Real Love

As International Beatleweek celebrates its 40th anniversary, Julia Baird, a director of the company behind the festival and John Lennon’s sister, reflects on its growth and the decision she made that helped secure the Cavern’s future.

Sharing memories of family life with her brother, she explains why she wrote her first book and reveals how proud she is of the part John played in putting Liverpool on the world stage.

Words | Lawrence Saunders

International Beatleweek marks its 40th anniversary this year and continues to grow. Since becoming involved with Cavern City Tours, which organises the festival, what has the event come to mean to you, and what do you think has been the key to its enduring success?

Well, it does keep getting bigger – that is absolutely true. It is a fabulous place to be and something we all look forward to. It’s a brilliant way to celebrate the end of summer, isn’t it? As an ex-teacher, I’m finally at the point where I no longer know all the school dates. I have to ask my grandchildren: ‘When’s half term?’, whereas it used to be embedded in me.

Beatleweek has always marked the end of summer, but when I first became involved, it was really just a one-day event. There would be music in the Cavern and in all the pubs, and then the Monday became part of the Mathew Street Festival. When that stopped, Beatleweek expanded in its own way. It now runs from the Wednesday before until the following Tuesday. That is how it became International Beatleweek.

It really is a major international festival. What’s great is that so many people come back every year, particularly from America, but also from all over the world. It becomes their annual holiday, and it feels like one big reunion. It’s a huge music festival, all within walking distance.

You became a director of Cavern City Tours, which also owns The Cavern Club, in 2004, despite the company’s directors, Bill Heckle and Dave Jones, initially advising you against investing. What convinced you to get involved?

It’s a question I’ve often asked myself [laughs]. As John’s sister, I’d been involved with them since 1986. Back then, Bill and Dave only had the Sunday, and it was almost like a trade fair with live bands. That’s really where it all started When I first met Bill and Dave, it was at the Beatles Shop on Mathew Street, which Steve Bailey managed. I went to see them with my son, who was about five at the time.

When we arrived, Dave and Bill were drinking cans of Foster’s and stamping T-shirts. It was 10 o’clock in the morning. They’d all been doing it at home the night before as well. It was a real do-it yourself operation, but in a brilliant way. Because I had my young son with me, Dave magnanimously said: ‘Would you like to go over the road to Lubinsky’s?’ It really wasn’t right for a little boy to be up there because we could hardly move. So, we went over to Lubinsky’s and had hot chocolate with all the trimmings.

When the idea of jumping in with them came up – which I did rather recklessly, I suppose – it didn’t come completely out of nowhere, because I’d already done various things with them by that point. We went to Australia to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Beatles’ visit to Adelaide. We had a dinner to celebrate our arrival, and Bill and I got talking. He was telling me about the problems with the Cavern at the time, and I just thought, rather glibly, that I could sort it out.

I said to Bill: ‘I might be able to do something because I’ve just sold a house’. He told me to go to bed and sleep on it. When I got up the next morning, he was standing outside the bedroom door and said: ‘Are you serious?’ I think he’d been on the phone all night. I said: ‘You know what? I think I am’.

It was as quick as that. I’m normally quite pedantic and weigh everything up, but I just did it. I retired from teaching two years early and wrote my first book, so it was advantageous to me as well.

Given your personal connection to John and the Beatles, how important was it to ensure that the Cavern and Liverpool’s Beatles tourism remained in the hands of people who genuinely care about the band and the city’s musical heritage, rather than being driven purely by profit?

Really important. Liverpool has always been a musical enclave, hasn’t it? It’s such a rich place for music, culture, theatre and the arts. So many of the country’s great actors did their rep at the Playhouse, sweeping the floors and doing whatever they could just to get on the stage. That’s where so many of them started.

Of course, the Beatles helped to regenerate the city, although that was never intentional, was it? They were simply a band at the time. The Beatles and football have both helped to regenerate Liverpool, and then it was topped off completely by the Capital of Culture year in 2008.

We’ve been very fortunate, but the talent was already here. People will never disassociate the Beatles from Liverpool – they think of the city straight away, don’t they? The Cavern is essential to that, but it always has to be stressed that the Beatles didn’t make the Cavern; the Cavern made the Beatles. It began as a jazz club. Alan Sytner visited Caveau de la Huchette, a jazz club in Paris, then came back, found a warehouse and established one himself.

The Beatles were almost taken off the Cavern stage at one point because they were playing skiffle. I think Paul might have been doing ‘Long Tall Sally’. He famously sang just one line repeatedly because he couldn’t remember the words. The Cavern was already established before the Beatles arrived, but they went on to play its stage 292 times – which is quite something.

