Tourist Productions 2005

Research : Looking at Pearson’s “approaches to retrieval”
Except for a few, many sites on the tour can be experienced without any connection to the Beatles. I want to look at relived memory and its connection with the present. Many of the sites that the tour visits have gone through dramatic changes since the heyday of the Beatles presence in New York. Memory, of course, is inevitably linked to personal narrative. In his text Theatre/Archaeology Mike Pearson states, “One thing that the watcher puts into narrative is time, the time of reflection of re-experiencing and inflating the fleeting image by replaying it over and over in the memory” (Pearson, 134). This is especially true for older generation Beatles fans who first experienced “Beatlemania” in 1964 and will use the tour to relive Beatle memories. And also true for younger generation Beatle fans who will utilize the tour and other’s re-experiencing for their present knowledge and memories of the Beatles.

“Meaning always precedes its own production” (Pearson, 144), and when integrating this statement into this project, I would like to know how the Beatles presence in these sites change perceptions of certain landmarks, structures, and memorials. I am curious to know if the majority of tourists are from out-of-town. How many are New Yorkers? Do New Yorkers have different connections to the sites?

Because it is a walking tour, I want to look closely at the relationship between the tour guide and the tourist. How will the tour guide incorporate architecture, space and time into the tour? I want to see how familiarity develops between the guide and visitors. Where and how does the guide insert facts, questions, personal anecdotes, jokes into his performance and how effective are they in making the visitor’s experience a more meaningful one? What makes the guide a Beatles expert?

During this process I will also look into other Beatle tours, the majority being in England.
I want to know how Day Trippin’ Rock and Roll Tours developed the Beatles’ Tour and if it is connected to or structured like any of the Beatle tours offered in other parts of the country, or those offered in England. How do other fans react to these tours? I’ve already downloaded some articles and reviews with tourist reactions from different tours around the world.

I would also like to interview some of tour guides and participants of the tour. Not knowing how willing or available these sources will be, I am prepared to heavily depend on questions asked during the tour. I would also like to interview employees of the sites visited and look into how significant the Beatles’ presence was to that specific site. With repeated visits I hope to familiarize myself with the structure of the tour and develop informed questions and relationships that will be effective for my research.

Themes that will be explored in paper
• Memory, Time, and Change : old generation, new generation
• Re-experience
Subtopics
• Description of tour, sites, path
• Tour guide relationship to sites and tourists
• Tour guide’s “expertise”
I want to incorporate the music (of course!)and I'm hoping that experiencing the tour will help me find a relationship that will link all these topics together.

Working Bibliography

Cohen, Erik. 1985. The Touris Guide: The origins, structures, and dynamamics of a role. Annals of Tourism Research 12, no. 1: 5-30

Fine, Elizabeth and Jean Haskell Speer. 1985. Tour guide performances as sight sacralization. Annals of Tourism Research 12, no. 1:73-95.

Goldsmith, Martin. The Beatles come to America. Hoboken, NJ. : John Wiley & Sons, c2004.

Pearson, Mike, and Julian Thomas. 1994. Theatre/Archaeology. TDR 38, no. 4:133-61

Pond, Kathleen Lingle. 1993. The Professional Guide: Dynamics of Tour Guiding. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Spizer, Bruce. The Beatles are coming!: the birth of Beatlemania in America. New Orleans, La. : 498 Productions, c2003.

http://www.daytrippin.com/fab4nyc.htm tour website
http://www.cnn.com/TRAVEL/NEWS/9808/27/beatles.walk/
http://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-liverpool8feb08,1,5217628.story
http://www.cavern-liverpool.co.uk/mmt/ Magical Mystery Tour in Liverpool