oglet Shore is a popular beauty spot for local residents. Paul McCartney no doubt remembers many happy times spent there with his family.
I took my own children there just after Xmas this year to capture the view across the Mersey to Heslby Hill, which is a prominence near the town of Frodsham.
There is also lots to admire, on a purely musical level, about In Liverpool. I go into detail about these features in Volume Two of my book:
