The Twenty-First-Century Legacy of the Beatles

After three decades of playing and listening to popular music, Michael Brocken was amongst the first few Doctorates to emerge from the Institute of Popular Music at the University of Liverpool in the mid-late 1990s. A Liverpudlian by birth, he is currently Senior Lecturer in Popular Music Studies at Liverpool Hope University, UK where he inaugurated what is still the world's only Master’s degree in Beatles-related studies. He has written and broadcast on a wide variety of topics including the Beatles and Merseybeat, Green Day, Burt Bacharach, British folk music and industry, and even rugby league football. He hosted his own music show 'Brocken Roll' for several years and following a seven-year gap has recently (2014) returned to radio broadcasting by hosting, twice each month, Britain's longest running specialist music radio programme: BBC Radio Merseyside's Folk Scene.

'There's a place': travel, tourism, Liverpool and the Beatles. 'No reply': ideas and identities - a 'rocky' context for popular music tourism in 1970s Liverpool. 'I'll follow the sun': the Cunard Yanks narrative and the beginnings of 1970s Beatles tourism. 'Day trippers': confronting issues around popular music tourism in 1980s Liverpool. 'Across the universe' (well the Atlantic) - Beatle City, Dallas, and beyond. 'The long and winding road' to The Beatles story. 'Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes' - case studies: the National Trust, Beatle streets. 'Is there anybody going to listen to my story?' Guiding, Cavern city tours, the replica Cavern and horizons. 'Come together': a future industry?