The new exhibit at Foxwoods Resort Casino of Beatles memorabilia, “The Magical History Tour,” begins chronologically before the Beatles existed, when John Lennon was playing in his first band, The Quarrymen, and ends when the Beatles were just a memory and the Fab Four had moved on to other musical projects.
For the collectors whose artifacts are on exhibit in the show, their own “magical history tours” began on Feb. 9, 1964, the day The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show.
“It was all people could talk about in school the next day,” says Jim Cushman of Mattapoisett, Mass. “Even kids who didn’t care about rock and roll were picking up guitars after that.”
“That was the day the whole world changed,” says Dennis Toll of Brantford, Ontario, Canada, and the day he began collecting Beatles things.
Beatles memorabilia exhibits are common. But the Foxwoods’ exhibit has a unique focus: items owned or at least touched by the Beatles themselves, and on a series of extraordinary photos that give the Beatles’ view of the fans, taken by Curt Gunther, who tagged along on the boys’ 1964 American-Canadian tour.
Peter Miniaci, the former owner of a Beatles shop in Toronto and one of the organizers of the show, says the exhibit’s “narrative” begins on July 6, 1957, the day Lennon met Paul McCartney, and ends on Dec. 8, 1980, the day Lennon was shot to death by a mentally unstable fan, Mark David Chapman. That timeline is the reason the exhibit’s most shocking item is included: the copy of the Lennon-Yoko Ono album “Double Fantasy” that Lennon autographed for his killer, complete with a police evidence number written on Ono’s neck.
“We had misgivings including it. A lot of hardcore Beatles fans do not mention his name,” says Miniaci. “But it’s history. People get emotional about it.”
Lennon met McCartney at a concert Lennon played with The Quarrymen. One of the exhibit’s show-stopping pieces is a drum kit used by The Quarrymen, sitting atop a piece of the flooring of the club where the future legends had their first encounter. McCartney joined the skiffle band in 1957 and George Harrison joined in 1958.
“The drum set was used by John, Paul and George. Colin Hanton was the drummer, but they all used it when they were writing songs and when they wanted to show Colin how to play songs,” says Toll, who owns the drum kit. Hanton left the band when it moved from skiffle to rock ‘n’ roll, leaving Lennon, McCartney and Harrison behind.
A reproduction of the stage in the Cavern Club, where The Beatles played in their early years and where Beatlemania first took hold in England, faces the drum kit.
The ill-fated Stuart Sutcliffe later joined The Quarrymen, which had been renamed The Silver Beatles. Several artworks and poems by Sutcliffe are seen in the exhibit. By the time they won Mersey Beat magazine’s best-band poll, the band was calling itself The Beatles and Pete Best was manning the drums. A copy of that Mersey Beat poll signed by all four — Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Best — is showcased.
The American tour in 1964 is marvelously chronicled by an array of photographs by Gunther, who begged The Beatles to let him be their official photographer and was given the job with no pay. Many photos taken at that time by other photographers are legendary, but Gunther’s unequaled perspective — in a limousine with The Beatles, backstage, in the dressing room, getting off the plane — shows the phenomenal period as the band members saw it.
A wax bust of actress Diana Dors, which was used to assemble the cover of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” is on display, as is a clavichord used to record “Revolver.” The first home-recording kit used by the band’s manager, George Martin, sits nearby.
The prickly breakup of the band is remembered by a letter dated April 18, 1969, from Lennon, Harrison and Ringo Starr, telling McCartney’s father-in-law George Eastman that he may be authorized to speak for McCartney but he is not authorized to speak for them.
THE MAGICAL HISTORY TOUR: A BEATLES MEMORABILIA EXHIBITION is in the Sunset Ballroom in the Great Cedar Hotel lobby at Foxwoods Resort Casino, 350 Trolley Line Boulevard in Mashantucket, until Feb. 5. Admission is $15.95, $13.95 seniors, $10.95 for children 6 to 18. foxwoods.com/beatles.
