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Coral Reefers in The United Kingdom
By Peter Mayer

“Apparently you get PJ’s on that British Airways flight, that’s the real deal” I hung up the phone with my friend Mike, confident that I was in for a unique transatlantic experience in the coming night, or at least a bit more comfortable one than the former “squeeze your knees” flying bus rides to Europe. Our Delta flight out of Atlanta was delayed once, then delayed again-- storms in the Northeast-- and the travel agent had put together plan B for us upon our arrival at JFK. Since it was assumed that we’d miss our connecting flight, the tickets would be exchanged for the substantially better accommodations on British Airways.

Two ingredients are required for the main course of comedy to be served: a cup (or sometimes a whole quart) of trouble plus a little time to let the bread rise, or the roux mellow. When you’re in the heat of the kitchen, things can actually, truly suck. We arrived at JFK, by-passed the gate where we would have gone to catch our Delta flight, and went to check-in at British Airways. We were a band of brothers, lugging heavy suitcases packed beyond capacity with rollers that have been put to greater tests than the proving grounds at HUMMER. We hauled and we walked and we hauled for about 20 minutes to the British Airways ticketing terminal. A noticeable change came over the atmosphere as we came in sight of the smartly dressed ticketing ladies, sitting at their own neatly organized desks. Things were calm here, “we are British Airways, and always have time for a cup of tea,” was the invisible sign board above everything. Ah, this is going to be good, I thought. My distinguished agent pulled out the crumpled, 70% dark chocolate stained Delta ticket that had gotten me from Atlanta to New York, and held it like a bachelor holds his first dirty diaper and remarked, “What have we here?” We explained that we had been transferred to a British Airways flight because we had missed our connecting Delta flight. She asked 5 sweating, panting Coral Reefers where were our neat and crisp vouchers that proved that Delta would pay for a flight with pajamas? No, they could not accept our word and we would have to produce the vouchers, which meant that we would have to reverse our trek and head back over to the Delta counter and get the vouchers. We decided to split up; three of us would get the vouchers and two of us would stay with the luggage. JFK was undergoing some type of construction and Doctor Doom could not have designed a more difficult trek to get to the Delta service counter. I am not kidding; directions were handed out: “Over that pile of rubble, under that bridge, up the ramp and go in the door with the hand written sign that says “Delta Customer Service”. We burst in the door and into a line that started behind a cordon rope. The room was crazy with people - newlyweds, animals, people shouting, carry-on luggage that looked like refrigerators with duck tape slapped on to it. We cast a wary glance at our watches. Time was getting slim. We had to make that flight, or it’s out first thing the next morning, and a night in New York City. Fun, except when you are lugging a Hummer behind you. At least we were next in line. That was, until the newlyweds jumped in front of us. They disobeyed that little rope and got right in front of us! We started to fume. Nothing was getting done. Then a family appeared to our left; they had just missed their flight and needed immediate help. Uh oh, things were looking bad.

I was ready to pull out my judo moves when the newlyweds, hugging and laughing, and on their way to some silly spot like Cancun, started trying to change their return trip! Great credit goes to Mac at this point for his cool composure and presence of mind. He calmly spoke up, “You’ve got six first class passengers about to miss their flight here.” The lady looked up slowly and took our case in hand. She explained, first of all, that our tickets were not eligible for upgrade, and secondly, that if we were in for yet another hustle, our original Delta flight had not yet departed. I had to hand it to her though because she arranged for a shuttle to get us down to the gate and all. The bad news was that Brother Jim and Michael Utley had to traverse two zip codes in about three minutes to make it to the departure gate. We were the last passengers to board and greeted by a flight attendant who, in Mac McAnally’s words, was a male re-incarnate of Blanche Dubois. In a sultry voice, we were told where to put our guitars, what to order, and, in no uncertain terms, that “there are no pajamas on this flight honey, but we have comfy little red socks for you in the Delta travel bag.” Sometimes you have to give up the upgrade to get airborne.

We arrived at Heathrow, still intact, and feeling great after two hours of sleep. This was my second trip to London in a year’s time, but a first for the Coral Reefers as a band. I was excited because I had arranged to stay two extra days in England with my friend Mike and Brother Jim so we could visit Liverpool. Some of you may have seen the Abbey Road footage I posted online last year, but this year we were making a pilgrimage to the home town of the Fab Four.

