Liverpool vainly tries to shrug off its past in bid to be culture capital

It was a rainy Sunday afternoon in Liverpool. The streets were deserted. Downstairs in a subterranean bar in Matthew Street a cheerful chap with an acoustic guitar was addressing a motley audience of Bud-swigging youths and middle-aged women in zipped-up fleeces who, to the untrained eye, might seem only to be refugees from the steady drizzle outside.

The guitarist peered into the darkness. "You'll have seen the sign for this one on the bus trip ­ 'Penny Lane'," he told the desultory crowd, by way of introduction to his next song. This was the Cavern Club ­ the crucible of the greatest revolution in 20th-century popular music. Or at any rate an approximation of it.

The real Cavern ­ where unknown groups such as The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Kinks, along with Rod Stewart and others too numerous to mention except in a chronicle of pop fame, played early anonymous gigs ­ closed many years back.

The present one is a reproduction of it, built a few doors down from the original address. But the heritage industry happily accommodates such small details.

Pretty much as the guitarist, a local performer by the name of Tim Shaw, took in his stride the silence which greeted his introduction to one of the Beatles' biggest-ever hits. "Did you go on the coach tour?" he asked, with increasingly cheery desperation.

A couple of cagoule-clad grandmothers in the front row replied. "We missed the bus," one shouted.

There will be those among the city's movers and shakers who hope that this is not a fate which will befall the entire city. Today representatives of Liverpool's great and good will travel to the House of Commons to launch the city's bid to become European Capital of Culture for 2008, the next year when that title will be awarded to an English city. They know that they are up against at least Birmingham, Bristol, Newcastle, Cardiff, Bradford, Belfast, Inverness and ­ you can't fault them for trying ­ Milton Keynes.

Homely Beatles singalongs is not quite the image the Liverpool Culture Company, which is putting together the 2008 bid, is hoping to convey. Key players in the venture include the spikey property developer, Tom Bloxham, founder of Urban Splash, along with staff from Cream which still draws clubbers from all over the UK every weekend.

And even if the enterprise is headed up by Bob Scott, the man who ran Manchester's unsuccessful Olympic bid, its aim is to present something new rather than retreaded. They have had enough of the mighty 18th-century port, Victorian prosperity, imperial architecture, the Mersey poets, Bill Shankly and "You'll Never Walk Alone".

Among their innovations are several projects to redefine what culture in Liverpool today really is. Schoolkids are filling 2008 sweet jars with anything that represents culture to them. Banquets of classical Hindi music and food are under way, along with massive community mosaics and a Toxteth community music extravaganza. Yet even as these modernisers were putting the finishing touches to their opening Commons presentation, the old Liverpool was in its most nostalgic melancholy.

Yesterday would have been the 59th birthday of George Harrison, had not "the quiet Beatle" lost his fight with cancer. In addition to the usual birthday tours round Harrison's birthplace in the suburb of Wavertree there was a memorial concert at the Liverpool Empire last night to the Beatle described by the leader of the city council, Mike Storey, as "a true Scouser who never forgot his roots".

A host of big names, including Paul McCartney ­ who appeared after the end of the concert to sing an emotional, unaccompanied, rendition of "Yesterday" ­ Steve Harley and Ralph McTell, appeared at the concert, which had sold out within 24 hours of the tickets going on sale. But the tone was set by the opening act, a Sixties showcase called Merseybeats and Friends which featured guest appearances by several of the stars of that era.

In the same tone, Liverpool's Lord Mayor will open a Tribute Wall today to which Harrison fans can attach prose, poetry or paintings in memory of the late musician.

Down in the Cavern basement yesterday the audience revelled in all that remembering. It was not all large-bellied men in their sixties reliving the glory days of their youth. In addition to the bus tourists there was a good sprinkling of students and young people. Despite their youth they all knew all the words.

One 22-year-old, who later revealed she was about to sign a record contract with a band named the Dope Smugglers, even climbed up from the floor to do a solo of "Here, There and Everywhere". A diamond-studded, snake-tattooed Sarah Puzzar smiled sweetly and said: "These were the songs I learned to play the guitar on."

The next band on was called The Cheat Beatles, four local lads in their twenties who have discovered that if the streets of contemporary music are not paved with gold then those of the past certainly are.

Jay Murray, 26, from Croxteth ­ not that far from where the George Harrison tour had journeyed ­ is the band's John Lennon. He explained: "We were all in different bands, doing cover versions of Brit pop stuff, and we weren't getting anywhere. Then we thought, why not do what we all enjoy: so we did. Now we're working six nights a week. We're doing the Cannes Film Festival soon. And recently we opened a Marks & Spencer in Croatia."

The rest of the group are keen too. But the other three maintain a double life. On their one day off a week they find the time to play in another band, in which the members perform original material.

Jay is magnanimous about that: "They don't make any money, but they enjoy it," he said. "But for me the past is enough."

Those who want to see Liverpool the Capital of Culture know that is not a sentiment they can afford to embrace.