#forthlinroad

The same holds for museums, as was demonstrated when McCartney, for the first time since his teens, stepped into his family home, 20 Forthlin Road, which is now a National Trust property, open to the public. As a side-note, Forthlin Road is one of the few working-class residences managed by the National Trust, which mostly represents grand country houses. 

The fame of its one-time resident seems to be enough to cross those class-based boundaries. 

The same holds true for John Lennon’s childhood home, Mendips Road, which was bought by Yoko Ono, who donated it to the National Trust. Here are images of both locations.

Like numerous museologists, I am interested in historical house museums. Before getting any further into this blog-post, I would like to add that there is an existing body of work discussing them in an academic capacity. Including The Anarchists Guide to Historical House Museums, Mårdh (2015), Risnicoff de Gorgas (2001), and many more. I encourage interested readers to look them up (and/or wait for me to develop this research into an article in the future).

Historical house museums are quite a unique exhibition space. They represent spaces which are simultaneously alive and dead. 

The previous inhabitant, deemed worthy of an exhibit, is always absent, represented by items (materiality) left behind. The space is usually made to look as if they have just stepped out of the room, thus creating the illusion of time moving forwards, of life in the house.

A great example of this is the final scene of the film Julie & Julia (2009), starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child. The camera pans into the kitchen (as can be seen here), protected by a rope-barrier, demonstrating that this is a museum space and therefore different rules apply than in a normal kitchen. As the light in the room changes, the camera pans in through the looking-glass. Julia Child herself walks in and starts cooking. This is exactly the same kitchen, except the tea towel and tablecloth are slightly wrinkled and the tools on the wall are, perhaps, a little more chaotically displayed. This demonstrates the minor differences between living (lived in) spaces and dead (exhibition) spaces. The latter are polished but correct representations of reality. The Smithsonian's actual recreation of Child's kitchen is, much the same as in the film, a polished version of reality. 

Recreation of Julia Child’s kitchen at the National Museum of American History, Washington D.C. Photograph by dawnmichele and used under a Creative Commons license. 

Yet, understanding the difference, historical house museums might leave the tea towel wrinkled, further blurring the lines between private and public. This gives the stronger impression that the owner, having just stepped out, might reclaim the room at any given moment, making the museum visitor an interloper or Peeping Tom, as though they are gaining an almost illicit look into private lives.

This is core of historical house museums: they freeze that fraction of a second, where the owner is just beyond the door, ready to come in, yet never does. 

Except, as with Child, McCartney did return. Welcome to Wonderland.

This atmosphere is what fascinates me about historical house museums: the recreation of almost-life. It functions much like realistic mannequin displays: the horror and fascination lies in their unnerving resemblance to life. At any given moment, the mannequins might look back at the visitor. A great example of this is the sensationalized silicone figures at the Saga Museum, depicting people and events from Icelandic sagas and history. An exhibition which I delve into further in an article to be published later this year. 

As you walk through the space, it is easy to forget if you are the viewer or the one being viewed.  

Þorbjörg Lítilvölva, from Eiríks saga rauða as represented by the Saga Museum. Image copyright: Saga Museum, 2018.

Þorbjörg Lítilvölva, shown above, demonstrates a meticulous recreation of a literary character (her possible basis in actual history is not part of this blogpost), through materiality, i.e. clothing, jewelry and background drawing. In historical house museums, the same is achieved very similarly, through household objects, clothing and more. The realistic atmosphere is deliberately created by museum staff. In reality, the objects are placed by someone else, and may, in fact, not always have been owned by the person/people being represented in the exhibition space.

As the National Trust verified in our correspondence, in the case of Forthlin Road, none of the interior furnishings, including the piano, are original but are similar in age and design as when the McCartney family lived there. Interestingly, the piano is kept in tune and visitors are allowed to play on it during their stay. This usually ends up in a sing-song (presumably predominantly of Beatles and McCartney songs) which lends life to the museum’s atmosphere. Paul’s brother, Mike McCartney, was vital when furnishing the flat; he also took the photographs on the walls, which helped when choosing the correct paint colours, wallpaper and flooring. The photographs are a paradox in themselves. On one level, they are there for the benefit of the visitor. They are a testament to the cult of Paul McCartney’s celebrity status, rather than the standard images that families frame. Yet they also provide an insider’s gaze into the Beatles’ life, because they were taken by Mike McCartney as he was learning to compose pictures with a 35mm camera. They are a private view into a public life.

According to the Liverpool Echo, Paul only specifically asked for one thing to be included; something to remember his parents by. The result is a wooden plaque above the front door, reading “In loving memory of Mum and Dad, Mary and Jim”. With personal and private memories of his family life, to Paul (and assumedly his brother) Forthlin Road is certainly a memorial to his parents as much as himself. For the rest of the world, it is a testament to the legacy of Paul and the Beatles. The birthplace of a legend. It is a time-capsule, carefully curated by exhibition staff, with a little help from the McCartneys. 

