Liver Buildings, Liverpool

The Liver Buildings probably provide the most iconic picture of Liverpool. They are embedded in the consciousness of many people throughout the world who instantly recognise the city by the view of the building from the River Mersey.

The Liver Buildings would have been a familiar sight to Lowry walking along the promenade on the Wirral side of the river, sitting in the Egremont Ferry Hotel, crossing the river on the ferry from Birkenhead or Seacombe or when he walked up from the river to his father's workplace in the Cotton Exchange in Liverpool.

Lowry's first novel Ultramarine has many references to Liverpool. It is not surprising that Lowry refers to the Liver Buildings early in the novel as his hero Dana Hilliot daydreams aboard the ship Oedipus Tyrannus:

...he remembered just where he stood, just what he had said, and how he said it, just how the silver compasses of the Liver Building clock had indicated half-past eleven. Ultramarine

Dana Hilliot's recollections of the clock have been prompted by his desire to pin down the exact moment he signed on at the Board Of Trade Office for his voyage on the Oedipus Tyrannus to the Far East. That fictional account was based on Lowry's own trip aboard the Blue Funnel ship Pyrrhus in 1927. I have spoken to ex-Blue Funnel Line sailors and they have told me that they signed on for the voyages in Birkenhead where the Blue Funnel Lines wharf was located. Dana's (Lowry's) recollections would have been based on viewing the Liver Building clock from the Birkenhead Docks which is possible given the size of the clock and how the tower dominates the waterfront.

My photograph above is a slightly unusual view of the Liver Buildings taken from the top of the old Martin's Bank Building in Water Street, Liverpool. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a shot with the clock showing 11.30!

The dark moody shot below of the building is more contemporary to Lowry. The shot shows the buildings in their smoke covered dark guise which would have fitted Lowry's perception of Liverpool as the "dreadful city". The building takes on sinister overtones as it overlooks the journeys of commuters on ferries, sailors setting out for distant places, people emigrating or ships full of cargoes plying mercantile business that kept Liverpool a premier financial centre even in the 1920's.



The Liver Building is topped by the Liver Birds which have become symbols for the city. I am sure that Lowry would have appreciated that irony, with his love of birds, that the mythical Liver Birds are based on the cormorant, which is a symbol of deception and greed. The bird is described in Milton's Paradise Lost, a book that Lowry studied at Cambridge, sitting on the Tree of Life, as an image of Satan entering Paradise in disguise before tempting Eve. The birds become the guardians of the entry to the "dreadful city".

You can still see the cormorants gathering on old staging at the Pier Head just below the Liver Buildings. In my photograph, the real bird sits in the shadow of its mythical cousins. There is another irony in that the building was the home of the Royal Liver Assurance group, which had been set up in the city in 1850 to provide locals with assistance related to losing a wage-earning relative many of whom would have been sailors who began their journeys from Liverpool.

Malcolm Lowry & Northern Soul

Volcanos Storm Warning Arctic

Ronnie Forte That Was Whiskey Talking Forte



When I began this project on Malcolm Lowry, I joked with a friend that I would love to find a connection between Malc and my love of soul music. Over this last weekend, I found that link in the fact that one of the cinemas Lowry frequented in the 1920's called the The Century Theatre in Liverpool later transformed into the one of the original homes of what became known as Northern Soul as the Mardi Gras Club in the 60's.

I have posted 2 tracks which have vague references to Lowry to give a taste of the Northern Soul scene.

The Century Theatre was a regular haunt of Lowry's in 1928 according to an interview given by Jay Leyda, a Canadian friend of Lowry's, to Miguel Mota and Paul Tiessen for their book The Cinema Of Malcolm Lowry. Mota and Tiessen only identified the cinema as the "home of the unusual films". However, I was able to identify the cinema frequented by Lowry after reading Picture Palaces Of Liverpool by Harold Ackroyd. Lowry would have enjoyed the irony that the theatre was a former Weslyean Chapel before becoming a cinema in 1908.

