Ghost Beatles

By Mark McConville

INCREDIBLE images show 1960s Beatlemania Liverpool in black and white merged with the colourful modern-day city.

The stunning pictures offer a trip down memory lane as excited fans are pictured queuing for a Beatles gig at the Cavern Club while modern-day commuters stroll past on their way to work.

Other shots show the young fab Four playing in an otherwise empty bar, arriving at Speke airport and posing in the modern Derby Square.

The nostalgic pictures are the work of Port Captain and amateur photographer Keith Jones (45) from Liverpool.

“I’m biased, I know, but who doesn’t love The Beatles?” he said.

“I’m a lifelong fan of their music and having travelled the world a bit, it has been particularly clear to me that, for people from other parts of the world, the group are absolutely synonymous with their hometown.

“Ask anybody from New York to Nepal, Auckland to the Arctic, to name someone or something from Liverpool and I imagine John, Paul, George and Ringo would be right out in front.

“I feel our city should be proud and thankful for their music, their impact and their message, and blending their image back into the modern day scenes makes me smile and also wish I had been around to be in that queue for a lunchtime show at The Cavern Club!”

Keith first got the idea to merge old photographs with new ones at the same location when he came across old Victorian postcards and realised the pictured buildings still stood.

“I went back as close to the same vantage point to ‘rephotograph’ the same view, to compare the scenes,” he said.

“It struck me that I found it equally fascinating whether the scene was unchanged in one hundred years, completely different or now a mixture of modern and historic elements.

“I’m lucky to live and work here in that the City of Liverpool has an amazing history, with everything from incredibly grand architecture from the most prosperous times in the 19th Century, to the most modern designs, quite often already placed side by side.

“When I get the chance to ‘change the timeline’ by blending in people from different eras to a modern day scene, it fascinates me to imagine how life was for city residents in decades gone by.”