Pop and rock tourist destinations around the world related to the Beatles, Elvis, Jim Morrison. Mozart and ABBA.
From shameless pop museums to highbrow classical concerts, fans of particular singers, bands and composers can embark on pilgrimages to the places where their heroes left an indelible mark. We’ve picked out just some of the great destinations around the world for a musical mission.
Musical travel | Liverpool, England
Few cities play on their musical heritage as much as Liverpool does, but it has good reason to boast. Amongst many other bands ancient and modern, Liverpool was the birthplace of The Beatles, and there are plenty of sights linked to the Fab Four within the city.
Many of these are covered by the Magical Mystery Tour (www.cavernclub.org/mystery_tour.php), which visits the houses that John, Paul, George and Ringo grew up in, as well as famous landmarks from their songs. It stops outside the most famous Salvation Army prayer centre in the world – Strawberry Field was formerly a children’s home near John’s childhood home – as well as Penny Lane.
It also visits St Peter’s Church, which hosted the festival where John and Paul met for the first time. Eleanor Rigby’s tombstone can be found in the graveyard.
The tour finishes off at the Cavern Club in Mathew Street. This is a reconstruction on the site of the original venue, but with its basement archways and cramped stage it’s brilliantly atmospheric. It’s not difficult to imagine what it would be like in the early 1960s when the Beatles played one of their 275 gigs.
To round off the pilgrimage, you may as well stay at the world’s only Beatles-themed hotel. The Hard Day’s Night hotel only opened in February, and manages to be stylishly upmarket whilst retaining a Beatles flavour. Statues of the Fab Four adorn the outside, while public areas have limited edition photographs all over them, and the bar sells (pricy) cocktails with names such as Yellow Matter Custard. In a grand old building with marble floors and staircases, it could have been horrendously tacky, but somehow isn’t.
Musical travel | Paris, France
The Doors are one of those bands that many are indifferent to, but that fans love with a scarily slavish devotion. It’s no wonder, therefore, that many will make the trip to Paris purely so they can pay their respects at Jim Morrison’s grave. It’s a surprisingly simple tomb in the city’s massive Père-Lachaise cemetery, but it’s forever covered with flowers.
The alternative pilgrimage site for Doors fans is the Whiskey-A-Go-Go bar on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. The Doors were the house band there for a while, until they were fired for the singing the infamous lyrics to The End live on stage.
Musical travel | Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Of all the world’s musical pilgrimage sites, Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion has to be the best known shrine. Hundreds of thousands flock to the rather impressive complex in Memphis to pay homage to The King every year, and while there are vague pretences at keeping it dignified, this is Elvis we’re talking about – subtlety doesn’t really factor in.
There’s a hell of a lot to see at Graceland, and the basic package gets you a tour of the gardens and rooms where old snakehips lived.
However, go for the full works and you can get as much Elvis as you can possibly handle. On top of the usual tour, you can visit his own private automobile museum and have a mooch around two of his planes.
Even more bizarrely, you can also check out 56 of his OTT stage outfits in a special area devoted to Elvis’ Jumpsuits. Perhaps the highlight of the VIP tour is getting the chance to look at many items that were personal to Elvis. These include gifts he gave to his parents and the deeds to Graceland.
Musical travel | Vienna, Austria
For classical music fans, there are plenty of potential destinations – Beethoven’s birthplace in Bonn Germany for one, or the many Mozart-related attractions in Salzburg, Austria perhaps. But the one place that is the undisputed classical music centre of the world is Vienna.
Most of the great composers stayed and worked in the Austrian capital at some point, while the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra is almost universally regarded as one of the greatest – if not the greatest – in the world. With its grand palaces, opera buildings and theatres, Vienna is undoubtedly the place to take in a concert, but it’s also possible to find out much more about the likes of Schubert, Strauss and Brahms, as well as Beethoven and Mozart.
The Haus der Musik is a fantastic hi-tech exploration of the world of music, allowing you to create your own, explore different types of sound and see how music is formed.
Most importantly, though, it has a huge section exploring the lives and works of the world’s best known composers, and pulls of that perfect blend of education and entertainment.
Musical travel | Stockholm, Sweden
ABBA are possibly the biggest thing to have ever come out of Sweden, and up until recently there hasn’t been much in the way of tourist attractions built around the pop supergroup. That’s all changing, though – the city’s tourist information office can point you in the right direction to spots that featured on ABBA single and album covers, while a devoted museum opens in 2009.
The ABBA Museum promises to be full of memorabilia, instruments, images and multimedia attractions, with ABBA music blaring away at all hours.
While visiting, fans can also stay at the Rival Hotel. A designer boutique joint with its own cinema, the Rival is worth a stay in its own right – but the fact that it’s owned by Benny Andersson is the icing on the cake.
This article was originally written for Ninemsn.
Copyright David Whitley
