Page 185 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book

The Beatles were formed in Liverpool; this bronze statue by Andy Edwards was erected in 2015 to
commemorate the 50-year anniversary of their last live concert in the city CREDIT: iStock

At Otterspool, the builders are in, somewhere behind the trees. This was the location for the 1984
International Garden Festival – Michael Heseltine’s attempt to draw in tourists with blooms,
pagodas, a toy train, a Blue Peter ship. The regenerated Albert Dock opened in the same year. Both
were deemed successes. A decade later, there was a plan to build a thousand-foot ‘Scousescraper’
at Otterspool, but it came to nothing. What now? 1,400 new homes, apparently. You can’t win ’em
all.

But you can, of course, win the rights to host the Eurovision Song Contest, which arrives for the
week of May 9-13. In many ways, it was a natural choice; you could write Liverpool’s recent life
story through its festivals. Two years after Heseltine’s flower show, Rock Around the Dock
bounced to the rhythms of Chaka Khan and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, among others. The first
Liverpool Biennial was in 1998, launching the largest contemporary art show in Britain. The 2008
Capital of Culture year-long shindig was huge; the biggest party, the MTV Awards at the new Echo
Arena, was as glitzy as anything this side of LA, with Katy Perry hosting, Beyoncé choppering in to
perform, and Adele (in the audience – not yet big enough to perform at the event) losing out to
Leona Lewis for the Best UK and Ireland gong.