In London, we stayed in Shepherd’s Bush, a great area with anything and everything you could want from restaurants, theatres, clubs, studios, malls etc. What a fabulous city! I never understood a comment made to me by a friend who shall remain unnamed, “Why would you ever want to go to London?” From the Roman Empire to the Fab Four, there is an unending trail of history, music, art and food to follow. Our mission, should we decide to accept it, was to play a concert with Jimmy at the Empire Theatre, and in the three days before that, do some recording at Mark Knopfler’s place, British Grove Studios. These tracks would be added to the ten or so tracks that had already been completed in the States for Jimmy’s new CD.

After a “clear the jetlag and sight-seeing day,” we took a taxi over to British Grove Studios, about a 10 minute drive. It’s nestled in the back of a neighborhood on an alley wide street, and you’d never find it if you weren’t looking for it. In fact, we didn’t find it, until we called for directions. JL Jamison, the Vasco De Gama of the crew, walked out the door with a John Wayne swagger and said, “You boys aren’t from around here are you?”

British Grove is one of the most beautiful, well-organized studios I’ve ever been in. It’s not only the care with which everything is organized, nor the fine wood and comfortable furnishings throughout; not even the history around you that includes the mixing board that Paul McCartney used for “Band On The Run”. It’s the sum of all those parts, and that intangible “Mojo Factor” that makes it easy to make music there. The vibe is right and it sounds incredible. Alan Schulman, our good friend, who engineered Jimmy’s last three or four albums, and a bevy of #1 songs, said he was astounded at how well maintained everything was. It’s one thing to have great microphones and state-of- the-art equipment; it’s another to have everything kept in pristine, perfect working order.

Among the amazing historical bits and pieces of gear they had there was a 4 track Redd recorder like the one used on the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Album. It had been cleaned up and maintained to original standards, and in fact, Brother Jim’s bass was put through it for tone on several Jimmy songs. It is the recorder that was used for the photo in the Beatles Gear book, since the original recorder is no longer available. They believe it was discarded when Abbey Road was updated and cleaned out. (Go figure, someone made a to-do list that day that read: light bulbs for closet, empty trash cans, pay gas bill and chuck mixing board that made some of history’s greatest rock n’ roll music). Behind a glass display case sat a beat up old Radio Shack looking speaker about 12 inches tall and 9 inches wide. Apparently it was designed and built, as a joke, out of some spare parts by Geoff Emerick, the Beatles’ engineer, when George Martin and the Beatles asked for a speaker to monitor the mixes they had in mono. (All Beatles’ music up to then had been mixed in mono (one speaker) and stereo had been an afterthought that was done quickly to accommodate the new stereo home sound systems). The best part of the joke was that they actually used it for the whole album.

Show day came on Sunday after three days in the studio. We had sound check mid-day and arrived at the O2 Empire Theatre at about 1 p.m. The Empire is a performing hall with a rich history. Built in 1903, its first shows were vaudeville-like reviews that included the likes of Charlie Chaplin. In the 50’s, the BBC used it for television programming and in the 60’s for music acts such as Cliff Richard, Lulu, and Shirley Bassey among others. Since the early 90’s though, it’s been used exclusively as a music venue. The Empire has a capacity of only 2,000, but the intimate experience it provides concertgoers has attracted artists like Neil Finn, David Bowie, Phish, Elton John, The Rolling Stones, Radio Head, and yes, Jimmy Buffett. It’s also the site where the Dixie Chicks’ Natalie Maines dissed George W. a few years back causing such uproar that it had country music fans burning their CD’s.

But, whatever your taste in entertainment, a laugh, some music, or a political diatribe, there’s not a bad seat in the house for sights and sounds at the Empire. As is often the case with Jimmy, he wants to rehearse and play the new material we’ve just recorded at the gig. He’s pumped about it, wants to deliver a fresh performance, and it always keeps the set interesting. We played a few of the new songs at rehearsal and headed back to the hotel for the afternoon. After a brief nap, it was time to get ready for the show, so we headed over for the second time that day to the Empire.

