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Penny Lane is a street in Liverpool, England. The area that surrounds its junction with Smithdown Road is also commonly called Penny Lane.
Penny Lane is now famous worldwide as it is the title of a hit single by The
Beatles, released in 1967 and written by Paul McCartney. McCartney, along with John Lennon, grew up in the area and they spent a lot of time playing on Penny Lane as children.
The street is an important landmark, sought out by most Beatles fans touring Liverpool. In the past, street signs saying
"Penny Lane" were constant target of tourist larceny and had to be continually replaced. Eventually, city officials gave up and
simply began painting the street name on the sides of buildings.
The barber shop mentioned in the song was probably a shop owned by a Mr. Bioletti, who has claimed to have cut hair for
Lennon, McCartney and George Harrison when they were children.
One innovative feature of the song was the piccolo trumpet solo played by David Mason. This is probably the first use of this instrument (a distinctively
higher version of the standard trumpet) in pop music, where it is now (in certain genres) almost a commonplace.
Penny Lane today
It is a tribute to the creative genius of The Beatles that they were able to take an utterly undistinguished suburban road
junction and fashion a memorable song on such a flimsy foundation. Prior to securing international fame, Penny Lane's chief
renown was as the terminus for several important bus routes out from the city centre and as the site, in the middle of the
roundabout, of a very handily located public convenience. The area remained largely
unremarkable for the remainder of the 1960s and the 1970s; its most distinguishing feature was, perhaps, the regular arrival there of tour buses laden with
bemused-looking tourists who would alight, take a photograph or two, and then get back on the bus headed towards 251 Menlove Avenue.
Penny Lane began to evolve into what it has since become in the late 1970s and early
1980s. Towards the end of the 1970s, the businesses that set up shop there included Penny
Lane Records, Sven Books (Liverpool's first high-street sex shop), and a wine bar known, at least in the early years, as Harper's
Bizarre. In the mid-1980s, the bus shelter and public convenience were converted into a café that intelligently marketed itself
as Sgt. Pepper's. Following privatisation, the Merseyside Passenger Transport Executive bus depot, slightly up the hill past
Bioletti's, was knocked down was turned into a shopping precinct, complete with a supermarket and a public house.
Since then, the general Penny Lane area has acquired a distinct trendiness and desirability. The "alternative" businesses
(wholefood outlets, charity shops), the now expanded array of cafés, bars, bistros, and takeaway food emporiums in the vicinity,
as well as handily located traditional businesses (Woolworths, WH Smiths, Clarke's and Chalkin's cake shops) make the
neighbourhood one of the most sought-after among Liverpool's large student population.
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