 

 

The Cavern celebrates its 70th anniversary next year, with a major exhibition about the venue opening at the Museum of Liverpool in January. Have you been involved in planning it?

Not yet – but hopefully I will be. The Museum of Liverpool is a fantastic exhibition space. They had a John and Yoko exhibition there a few years ago, which I thought was mesmerising. Whenever I was in town, I’d go around it again. I must have seen it about five times. Whatever team they have there, they put on brilliant exhibitions.

We’re really looking forward to this one because they’re going to make a diamond job of it. The Cavern exhibition will be there throughout next year, so everyone who comes to International Beatleweek this month will hear about it and know it’s happening. Hopefully, many of them will make plans to come back and see it.

You’ve described John as a playful and caring older brother. Which memory best captures the person you knew, rather than the figure the world came to know?

Well, probably my fondest, closest and most loving memories of John were in Springwood (1 Blomfield Road), because my mother was still there. That was when we were a family. After she died, we went away, as everybody now knows, and by the time we returned, we had already been moved into my mother’s sister’s house in Woolton.

Of course, being with John didn’t change, although John himself was changing because the group was becoming more and more popular and in demand. But at Springwood, we were a family unit: me, my younger sister Jackie, John, my mother and my father. It changed, as families often do – probably more often now than they did then – but that was our strong family unit, and John was very much a part of it.

How do you balance protecting your personal memories of John with the public’s enduring desire to know more about him? Are there some things you prefer to keep private?

Some [memories] I do keep to myself, and not for any nefarious reason. It’s simply that they were just ours. Sometimes it was just normal life, wasn’t it? I don’t necessarily think: ‘Oh, that was particularly special’. For example, John, Jackie and me all sitting with our feet up, watching Children’s Hour on television. That’s a lovely memory. Or Paul being in our house a lot as well, especially after his mother died. That’s a memory I don’t talk about much either.

When you wrote your first book, was it less about setting the record straight and more about your concern that books and films about John were being made without consulting the family and were getting things wrong?

You’ve got it bang to rights. The whole family was devastated [with John’s death] beyond anything the public could possibly have been aware of, especially after everything that had already happened with my mother. Families go through tragic events all the time. We were just one of them, but for us, John’s death was absolutely devastating. Five years later, I was teaching on the Wirral and had three children, two of them teenagers. They wanted to watch a Panorama documentary about John. I wasn’t keen but my daughter said: ‘Mummy, everyone in school will have seen it tomorrow’. I thought: ‘You’re right. I understand that’. So we watched it, and I cried from start to finish. It was just so wrong.

At the end, there was a segment with Yoko and Sean, who was about 10, sitting on a sofa in New York. They were asked what they thought of it. Obviously, Yoko had been involved in the programme, and it had never occurred to me that she would attempt to make a documentary about John’s life. What did she know about it? Nothing. She said [the documentary] was a wonderful way, I’m paraphrasing, for Sean to learn about his father’s family. But the story was so wrong. So I started scribbling the book together at night, and that became John Lennon: My Brother.

In telling your own story, you have also spoken about John’s plans to return to Liverpool. Is it true that he was intending to come home shortly before he died?

Yes, absolutely. I had gone to visit my middle aunt Anne, ‘Nanny’ to the children, on her birthday, 17 November 1980. John rang while I was there to wish her a happy birthday, and I spoke to him. He said: ‘I’ll see you soon. I’m coming home after Christmas. It’s about time I saw to my own family’. We said: ‘Oh, thank goodness, John. That is wonderful’.

We talked about where we might meet up. Nanny lived in a big house in Rock Ferry called Ardmore, so initially we were all going to meet there. At one point, he wanted me to buy a big farm in North Wales where my sister and I could live and he could stay when he came over. These were all the ideas.

You were recently at Strawberry Field for the opening of a new rose garden in honour of Sir George and Lady Judy Martin. What was it like to see them recognised in such a special way?

Lady Judy Martin – I always called her Judy – used to come up for the ‘hard-hat events’ while Strawberry Field was still being redeveloped.  I’ve been involved in its regeneration from the beginning, and whenever she visited, we would walk around the site and speak to people about the building and how the project was progressing.

It was very fitting that the garden should commemorate and celebrate George and Judy, and equally fitting that it should be such a beautiful place.

What does it mean to you personally to see the part John hasplayed in making Liverpool so famous around the world?

I’m really, really proud. I could not be more proud to have John as my brother. It’s not possible.

International Beatleweek 2026 takes place across Liverpool city centre from Wednesday 26 August to Tuesday 1 September