We were surprised by the lines of people outside the theatre. While that’s not so unusual here in the states, the crowds we’ve encountered in Paris have been enthusiastic but appeared to be more the expats than were tried and true Parrot Heads along with some new French fans. In London, we were seeing huge Jimmy fans that knew the drill, were ready to rock, and wondered where the heck we’d been for all these years. Christiane Amanpur, the NPR and CNN foreign correspondent, gave a surprise appearance as a Parrot Head that night as did Frank Marshall, Coral Reefer friend and film producer. A few moments in the dressing room and it was time to hit the stage. Jimmy gave the packed house a full show and several encores that night. Anybody who’s asked themselves, “why go to a show in London when I can go down the street and ….”, could understand why, only if they were there to experience the electricity in the room as fans that have never seen a live Jimmy Buffett show came together at a distant outpost on that Sunday night. As the last strains of Werewolves of London, Yellow Submarine and He Went to Paris faded away; we raced out of the theatre into the vans and headed back to the hotel for the after party. It was time to get some sleep. Tomorrow we’d head out on our own journey to an outpost called Liverpool.

I dropped my guitar in the boot of the London taxi and we all headed for Euston station the next morning. We were still a little bleary eyed from the previous night at the Empire and the after party, but I would have stayed up all night long for the journey ahead of us. It was my Brother Jim, my good friend Mike Davis from Atlanta GA, and me on a mission to visit the stomping grounds of a group of teens, way back when, who had set the direction for my life many years ago. We picked up our tickets (order them online before to save money) to Liverpool, and with a spare 25 minutes till boarding time, we went to enjoy a quick English breakfast. English trains are some of the best run in the world, and the Virgin line that day was no exception; we left at precisely 8:07, making it to our seats with just 2 minutes to spare. Mike, Jim and I were each sporting the latest in video and camera gear, and had I been a local on that train going to Lime Street that day, I would have rolled my eyes a time or two. What the heck are they doing filming every bloody inch of the journey from London to Liverpool? But, we were in the entertainment industry, and we’re not bashful about making fools of ourselves. So film we did, each hamlet and town on the way, including some strikingly beautiful English countryside.

For those of you who read my blog from my own European adventure last time, you’ll recall that I come from a long line of under preparers. We had figured on taking the Beatles Taxi Tour upon arriving in Liverpool, but Jim and I realized by the time we got to Manchester that we had never thought to make a reservation. Jim got out his trusty Iphone and made a quick call. We were in luck; Alan would be our driver today, and we’d meet him at the Olympia restaurant in Liverpool at noon- thirty.

Lime Street station came into view. We stopped filming and grabbed our bags, 27 cameras (well, I’m exaggerating a bit), and stepped out into a balmy Liverpool day. It’s a much bigger city than you might think; 400,000 plus people live here and at one time 40% of the world’s trade passed through its docks. From early Beatles’ photos of the Cavern Club and childhood pictures of John, Paul, George and Ringo, I thought of it as a coal stained, dark, industrial port city. Well it does have those qualities, but much, much more. With architectural wonders like St. Georges Hall, which is a combination concert hall and courts of law, Liverpool Cathedral, the largest cathedral in England and the 5th largest in the world, and a distinguished history of inventions including the helicopter and types of rail travel, this city has it going on.

But we were here because of the Beatles, so we walked over to our meeting place, the Olympia restaurant, and met our driver, Alan, who was a born and bred Liverpudlian. He was a fairly new driver for Fab Four Taxi Tours, but nonetheless well qualified for it. He provided great info and stories all along the way, and we ended up spending most of the day with him. They name all their cabs after Beatles’ songs. Ours was Penny Lane. That was a little bit of synchronicity in that I had just been working on overdubs to that song at home for our upcoming “Beyond Abbey Rd.” Beatles CD. To all who might want to follow in our footsteps to Liverpool, I can’t recommend this company more. They are well prepared, personable, spontaneous, and they make for a fun day. While other companies have better access to some Beatles’ sites, I don’t think they can outdo the service that we got that day. Allen saw my guitar, and we told them we were on a (in the voice of Dan Akroyd) “mission from God”, that we were musicians who played with Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefers and had our own groups as well, and had come to pay homage to the homeland of the Beatles. I did not perceive one hint of sarcasm (honestly) as he said, “Oh, fabulous”. That surprised me. I can’t imagine how many teary eyed fans have collapsed on Paul’s or John’s doorstep as if performing a last desperate attempt at an American Idol title, screeching out strains of “Yesterday” or “All You Need is Love” . But no, Alan was happy to see us, and we scooted down the road to our first stop, The Liverpool registry.