The family does not need to be present in body; they are there through materiality.

What happens when the owner comes back? Do they reclaim the space as theirs, even if just temporarily, disrupting the timelessness of the exhibit? Are they visitors in this professionally created version of their past? Do they become the temporary curator or tour guide? That short clip of Sir Paul walking around his childhood home gave us an insight into such an event. And while I certainly enjoyed the singing in the car and the pub, this, to me, seemed like the most unique aspect of the journey.

I do not doubt that the custodian knew McCartney was coming to visit. Certainly her startlement could be explained as her being starstruck, something most of us can understand. Yet, there is something more paradoxical about the situation, which she might have felt. Here he was, the absent collection object, the man himself, on the doorstep. The artificially created ‘absent but here’ atmosphere was broken. McCartney, knocking on the door as a guest, became the owner as soon as he stepped through the looking glass.

It was the ultimate Bakhtinian Carnivalesque moment, stepping over socially constructed boundaries, the merging of past and present, where anything is possible and permitted.

It all culminated in the moment that Paul McCartney looked out the window at his fans, recreating in the present, the first year of his rise to stardom. It disrupted the time-capsule and lent it credence. In other words, Beatlemania was really happening again. Paul McCartney stood in his family home, looking out at his admiring fans.

Sir Paul himself is aware of his status as a living legend. In a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, he referred to this, saying, “No matter what you hear, even the stuff that we thought was really bad - it doesn’t sound so bad now. Because it’s the Beatles”. 

Indeed, nothing is void of value when in the hands of an artist. 

Paul McCartney is part of a legacy influencing generations of people around the world. As his visit to Forthlin road showed us, if he stops at any one stop for more than a few minutes, he gathers a crowd. Yet even to him, it must have been odd to walk into his childhood home and find himself musealised within it. Judging by the clip, it did not take long for him to take charge of the situation and become the curator of his own memorialised, musealised life story. Over the years, the museum has gathered stories from both Paul and Mike, which are weaved into the tours, but even that is a reinterpretation of the original through the museum. In this episode of Carpool Karaoke, the ‘museum object’ (Paul himself) narrated its own story.

At the end of the visit, Paul McCartney hugs the custodian and leaves Wonderland. He has seemingly approved of the preservation and representation of his legacy, his roots. 

The museum is returned to its former state of frozen anticipation.

My final note is about the Penny Lane street sign, signed by McCartney himself, seemingly rather offhandedly. I could not help but chuckle to myself when watching that scene unfold. Some of this was because of Corden’s joke that most people will assume the handwriting to be fake, perhaps underestimating the popularity of both McCartney and his own ‘carpool karaoke’ segment. Yet mostly I laughed at the conservational nightmare presented to the city. Would they now have to cut out a segment of the wall and preserve in a museum? McCartney seems to be using some sort of permanent marker on a sign painted (presumably using theft-proof paint) on a stone wall. I am not so familiar with conservation that I can say how long before it rubs off or is simply erased by avid fans touching and signing the sign themselves. Yet surely, it is an important part of the legacy: Paul McCartney is giving a nod to one of the Beatles’ most famous songs, Penny Lane. 

Out of interest, I contacted various branches of Liverpool City Council to inquire about the fate of Paul’s autograph. Sadly, the Planning Department’s Building Conservation Team is unable to act, because the road sign is not listed. The Council’s Culture Team is also unable to act because they are led by the Planning Department. A helpful member of the Council discussed the issue with the Beatles Legacy Group, which also indicated that no action would be taken (i.e. they will ‘let it be’ - this pun needed to be included). The sign is already almost illegible due to fans visiting the site and writing their own names as close to Paul’s as they can. Somehow, the act of having their names close to his brings them closer to their idol. I can only conclude that once the sign is so filled with scribbles that the street name becomes hard to read, it will be painted over and the issue will be resolved with a blank canvas. Perhaps then we will have a sequel ‘Carpool Karaoke with Paul McCartney’ segment. That would surely require the City Council to list a piece of painted brick wall.

The ‘carpool karaoke’ clip has already had a positive effect on tourism in Liverpool. Because of it, people have flocked to the street sign and other locations to follow in Paul’s footsteps. I do not have information if this interest has trickled down to Forthlin Road, but one can only hope that Paul’s visit has revitalised and disrupted the quiet enough to increase tourist interest. I, for one, will certainly be in their number in the near future.

Gudrun D Whitehead, is Assistant Professor of Museology at the University of Iceland. You can find further details of her work and her blog on her website.

Gudrun would like to thank Dr Julia Petrov for her input, Jackie Crawford and Cerys Edwards of Liverpool City Council, Simon Osborne of The National Trust,  and the Beatles Legacy Group for the information provided.