Apparently, the cinema specialised in showing rare continental films during this period including Murnau's The Last Laugh and Faust, Ludwig Berger's The Waltz Dream and Fritz Lang's Dr Mabuse.

Unfortunately, the theatre was demolished in the 1970's and the site re-developed into a car park.

The photograph below shows the Mardi Gras Club circa late 1950's

Bryan Biggs & Helen Tookey Editors: Malcolm Lowry: From the Mersey to the World

Helen Tookey mailed me today with the final details of the new book on Lowry that she is editing with Bryan Biggs called Malcolm Lowry: From the Mersey to the World.

I was very proud to be asked to contribute to the new book. My involvement in both the book and the forthcoming festival to celebrate Malc's centenary later this year have galvanised me to bring all my research on Lowry's work into this blog. I thank both Helen and Bryan for supporting my work and giving me focus after years of researching about Lowry and doing nothing with my discoveries.

Here are some details about the book:

Synopsis

Malcolm Lowry described Liverpool as ‘that terrible city whose main street is the ocean’. Born on the Wirral side of the river Mersey, Lowry’s relationship to the Merseyside of his youth informs all of his writing and Liverpool itself continued to hold tremendous significance for him, even though he never returned.

On the occasion of the centenary of his birth in 2009, the Bluecoat, Liverpool’s contemporary arts centre, is working with a group of Lowry enthusiasts in the city and international experts to celebrate this event with an exhibition and related programme (25 September–22 November) examining Lowry’s life and work. The book will be an integral part of this celebration.

The publication will follow a similar trajectory to that of the Bluecoat exhibition, visiting points on Lowry’s compass, and comprising twelve sections (reflecting the symbolically significant twelve chapters of Lowry’s masterpiece, Under the Volcano). It will combine academic and personal perspectives on Lowry and will integrate images of works from the exhibition and other illustrations. It will consist entirely of new research, some of it into lesser-known aspects of Lowry, as well as creative writing in response to his life and work.

Contents:

Ian McMillan, ‘Malcolm Lowry: who he was and who I was and who I am’; Colin Dilnot, ‘Lowry’s Wirral’; Cian Quayle, ‘Elliptical journeys: Malcolm Lowry, exile and return’; Michele Gemelos, ‘Lunatic city: Lowry’s Lunar Caustic and New York’; Alberto Rebollo, ‘It is not Mexico of course, but in the heart…’: Lowry seen from Quauhnáhuac’; Mark Goodall, ‘Lowrytrek’: towards a psychogeography of Malcolm Lowry’s Wirral’; Ailsa Cox, ‘No se puede vivir sin amar’; Annick Drösdal-Levillain, ‘ “Eridanus, Liverpool”: echoes and transformations at the edge of eternity’; Nicholas Murray, ‘Uxorious prose: Malcolm Lowry’s October Ferry to Gabriola’; Michael Turner, ‘The Malcolm Lowry Room’; Robert Sheppard, ‘Malcolm Lowry’s land’; Gordon Bowker, ‘Malcolm Lowry: neglected genius’.

128pp., 40 colour illustrations, 234x156mm, Paperback

Publishing September 2009

You can pre-order the book from Liverpool University Press

Eddie Lang Church Street Sobbin' Blues

Church Street Liverpool Late 1920's

Eddie Lang didn't write Church Street Sobbin' Blues with Liverpool's main thoroughfare in my mind. But I love the coincidence that one of Lowry's favourite jazz players wrote a song with that street title and I am sure Lowry would have loved the coincidence. Church Street would have been a street which Lowry would have often walked down on his visits to the city. You can see Lord Street at the top of the photograph which would have taken Lowry down to the river front. Paradise Street, with its infamous Museum Of Anatomy mentioned by Lowry several times in his books, is a street off to the right at the point where Church Street runs into Lord Street.