This was the place where Freddy and Julia Lennon got their marriage license, and as fate would have it, where John and Cynthia Lennon would sneak off, years later, to get theirs as well. Up the road, about five blocks, was the hospital where John was born, now turned into University apartments. Then it was a dozen streets or more to an apartment with a bright red door. It turned out to be Brian Epstein’s apartment, the Beatles’ manager, who died tragically of an overdose in August 1967. Epstein’s enthusiasm and belief in the true talents of the Beatles were what convinced Parlaphone Records, a subsidiary of EMI, to sign the Beatles to a record deal. Paul McCartney was quoted as saying, “If anyone was the fifth Beatle, it was Brian”. We went on to Hope Street, where we saw the Liverpool College of Art, where John Lennon attended after a few turbulent years in school. The Art College was located in the same building as the Liverpool Institute for Boys, where Paul McCartney and George Harrison still studied. This gave the guys a perfect opportunity to rehearse together as the Quarrymen. Outside the Art College was a sculpture, which was a realistic pile of travel trunks, guitar cases and boxes, which represented the Beatles’ travels and progress around the world. We decided to pull out the guitar and play a song for the occasion. I launched into “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and Jim and I joined in together on the chorus harmony with our friend Mike as film director. Some teenage school kids were walking by as we were finishing and a girl called out, “That sounded fat, man!” I looked down at my Lucky jeans for signs of love handles, but Mike caught me and said, “Pete, I think she liked it.”

The Beatles’ Fab Four Taxi Tour is not all Beatles, but shows off the sites of Liverpool as well. The next stop we made was the Liverpool Cathedral. It is an awesome structure, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who coincidentally, designed the red British phone booth, which is one of the most recognized symbols of the 20th century phone call. This huge, beautiful building is where Paul McCartney and his brother were rejected from joining the church choir. Years later, Paul’s symphonic and choir works were eventually performed long after his early years with the Beatles. Close by is a neighborhood at the opposite end of the spectrum from the pristine lines and glorious architecture of the Liverpool Cathedral. We parked in front of a neighborhood, not unlike the toughest project housing here in America. It was an old decrepit cluster of shops and houses that were abandoned, boarded and unwelcoming to say the least. Allen told us to carry the guitar with us because it was not safe to leave in the car. This, he said, was the birthplace of Richard Starkey, better known as Ringo Starr, drummer for the Beatles.

Allen led us down an alley-like street with a row of houses. We walked up to #10 and he said, “Here we are. This is the house where Ringo, his mother and her new husband moved after her divorce from Ringo’s first father. Let’s see if Margaret will let us in.” To our amazement, Allen knocked on the door, and an old, slightly hunched woman, probably in her mid 70’s, opened the door and said, “Come on in.” We found ourselves in the house where Ringo lived, with pictures of him hanging on the walls. It was a surreal experience. A few other people, also on the Beatles’ Taxi tour, were there with us in a tiny living room, and we all gazed around with a stunned look in our eyes. Someone noticed that many guests of notoriety had been there, including Mick Fleetwood, and of all people, the actress who played the youngest child of the Von Trapp family in the movie, Sound of Music. It turns out that Margaret loved the Sound of Music songs, so….what could we do but pull out the guitar and play Edelweiss. I couldn’t remember the lyrics, so as I mumbled watermelon, watermelon, the kind family from Florida filled in the missing consonants. Ok, for all of you who would rather see us spitting blood and rocking out to Revolution or Helter Skelter, the kind woman wanted a nice song…..OK!? Incidentally, Margaret asks for no money for opening up her house, but has a can that collects money for the Linda McCartney breast cancer fund. How cool is that?

By that time, Alan had radioed the owner of Beatles’ Fab Four Taxi tours and said that he had some musicians on hand who wanted to play. So, for the next 3 hours, we played kind of a musical automobile’s version of “It’s a Mad Mad Mad World”, racing from one Beatles highlight to the next, with other groups of tourists meeting us here and there. Alan said he would take us to Penny Lane next. But first he wanted to know if we believed that the Barbershop, the roundabout, the fireman and the banker depicted in Paul McCartney’s song all really existed? We all agreed that no one was good enough to make up that stuff, even if your name was Paul McCartney! We came to a road, pulled in to the left and stopped. To our left and right was a stone wall that served as an entrance to this lane. On each side was a painted stone that said “Penny Lane”. Over the wall were a track field and a school, and down the lane there was nothing but trees and a few houses. We were crushed! That world where the nurse sold poppies from a tray and the fireman’s got a portrait of the queen in his pocket doesn’t exist? Impossible. We continued down Penny Lane marveling at Paul McCartney’s inventive genius, wanting to have a heart to heart talk with his pharmacist.

