The church hall stage on which founding Beatles members Paul McCartney and John Lennon first met is being sold by a Liverpool clergyman, resulting in hate mail by enraged Beatles fans, Reuters reports.
McCartney was introduced to Lennon on the stage in 1957 while Lennon was playing there with his band, the Quarrymen. The meeting is regarded as a seminal moment in the story of the Fab Four. The St. Peter’s Church stage has become a shrine to Beatles fans. Canon John Roberts is selling the stage to fund renovation work.
“I have received hate mail. The people are just ignorant. I have gone out of my way to welcome fans,” Roberts told the Independent, a British newspaper.
“Our original plans were to extend the hall and preserve the stage, but we have not been able to find the money. We have been talking about this for five or six years, and if every Beatles fan had sent us just one pound we could have done it.”
Beatles’ biographer Hunter Davies lamented that “it’s a real shame that the stage can’t be kept in situ.”
Beatlemania, which resurfaced last year with the release of an album featuring the band’s No. 1 hits, continues to sweep Britain. The Beatles’ 1964 film debut, A Hard Day’s Night, returned to British cinemas Friday after premiering earlier this week in the band’s hometown of Liverpool. The film received its U.S. re-release late last year.
The black and white comedy, directed by Richard Lester, fictionalized how John, Paul, George and Ringo escaped on a daily basis the clutches of hysterical fans and nosy reporters during the early years of Beatlemania.
“The Beatles gave me a film career,” Lester told the Mirror, a British tabloid. “I was able to trade on that for 40 years. So in terms of gratitude I owe them a lot more than they owe me.”
