You Can Now Travel the World Through Beatles Lyrics
A new video uses Google Maps to take Beatles fans on a world tour, covering more than 25,000 miles, using the group's lyrics as a guide.
Produced by Vanity Fair, the nearly 13-minute clip begins in their hometown of Liverpool. In addition to obvious places like Penny Lane and Strawberry Field, Beatles songs that reference their parents (like "Julia" and "Let It Be") are matched with John Lennon's and Paul McCartney's childhood homes.
After three-and-a-half minutes, the video turns from Liverpool to Blackburn ("A Day in the Life") and the Scottish town of Kircaldy ("Cry Baby Cry") before flying to London, where Buckingham Palace ("Her Majesty"), the Royal Albert Hall and the House of Lords and Bishopsgate ("Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!") are acknowledged.
You can watch the video below.
"The Ballad of John and Yoko"'s travelogue takes fans out of Britain -- moving from Southampton to Paris (with a stop at the Eiffel Tower for "I Am the Walrus"), Amsterdam, Gibraltar and Vienna. It then visits all the places name-checked in "Back in the U.S.S.R." After a stop in Rishikesh, India, which isn't mentioned by name in any lyrics but inspired "Dear Prudence" and "Sexy Sadie," the video travels to the U.S. for "Rocky Raccoon," "Get Back" and "Blue Jay Way" before returning to London.
The clip does take a few liberties, suggesting that "Savoy Truffle" may have been inspired by chocolates from the Savoy Hotel, and Abbey Road Studios is represented by "I Want You (She's So Heavy)," because of Yoko Ono's presence at the sessions (George Harrison's gently weeping guitar might have been less of a stretch)."Strawberry Fields Forever" is also revisited as a section of New York's Central Park that's named after the song.
As the Daily Beatle points out, "Eleanor Rigby" wasn't inspired by a gravestone at the cemetery at St. Peter's Church in Woolton, Liverpool, where, the video fails to mention, Lennon and McCartney met in 1957. McCartney has said that, though the cemetery may have been in his subconscious, he chose the name Eleanor from his Help! co-star Eleanor Bron and Rigby from a shop in Bristol.