staple

PLANS to permanently close a historic seaside cliff lift have sparked backlash from local groups.

Campaigners have criticised the proposal, arguing the historic significance of the lift as well as its role in providing disability access to the seafront area.

Whitby’s Cliff Lift was first opened in 1931, transporting beachgoers down a vertical shaft for over 90 years.

The lift, located on the town’s North Terrace, became a “staple of the town’s history” before shutting temporarily in 2022 due to corrosion and water damage.

Now North Yorkshire Council has outlined plans to permanently close the attraction after estimating repair costs would total around £5.5 million.

Campaigners have met the plans with backlash, emphasising the continued need for the lift.

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Alison Hume, MP for Scarborough and Whitby called for the council to backtrack restore the lift to its former use.

“The Whitby Cliff Lift is part of Whitby’s identity as well as providing vital access to the beach from the West Cliff,” she said.

“This is a good opportunity to invest in a town which brings so much value to the county as a golden tourism goose.”

And campaigner Andy Jefferson told the BBC that the beach could risk losing its blue flag accessible beach award if the lift was permanently scrapped.

He described the access route as “imperative” to the beach’s status and warned of the “significant” detriment its loss posed to the area’s tourism.

A spokesperson for the Whitby Community Network shared similar concerns when speaking to The Yorkshire Post.

“Setting aside the fact that the Cliff Lift building is actually a non-designated heritage asset and so should be proportioned a level of protection, it has a critical importance,” they said.

“That is, providing access to Whitby sea wall to many elderly and disabled people who either live in the town or visit – the town has double the national average of over-60s and the visitor age profile is not seen as so dissimilar.”

North Yorkshire Council’s corporate director of environment, Karl Battersby, said: “We understand how important access to the seafront in Whitby is for residents and visitors alike. The cliff lift has been a staple of the town’s history, and we are not taking a decision lightly.

“For the lift to be brought back into use, there would be significant costs for repairs and ongoing maintenance, and there remains uncertainty surrounding the need for waterproofing the shaft.

“We have listened to the views of the local community and our executive members will discuss its future on March 17, considering how many people used it and making an informed decision that ensures we use taxpayers’ money wisely.”

Pete Finney, a steel guitarist who toured with Patty Loveless for more than 20 years and recorded with Reba McEntire, the Chicks, Vince Gill, the Judds and more, has died. He was 70.

Confirmation came via a statement earlier this week from Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, which said Finney died Saturday. No cause of death was provided.

Calling him “a widely admired Nashville musician,” the museum said Finney “exemplified how top instrumentalists can adapt to a remarkable range of styles and settings, whether in a recording studio, a concert stage, or the corner of a small nightclub.”

Finney was born in Maryland in September 1955 and played his first gigs in Washington, D.C., with singer-songwriter Liz Meyer before Meyer moved to the Netherlands in the mid-1980s. He relocated to Austin, Texas, in the late 1970s and then moved to Nashville in the mid-1980s.

Upon his arrival in Tennessee, Finney toured with Foster & Lloyd and later contributed to the solo careers of Radney Foster and Bill Lloyd. His career would take him in diverse directions: He recorded with Beck, Jon Byrd, Shemekia Copeland, Justin Townes Earle, Jon Langford, Jim Lauderdale, Allison Moorer, Ron Sexsmith, Candi Staton and scores of other artists.

“RIP old friend!” wrote Asleep at the Wheel frontman Ray Benson in a comment on a Facebook post announcing Finney’s death. His was one of hundreds of comments, many left by those who had known Finney. “Pete came to a concert in 1970 and saw Asleep at the Wheel he told me that was when he decided to play pedal steel… and play he did with style grace and total command of that instrument! Hard to lose a great friend who was there at the beginning of it all for me and so many in those early Wash DC days.”

Finney was something of a music historian as well, co-curating the Hall of Fame museum’s 2015-2018 exhibition “Dylan, Cash, and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City” and co-writing the exhibit’s accompanying book, which won the 2016 Chet Flippo Award for excellence in country music journalism from the International Country Music Conference.

“The idea for the exhibit came from Finney’s research on the many non-country artists from North America and England who came to Nashville in the 1960s and 1970s to record with the city’s talented and fast-working studio musicians,” the museum said.

Finney hosted programs at the Hall of Fame museum and participated in panel discussions frequently over the years.

The musician married singer Carol Tully on Oct. 15, 2017.

He was touring with Reba McEntire in 1991 when one of the tour’s planes crashed into a mountain near San Diego, claiming the lives of eight band members on their way to a show in Fort Wayne, Ind. Finney was traveling in the second plane to take off from a municipal airport that night; the first was the one that went down. McEntire was not on either plane.

“The planes took off three minutes apart,” a spokeswoman for McEntire told The Times after the March 1991 crash. “The plane that crashed took off first. The pilot of the second plane didn’t see anything. They just knew that they had lost radio contact with the other. They continued flying and were diverted to Nashville.”

Years later, when he was recruited by Mike Nesmith in 2017 to join the revival of the Monkees singer-songwriter’s country-rock group the First National Band, Finney stepped up to replace founding member Red Rhodes, who died in 1995.

“Finney often used Rhodes’ innovative parts from the recordings as his starting point, but frequently added dimensions of his own to prevent the set from simply replicating the original versions,” detailed former Times music writer Randy Lewis in a feature on a 2018 show by the reconstituted group. “Rhodes — and Finney — employ the steel guitar inventively, not just to evoke notes of melancholy often found in country music, but to bring an orchestra’s worth of color, texture and shading to the arrangements.”

In 2021, Finney joined the final Monkees tour, which included Mickey Dolenz as well as Nesmith and wrapped before Nesmith’s death that December.

The Hall of Fame said Finney “frequently performed in pickup bands in small Nashville clubs, where he might be seen with top-flight players such as Mac Gayden, Jen Gunderman, Jimmy Lester, Chris Scruggs, Kenny Vaughan, and others.”

Singer-songwriter and podcaster Otis Gibbs, who had Finney on his show several times, remembered frequently seeing the steel guitarist out on the Nashville music scene.

“I’d sometimes run into him 4, or 5 nights a week at shows,” Gibbs wrote Tuesday on his website. “If there were 9 people in attendance, Pete would usually be one of them. He’d joke that he liked seeing me at shows because he’d know it must be the place to be.”

Gibbs said he saw Finney just three weeks ago at a Jon Byrd show in East Nashville.

“I snuck up next to him and whispered, ‘I must be at the right show because Pete Finney’s here,’” he wrote. “That was the last time I saw him.”

Finney is survived by his wife. Friends and family are invited to a remembrance gathering Sunday at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s Ford Theater in Nashville.