Olympia Liverpool

The advertisments were now for the Liverpool theatres. At Olympia, Jack and The Beanstalk was still playing. Malcolm Lowry Enter One In Sumptuous Armour

Here's another post featuring an extract from Lowry's early story Enter One In Sumptuous Armour. Lowry again uses a reference to a poster he sees while on his way back to the Leys school. This reference comes before his mention of the poster for Fritz Langs' film Die Nibelungen which I have already posted on.

I am currently collating all references to posters and advertisments made by Lowry in his work for a bigger project.

The juxtaposition by Lowry between the popular Jack and The Beanstalk and Fritz Lang's avant garde film is an early demonstration of Lowry's love of both low and high brow art forms.

Recent Interior and exterior shots of Olympia

The Olympia Theatre in West Derby Road, Liverpool is still in use and you can read some of the history on Arthur Lloyd's site. Lowry's reference to Jack and The Beanstalk is probably to a performance of the popular winter time pantomine.

Futurist Cinema Liverpool

The advertisments were now for the Liverpool theatres.... A German film called the Nibelungs was at the Futurist. Malcolm Lowry Enter One In Sumptuous Armour

The film The Nibelungs which Lowry mentions is the Fritz Lang silent classic Die Nibelungen.



Enter One In Sumptuous Armour was published after Lowry's death in Psalms and Songs.In the short story, Lowry looks back at his school days at The Leys.

I will be returning to this story because it has many references to the Wirral and Liverpool. Lowry was a great admirer of German Expressionist film and must have seen the film The Nibelungs. What is intriguing is whether he went to see the film which was released in 1924 when he would have been 15. He certainly was a frequent visitor to cinemas during the is period. Lowry doesn't usually reference something in his work without it having meaning for him. The Futurist is still a Liverpool landmark.

The original cinema opened on 16th September 1912, the Lime Street Picture House was a very upmarket city centre cinema with a tiled Edwardian facade and 1,029 seats in the stalls and circle auditorium which was richly decorated with plasterwork in the French Renaissance style. Dummy boxes with a riotous pediment were either side of the screen opening and looked down into the orchestra pit. The lower walls were panelled in a dark oak wood. An unusual feature for such an early cinema was the provision of a lift for the circle patrons. There was a cafe-lounge located on the first floor. It was re-named City Picture House from 14th August 1916.

In 1920 the City Picture House was renamed the Futurist Cinema, a name the closed and derelict building still bears.

Read more here:

Chris Routledge on Futurist

Nerve Magazine article

Here is film director Alex Cox talking about the Futurist:



I was quite taken with the next video seeing that Lowry often used birds as symbols:

A bird nesting in the roof of the Futurist Cinema, Liverpool from Sean Hawkridge on Vimeo.

The cinema also featured in Terence Davies film's Distant Voices, Still Lives. Here's the trailer to the film:



It seemed fitting that while we are looking back at a Liverpool long gone that we should sample another Terence Davies movie Of Time And The City:

Of Time and the City is both a love song and a eulogy to Liverpool. It is also a response to memory, reflection and the experience of losing a sense of place as the skyline changes and time takes it toll.

Terence Davies returns to his native Liverpool and to his film making roots to capture a sense of the City today and its influences on him growing up in the late 40's and early 50's.

Liverpool’s phoenix-like rise is portrayed like it’s never been seen before; how a city can change itself and the people under its influence… Read more here


Also check out Yorkie's performance in Futurist in 2004:

YORKIE: DUST 'Live at THE FUTURIST' (2004)


Earlier this year, artist Paul Rooney also made a short film for the Tate Liverpool exhibition Ideas Taking Space. The film is shot in the Futurist cinema. The film features stand-up comedic efforts by scouse group MUCK (Merseyside Uncut Comedy Kollective). I have not been able to find any clips of the movie. Here is a still from the film courtesy of Paul Rooney:



Here is the cinema last year during the City Of Culture festival: