The Beatles in Hamburg: How They Really Became a Band

If you were to ask John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison what made the band as great as it was — and it’s a question drummer Ringo Starr would be able to answer from his own experience  —  the odds are that they would say it was The Beatles in Hamburg..

Among the local places they performed in their native Liverpool was the Jacaranda coffee bar, run by Allan Williams, who would occasionally become their booking agent (in the days before Brian Epstein became their true manager). In August 1960, he informed them that he could book them in Hamburg, if they could secure a drummer, which — in the days before Ringo had joined them — they did in the form of Pete Best.

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The Hamburg Experience

The Beatles in Hamburg — which included John art school friend, Stu Sutcliffe, who really couldn't play — performed the Indra Club for 48 nights beginning on August 17 and concluding October 3. The following day they shifted over to The Kaiserkeller for 58 nights, which lasted until November 30 and where they shared the bill with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, the drummer for which was one Richard Starkey, a.k.a. Ringo Starr. Future performances would take place at the Top Ten Club and the Star Club.

Germany was an eye-opening experience for The Beatles. For starters, they had to endure horrible living conditions. "We lived backstage in the Bambi Kino [an adult theatre], next to the toilets, and you could always smell them," reflected Paul in The Beatles Anthology . "The room had been an old storeroom, and there were just concrete walls and nothing else. No heat, no wallpaper, not a lick of paint; and two sets of bunk beds."

Muses Beatles biographer Julius Fast, "It was during this season in Hamburg that the boys finally decided on a uniform and an image, and a somewhat frightening image it was. Their hair was not unusually long in front … their hair curled down on the napes of their necks, and their sideburns were long, a la Presley. They wore black T-shirts, black leather pants or skintight jeans, and black leather motorcycle jackets.”

And then there was the realization that the type of performance they gave in Liverpool was not something German audiences would accept. Writes Johnny Black in the pages of Mojo magazine , “Before long, ballads were being ousted from the running order in favor of cranked-up rock tunes."

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Reflected John in the early 1970s, “We had to play all the tunes for hours and hours on end. That's why every song lasted 20 minutes and had 20 solos in it. The Germans like heavy rock, you know, so we had to really keep rocking all the time. It was just a little nightclub, but, at the same time, it was still a bit frightening, because it wasn't a dance hall, and all these people were sitting down, expecting something."

George remembered in Anthology , "We had to learn millions of songs. We had to play so long, we just played everything. So it was all the Gene Vincent — we'd do everything on the album; we'd get Chuck Berry records and learn it all, same with Little Richard, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino — everything , because we'd be on for hours. We’d make stuff up. Hamburg was really like our apprenticeship, learning how to play in front of people."

Notes Allan Williams in the pages of The Beatles in Hamburg , "It was not Liverpool that made The Beatles, but Hamburg. Working all those outrageous hours would make or break a group." Obviously it didn't break the future Fab Four.

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One of the late John Lennon’s best friends, Pete Shotton, writes in the pages of John Lennon in My Life, "Hamburg transformed The Beatles from happy-go-lucky amateurs into true professionals. Which is not to imply that they smartened their appearance, polished their act, or stopped eating, drinking, smoking, swearing and looning about onstage — far from it. Nonetheless, Hamburg forced John and the others to instill some method into their madness. It was only after their return from Germany that The Beatles truly seemed to know what they were doing. Hamburg, in short, made The Beatles.”

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