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| The Beatles in Hamburg as a quintet--Paul McCartny on piano, Pete Best at the drum kit, Stuart Sutcliffe on bass, lead guitarist Geroge Harrison, and John Lennon. |
Even
the causal Beatles fan knows that
the lads from Liverpool had some of
their first success playing in Hamburg, Germany red light district. From 1960 to ’62 the band made five trips
to the port city under contract to club owner and producer
Bruno Koschmider. It was a sometimes
stormy relationship with ups and
downs but during the time the band spent playing in the German dives they tightened up and matured as
musicians. After the first stay they
began to get a following at the Cavern and other Liverpool clubs where
the Mersey Beat sound was being born.
Their
first stay in Hamburg ended disastrously
when on December 1, 1960 Paul McCartney and
drummer Pete Best were arrested and deported back to England within hours. Just what happened is the
stuff of underground legend.
The
Beatles—they had finally settled on that
name after running through The
Beetles and the Silver Beetles—was
quintet when they first arrived in
Germany. Longtime pals McCartney and John Lennon, who had played together
since high school in pick-up and skiffle bands shared lead
singing and played around at song
writing. The younger George Harrison, not yet 18, was the lead guitarist. Lennon’s best pal from art school, Stuart Sutcliffe, sold his
first painting and on a lark had
bought a bass guitar and was learning to play it on the fly. The group had been getting by with pick-up drummers for gigs in England but needed a steady stick man for their new engagement. Lennon and McCartney had settled on Pete Best who had been knocking around
in small time rock bands.
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| The Indra Club in Hamburg where the Liverpool lads first played in the port city's Red Light District. |
They
arrived in Hamburg in August where Koschmider had converted a couple of former striptease joints/whore houses into music
clubs. He put his new act into the Indra Club as the house band. The frugal Koschmider was not going to waste good money on comfortable accommodations for the band
and the boys did not make enough money to rent rooms on their own. He converted
space behind the screen of his movie
theater, the Bambi-Filmkunsttheater. The accommodations for the five were Spartan at best. The room was poorly lit, damp, crowded, they
had to use the theater’s public restroom
which was inconveniently located in the front of the theater. But they were young and on an adventure and
took it in stride.
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| Producer Bruno Koschmider put the band up in a make-shift room behind the screen of his Bambi-Filmkunstertheater, a porn house. |
After
a few weeks Koschminder had to close the Indra Club due to noise complaints from neighbors.
He moved the Beatles to his other club, the Kaiserkeller in October. The
band was quickly picking up a local
following and the club was doing a robust
business. Band members, however,
were not seeing much money from the gate.
For extra money they began playing at the rival Top Ten Club on their nights off.
When Koshminder heard of it, he was furious. He informed the boys on November 1 that he
was terminating their contract,
originally scheduled to run six months, in 30 days.
But
he was not finished taking his revenge. He went to the authorities and informed them that Harrison had lied about his age to get a work permit. Harrison was quickly deported leaving the band scrambling without a lead guitarist. Lennon and McCartney, neither as gifted as
Harrison, divided the duties. During
their remaining month the handsome Sutcliffe moved out of the cinema and into
his photographer girl friend Astrid
Kirchherr’s pad.
The
band planned to stay in Hamburg and shift their primary venue to the Top Ten
Club. They had begun to move some of
their equipment to an attic room over the Club and Lennon had already moved in
there.
On
their final day, November 30, McCartney and Best were gathering their belongings at the theater. They had been drinking and popping pills. Irked by the dim light in the room they
decided to illuminate things by burning something. Here accounts conflict. Some say they used rags or towels, but
according the version of the story that has entered folklore—and which Pete Best later told a radio interviewer—they decided that a pack of new latex condoms was just the ticket. They lit them one by one and were amused by
how they “burned and popped.” In the excitement of the moment McCartney
either threw one burning rubber against
the wall or he pinned it there
and lit it. At any rate, it left a small scorch mark. Thinking nothing further of it, the two
collected their belongings and moved to the new room over the Top Ten.
That’s
where the German police found them
the next day. Koschminder had found the
scorch mark and was furious. He went to
the police and charged that Best and McCartney had tried to burn his theater down.
Most likely he simply wanted to find a way to keep the act he had helped
make popular from headlining a rival club.
But the police took the charge
seriously without much investigation
of the facts.
They
held the two Beatles most of the day.
Neither McCartney nor Best spoke German and did not understand why they were being held. A request to speak to the British Consul was denied. Late in the
afternoon they were taken back to the Top Ten room and given five minutes to collect their belongings. Best had to abandon his drum kit, but McCartney was able to salvage his guitar and a suitcase sized amp. That
evening they were placed on a plane
and deported to London.
They
arrived in the city broke and dazed.
They rang up friends and borrowed money for train fare back home to Liverpool.
Lennon, now without a band, returned on his own a few days later. Sutcliffe stayed with his girlfriend through
February.
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| Backing up fellow English rocker Tony Sheridan as the Beat Boys, the Beatles recorded a moderate German hit version of My Bonnie. |
Amazingly,
the band and the German impresario patched
things up and they returned for another engagement at the Kaiserkeller in 1961. During that stay Koschminder got them into the studio to play back-up and sing harmonies on a rock
version of the old Scottish song
My
Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean behind another British rocker, Tony Sheridan. My
Bonnie was released as a German single
credited to Tony Sheridan and the Beat
Brothers and became a modest hit—#35
on the local charts.
After
this stay, Sutcliffe decided to return
to art school in Germany and became engaged
to Astrid, officially leaving the group without a bass player. McCartney, who had never touched a bass, volunteered
to replace him and in a matter of weeks back home in Liverpool learned the
instrument, playing it upside down and
backwards because he was left
handed.
The
band was getting hot back home at
the Cavern club and had attracted a new
manager, Brian Epstein and a record producer, George Martin. But they were
contractually obligated to Koschinder
for more appearances in Hamburg and another German recording session. Epstein negotiated
a deal requiring a quick trip so that they could begin work at the Abby Road Studios for English releases
on EMI and two more short appearances.
They
arrived in Hamburg on April 11, 1962 only to be greeted with the devastating news that Sutcliffe had
died of a brain aneurism the day
before at the age of 21.
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| Now with Ringo Starr on drums and Sutcliffe tragically dead, the Beatles made one last Hamburg appearance at the Star Club in 1962. |
The
band returned twice more for brief appearances in Hamburg that year. In between they began working with Martin and
recording their early work with him. At
Martin’s urging they sacked Best, a drummer of limited ability and replaced
him with journeyman drummer Ringo Starr, most lately of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, who
became the oldest member of the
group. They released their first English
single, Love Me Do in October, and it went to #17 on the charts.
Ringo
accompanied the Band to Hamburg in December for their last engagement
there. Bigger things were on the horizon.
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