Just as we asked Alan where we were off to next, he pulled into a little town center with a few houses to our left and right. And then we saw it…. There was the bank on the left, to the right was Paul’s childhood church, the roundabout was there, as was the barbershop to the left and the fire station. We jumped out of the taxi with 24 shutters clicking left and right. I grabbed the guitar as well, and we went into the barbershop where a pretty girl was finishing up a haircut on a customer. Alan asked her if it would be ok to play a song in homage to the Beatles. She kindly said ok, we tuned up and played a lyrically imperfect version of Penny Lane, in honor of Paul’s pharmacist … uh, I mean genius imagination.

We were set to head off to Strawberry fields, when Allen got an emergency call. It turns out that we had made this journey to Liverpool on the very day, July 6, 1957, 52 years ago, that John Lennon met Paul McCartney at the Fete (church dance) at St. Peter’s church in Woolton. In commemoration of the day, David Peters was there to talk to folks and had some posters that he was signing as well. We rushed over to talk to the man who was there when John and Paul first said hello. And yes, we brought out the guitar once again and played another song. I believe this time it was “In My Life”. What I thought had been the absolute highlight of the day was shortly to be outdone as we crossed the street to St. Peter’s church. This was not only the site where the skiffle band, The Quarryman (that John had formed), played that day so long ago; there was also a graveyard attached to the church, and as we looked at the gravestones, we came across one that read;

My dear husband John Rigby that departed this life…
Also Eleanor Rigby, wife of John woods
And granddaughter of the above died 10th of Oct. 1939 Aged 44 years

Chills ran down my spine as I realized that Paul and John had often played hooky between these gravestones and borrowed one of the names for one of their greatest songs.

Then it was on to Strawberry Fields. We pulled up next to a gate that led into an overgrown drive where a large orphanage once stood in Liverpool. This was a place that John used to sneak into. John, having a troubled life at home, was fiercely independent. As the story goes, he used to sneak in and spend the night at the orphanage with the other boys until one night when he was counted in the evening census. When they did the morning head count, they were one boy short, and that boy was John, who had climbed through the window before morning to go back home. It was the last time he would be allowed to do that. We played a quick version of Strawberry Fields before heading around the corner to John’s house. It was actually quite a nice place. For all John’s rough edges, he had intentionally hidden the fact that he actually lived in quite an affluent neighborhood. We took a few photos in front of this house that Yoko Ono has donated to the National Trust. We unfortunately were not able to go inside; that would have been part of a different tour, which we didn’t have time for.

Next was Paul’s boyhood home at 20 Forthlin Rd. It was a neat little place in a row of connected houses. Paul had picked the smallest room upstairs for his bedroom, not because he was generous, but because he was over the porch which had a roof that enabled him to escape at night. He probably was sneaking out to go to the library to do some extra studying.

The day was winding down as we made one last stop at George Harrison’s boyhood home. This was just about as rough as Ringo’s neighborhood, an unincorporated couple of streets in Liverpool. George’s was called Arnold Grove, and because of some problem with the neighborhood and the city charter, those few streets did not receive Liverpool trash services. We had to keep our distance from the door; apparently some of the tour bus people had been peeking in the windows to get a view of the living room of the man who wrote “Here Comes The Sun”, and the present owner would rush out and throw buckets of water on them.

I mentioned that our train back to London did not leave until 10pm. So we celebrated our incredible day in Liverpool with a good Italian meal. We ordered pasta, a couple glasses of wine, and settled down for a relaxing dinner. It was then that I got that itch behind my ear or a tap on my shoulder that something wasn’t quite right. I pulled the train ticket out of my bag and noticed in horror that the train left at 8:48!! It was now 8:15 and our relaxing Italian meal turned into a grab and go quick stop as we took everything to go. The last thing I remember (I guess after Mike left a sizeable tip) was the waitress throwing in a bunch of their silverware (not plastic ware) saying, “Get going you’ve got to catch your train.”

Back to Lime Street station with barely a minute to spare, we hopped aboard the train and ate our pasta while watching the sun go down on the English countryside. 52 years to the day John met Paul. Twelve hours to the minute since we had left that morning. 45 years or so since first hearing “Please Please Me” come over that record player. And, as is often the case, whenever you head out to new territory, nothing will ever be the same.