WIRRAL schoolchildren have been learning all about The Beatles from the band's original drummer Pete Best.
Pete has been telling children from New Brighton Primary School about the history of the Fab-Four at The Magical Beatles Museum which was opened 12 weeks ago at the former site of Lennon's Bar.
Opened by Pete's brother Roag, son of Apple Corps chief executive Neil Aspinall, the museum holds more than 270 Beatle artefacts including Pete's original Premier drum kit from 1960 to 1962, John Lennon's Sergeant Pepper medals and George Harrison’s Futurama Grazio guitar.
Talking about the school trip, Roag told the Globe: "Well with a lot of the schools, The Beatles is actually part of the national curriculum, so the New Brighton Primary School have been getting taught about The Beatles, copying Beatles artwork, so today is taking them through.
"For these kids, some of them are so young and we talk about vinyl and they've never seen vinyl, they don't know what vinyl is - their jaws drop like 'What? People were listening to music on pieces of plastic?!'
"We talk about the effects that The Beatles had on fashion, on popular culture and just history in general."
Pete added: "It's great for me because it brings a bit of reality to it, people can talk about it.
"So to actually be there and get a response from someone who was there at the time helps. It's great how much they know.
"The questions the children ask - they ask better questions than some of the adults have on Q&A sessions.
"You know it's all moving forward for the future, for the kids, the future of the museum, for Liverpool, for Wirral, it's great that they participate in it and go away with a lot of happiness."
Roag explained that schoolchildren come in with a lot of knowledge and the museum helps expand on that, "They have background knowledge and we expand on it, one of the questions we end with, for example, is a little-known fact that The Beatles sold over two billion records and if you were able to count from the day you were born, you would be in your late seventies, without sleep bare in mind, before you got to two billion."
Talking about the success of the museum, which is now rated at #29 of things to do in Liverpool Roag said: "It's been open for around 12 weeks.
"We've been getting pushed up on Tripadvisor but not long ago there was so many reviews that came in that Tripadvisor put us down the list.
"We got in touch and asked why this was and they said that they found it hard to believe that every review is positive so we had to prove to them why we were getting the positive reviews and they then lifted their embargo on us and we are allowed to start climbing back up again.
"In Liverpool there is nothing to this level. Here we take the public right through the story from the very beginning and how we're doing it differently is that our collection spans through their whole history and this is basically the first time that this has happened.
"You can do the whole history of The Beatles and through each step of their journey with memorabilia and that has never been done before.
"The three words we use are that we're authentic, unique and original.
"We've got more than 1500 items in the collection, one we're expanding all the time.
"In the museum itself we can only house 260 to 270 so there's a lot more to come.
"The intention is to rotate them, in January of each year we will change 20% of it. But not this January as we're only just open but we will be changing memorabilia so it gives people the chance to come back and see more about The Beatles."
For more information on The Magical Beatles Museum visit https://magicalbeatlesmuseum.com/
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