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Beatles Liverpool mast used in first Fab Four photo faces scrap as no new home is found
Liverpool’s Salvor mast, tied to the first official Beatles photo, may be scrapped after the council failed to find it a new home.
A small but loaded corner of Beatles history in Liverpool is now staring down an unglamorous end: the mast from the ship Salvor, once used on the Mersey docks for decades and later the backdrop to the first official photograph of the Fab Four after Ringo Starr joined in 1962, may be broken up and sold for scrap.
The mast had stood for years in a central Liverpool city centre location near the Liver Buildings, but it was moved in 2020 because of roadworks. Since then, Liverpool City Council has said it has tried to find a new home for it. So far, nothing suitable has come forward, and the old dockside relic now risks being treated as spare metal.
That possibility has not gone down well with local campaigners. Former Liverpool Echo reporter Peter Elson is among those pushing to save it, and he has argued that a piece of Beatles memorabilia this visible should not be allowed to disappear. “It’s a no-brainer that a massive piece of Beatles memorabilia like that should be saved, yet they were going to sell it for scrap,” he said. “You would think that they would have learned after that whole own goal with the Cavern and Ringo’s house in Madryn Street, which they were going to demolish until a campaign was launched to save it.”
All of this lands in a year that is already crowded for the two surviving Beatles. Paul McCartney is due to release his new album The Boys Of Dungeon Lane on May 29, with pre-orders available here, while Starr put out his 22nd solo album, Long Long Road, last month.
The McCartney record includes a first-ever vocal collaboration between the two former bandmates on “Home To Us,” a nostalgic song about their Liverpool roots. It also features contributions from Texas’ Sharleen Spiteri and The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde, and you can check it out above.
Long Long Road, meanwhile, brought in St. Vincent, Sheryl Crow and Billy Strings, with T Bone Burnett producing. Starr recently told NME about the album and its guest list: “Everyone on there brings something different because they’re all great players and singers. They’re great musicians who have been at it a while, and they all came through T Bone. In my eyes, he’s never made a mistake on my records,” he said.
Elsewhere, Sam Mendes’ quartet of Beatles biopics is also moving ahead. Each film will tell the story from a different member’s perspective and is set for release in April 2028, with Paul Mescal playing McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison and Barry Keoghan as Starr.
Steven Soderbergh is also working on a Lennon documentary, John Lennon: The Last Interview, and has said that it will use generative AI.
