Reconstructing History circa 1963 ... AD

Greetings all from Cambridge where Patty and I are continuing our oh-so-civilized wandering around the UK. In an earlier dispatch, you may recall my curious ponderings about "what is "old" - reflecting on the opportunity I have had to see things that can be dated in the millions of years rather than centuries. This week in England, in both Liverpool and Haworth, I have had cause to reflect on this question from another perspective - asking myself when should we know that something is worth preserving before we risk handing it over for renovation or the wrecking ball.

On Sunday afternoon, I quaffed a pint in a dark, subterranean bar that now bills itself - with much gravitas - as the "most famous club in the world". I think most would agree that this place has strong qualifications to stake this claim. The Cavern Club was the pulsing heart of the Merseybeat in the early 1960's and the one place that can legitimately lay claim to being the birthplace of the Beatles. The Beatles played here almost 300 times and the threadbare stage at the Cavern saw many performances by the Rolling Stones, the Who and countless other storm-troopers of the British invasion. Almost half a century (ouch!) later, the Beatles nostalgia business is a huge part of Liverpool's economy and it is hard to escape the ubiquity of the Fab Four. And yet the Cavern Club in which I enjoyed my (highly overpriced) pint isn't exactly the one at which the Beatles served as the house band for so many gigs. In the 1970's, it fell into disrepair and renovation into a disco (shame!) was seen by its owners as the only option for its salvation. One would have thought that in the 1980's, in the second decade after Sergeant Pepper's, it should have been apparent to any reasonable watcher of 20th century culture that the Beatles were more than a passing fad. Perhaps the stage on which they truly launched their amazing rise should be preserved as a cultural shrine that could be visited by future generations - not just the present ones. Instead, with a now-failed disco on its hands, the owners decided to gut the Cavern and in-fill it to form the base of the construction of a seven story building above it. Then sometime in the 1990's, the light must have gone on. The excavators where called in and the arches that so distinguished the Cavern were unearthed. original bricks from the building were recovered from the in-fill and used to reconstruct the club with additional reinforcement being built in to hold up the new building above. Mathew Street , in which the Cavern is located, was declared a municipal historical site (can UNESCO Wold heritage status be far behind) and several historical markers and statues erected to commemorate the Beatles story in its earliest days. And yet even now, with so much reconstruction having taken place, there seems to be a great debate about where the Cavern was, in fact, located. As far as I could determine, there are at least three contenders for the entrance to the club - one that tries to back its claim with scratchy photographic evidence pointing to the end of the queue for club patrons by a dimpled stone that can still be seen a few feet above street level. Moreover, the reconstructed Cavern now is about 2/3 the size of the original and the stage is a model refabricated from photographic history.

I came away feeling that what I had seen was no less than a modern day archaeological reconstruction of a palace of culture - but this time it was my culture, contemporary culture, something that stretched back to 1963 AD not 1963 BC. The reconstructionists at the Minoan palace of Knossos in Crete or the Ellora caves in India, both of which date well back into the AD period, must have also speculated about where the palace entrances had been drawing on the best available evidence, sketches and arguments just like those used now to validate the entrance to the Cavern Club.

The important question in my mind is when do we determine whether we should take the risk to preserve a site that we can safely bet will be an important historical monument in our times and culture? When do we put pressure on the owners to conserve and not renovate or redevelop these sites - or, worse, submit to the wrecking ball? What other historic sites in rock'n'roll have been preserved for the future and which ones now might loom under the wrecking ball as we ponder these thoughts. I am aware that the Sun studios in which Elvis recorded his first records is now a museum. But what about the original Motown studios? Or the Bottom Line in New York where Bob Dylan first drew notice? Has a public crusade been mounted to preserve these sites - or has a well-heeled benefactor swooped in, bought the site and dedicated it to posterity for public enjoyment.

The latter option crossed my mind a few days after leaving Liverpool when Patty and I spent a few days in Haworth in Yorkshire. Here one finds the well-preserved and protected home - which the Bronte sisters wrote some of the great works of 19th century English literature. In the mid-1920's, at a time of apparent transition in the use or ownership of the Bronte parsonage house, a wealthy Englishman took the preservationist risk and bought the property and dedicated it as a public museum for posterity . A society dedicated to the preservation and enhancement of the Bronte sisters was formed and now almost two centuries after "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering heights" were written in that very house, there is little doubt that this cultural shrine will be safe from the wrecking ball for a long time to come.

Perhaps more of our future archaeological digs will be focused on unearthing the sites and history of a few decades rather than millenia ago. Or will we continue on in our ways and watch these places disappear while singing "I Should Have Known Better"