Fascinating pictures show the 1960s height of Beatlemania merged with images of the city as it is today

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When Liverpool was Fab: Fascinating pictures show the 1960s height of Beatlemania merged with images of the city as it is today
°  Amateur photographer Keith Jones has merged pictures of 1960s Beatlemania with modern day Liverpool
°  Stunning images offer a trip down memory lane to when the Fab Four dominated the music scene
°  Mr Jones, 45, got the idea after discovering old postcards and realising city landscape remained the same 
By JOSEPH CURTIS FOR MAILONLINE
7 November 2016

Incredible images show 1960s Beatlemania Liverpool in black and white merged with the colourful modern-day city.

The stunning pictures offer a trip down memory lane as excited fans are pictured queuing for a Beatles gig at the Cavern Club while modern-day commuters stroll past on their way to work.

Other shots show the young Fab Four playing in an otherwise empty bar, arriving at Speke airport and posing in the modern Derby Square.

The nostalgic pictures are the work of Port Captain and amateur photographer Keith Jones, 45, from Liverpool.


Amateur photographer Keith Jones, from Liverpool, has merged pictures from the height of Beatlemania with images of the city today, such as this combination of the Cavern Club today in Mathew Street with a huge queue for a Beatles gig in the 1960s


Mr Jones took on the project as a tribute to the Fab Four, pictured here posing in Derby Square, because they remain 'synonymous' with their hometown 


He also merged a picture of modern day Speke Airport with that of the Beatles arriving in the city in 1964 for the premiere of their film A Hard Day's Night, with hundreds of fans packing out the building to give them a huge welcome


The photographer merged iconic styles of the 1960s - including the Fab Four clad in leather jackets outside the Mathew Street venue (pictured) - with the modern day surroundings

He said: 'I'm biased, I know, but who doesn't love The Beatles?

'I'm a lifelong fan of their music and having travelled the world a bit, it has been particularly clear to me that, for people from other parts of the world, the group are absolutely synonymous with their hometown.

'Ask anybody from New York to Nepal, Auckland to the Arctic, to name someone or something from Liverpool and I imagine John, Paul, George and Ringo would be right out in front.

'I feel our city should be proud and thankful for their music, their impact and their message, and blending their image back into the modern day scenes makes me smile and also wish I had been around to be in that queue for a lunchtime show at The Cavern Club!'


Mr Jones was even able to go back to the band's humble beginnings as The Quarrymen, revisiting the Childwall Abbey Hotel where they played at George Harrison's brother's wedding in the 1950s


It's not just the Beatles who are the centre of attention, as Mr Jones shines a spotlight on the city's history through this picture of a shopper in Lord Street surrounded by a modern day crowd


He captures the essence of Beatlemania outside the Mathew Street Cavern, pictured, and contrasts it with the more subdued scenes outside the club in modern Liverpool


Fans regularly fainted while waiting to see the Fab Four in Liverpool, pictured here in the High Street in the 1960s

Mr Jones first got the idea to merge old photographs with new ones at the same location when he came across old Victorian postcards and realised the pictured buildings still stood today.

'I went back as close to the same vantage point to 'rephotograph' the same view, to compare the scenes,' he said.

'It struck me that I found it equally fascinating whether the scene was unchanged in one hundred years, completely different or now a mixture of modern and historic elements.

'I'm lucky to live and work here in that the City of Liverpool has an amazing history, with everything from incredibly grand architecture from the most prosperous times in the 19th Century, to the most modern designs, quite often already placed side by side.

'When I get the chance to 'change the timeline' by blending in people from different eras to a modern day scene, it fascinates me to imagine how life was for city residents in decades gone by.'  




In the early 1960s it was not unusual to see the Beatles out and about in Liverpool, as these pictures of Derby Square in the 1960s prove, and the landscape does not seem to have changed much in 50 years


An aspiring young Beatle is pictured on a bench in Renelagh Place in the 1960s in a scene that could easily still be the same today, aside from the fashion


Mr Jones, a port captain, said merging the photos of Liverpool then and now, pictured in Mathew Street, left him fascinated