The Beatles in Hamburg
The original lineup of the Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best—
regularly performed at different clubs in Hamburg, West Germany, during the period from August 1960 to May 1962; a chapter in the group's history which honed their performance skills, widened their reputation, and led to their first recording, which brought them to the attention of Brian Epstein. In November and December 1962 they played with Ringo Starr on drums.
The Beatles' booking agent, Allan Williams, decided to send the group to Hamburg when another group he managed, Derry and the Seniors, proved successful there. Having no permanent drummer at the time, they recruited Best a few days before their departure. After breaking their contract by playing at another club, Harrison was deported for being underaged, and McCartney and Best were arrested and deported for attempted arson.
The Beatles first met Astrid Kirchherr in Hamburg, who was instrumental in their adoption of the mop-topped Beatle haircut. During their period in Hamburg, Sutcliffe decided to leave the group to continue his studies. In April 1962, less than a year after leaving the group, he suffered a brain hemorrhage and died as a result.
Hamburg in the 1960s
Hamburg had once been West Germany's main seaport, the fourth largest in the world, but during World War II in 1943 half of the city was reduced to rubble by American and British bombing raids. By 1960, when the Beatles arrived, the Hamburg that had grown up from the ruins of WWII had established a reputation throughout Europe as a city of vice and criminal activity. In contrast to an economically depressed post-war Liverpool, Hamburg was a wealthy city. Since the end of the war in which England and Germany had been mortal enemies, only 15 years had passed when this first wave of British musicians started to wash the shores of the Hamburg harbour. Tony Sheridan explained the resistance faced at home by these musicians as they were preparing to embark for Germany for the first time: "My parents—all our parents—they went wild when they heard that we were coming to Germany.... When I went anyway, I broke my mother's heart by coming to Germany... to the enemy... to play rock and roll music."Sheridan also reflected on the era when he arrived in Germany, just over a decade after the end of World War II. He describes these teenagers and young adults whom he encountered in these Hamburg night clubs: "This was a violent place in those days, because all the kids from the war time ... so the German wartime kids, they had problems, psychological problems and aggressive, very aggressive. This was a very rough place, people getting kicked and hit and blood and fists.... One day I was on the stage playing, and somebody was getting killed down here and I just went... put my hands up... , closed myself up and just carried on playing.... I didn't see anything Rock and roll, man!... Being musicians, it was easier to stay alive, you know, because if you played, people liked you, because everybody likes music, even the bad people like music, even the gangsters they like music, so we had everybody on our side."
Nightlife in Hamburg clubs
In the early 1960s, the Hamburg scene revolved around the Kaiserkeller, Top Ten, Star-Club, Beer-Shop, Mambo, Holle, Wagabond, and the Pacific Hotel, as well as the less popular clubs like Grannies, the Ice Cream Shop, Chugs, and Sacha's. The Reeperbahn and the Grosse Freiheit were decorated with neon lights, with posters advertising the performers in the clubs. Each club had a doorman whose job was to entice customers inside, as the drinks were expensive.Harrison remembered the Reeperbahn and Große Freiheit as the best thing the group had ever seen, as it had so many neon lights, clubs and restaurants, although also saying, "The whole area was full of transvestites and prostitutes and gangsters, but I couldn't say that they were the audience... Hamburg was really like our apprenticeship, learning how to play in front of people."
McCartney explained that the Beatles had only experienced sex with girls from Liverpool, but when they got to Hamburg the only women who hung around the clubs late at night were strippers, dancers, or prostitutes. Harrison called Hamburg "the naughtiest city in the world". McCartney said: "By the time you got to Hamburg, a girlfriend there was likely to be a stripper, so to be suddenly involved with a hard-core striptease artist, who obviously knew a thing or two about sex... it was quite an eye-opener." Gerry Marsden—frontman for Gerry & the Pacemakers—remembered visiting a Hamburg brothel in Herbertstraße with Lennon: "We paid our money, went in and sat down. This guy came out with the biggest lady we had ever seen in our lives. She looked like a bus with a bra on. We ran out that door so quick we didn't hear it shut. I wanted to go back to get my money back but John said: 'No, we'd better not. Might cause trouble.'"
Stimulants used to perform long hours
The Beatles's introduction to "Prellies" was in Hamburg. As the group had to play for hours, Sheridan offered them Preludin, saying: "Here's something to keep you awake." Astrid Kirchherr also supplied Sutcliffe and the other Beatles with Preludin, which when taken with beer, made them feel euphoric and helped to keep them awake until the early hours of the morning. Looking back, Harrison said that the whole group would be "frothing at the mouth" and would sometimes stay awake for days. Lennon recalled, "The waiters always had these pills , so when they saw the musicians falling over with tiredness or drink, they'd give you the pill. You could work almost endlessly until the pill wore off, and then you'd have another." McCartney said that he would usually take one, but Lennon would often take four or five.Legitimate use of Preludin required a doctor's prescription, but Kirchherr's mother was able to obtain it from a local chemist who supplied the drug without asking questions. Epstein later asked the Star-Club owner, Weissleder, not to publish photographs showing the group playing with tubes of Preludin. Starr explained that Dexedrine too was in plentiful supply in Hamburg, as it was known to produce increased wakefulness and focus, in association with decreased fatigue, and decreased appetite.
Leaving Liverpool
Allan Williams, a 29-year-old Liverpool businessman and promoter, had sent his leading group, Derry and the Seniors, to Hamburg, where they were enjoying success, and wanted to send an additional group. He initially tried to send Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, but Storm and his group were committed to a Butlins holiday camp and turned Williams' offer down, as did Gerry and the Pacemakers. Williams started promoting concerts for The Beatles in May 1960, after they had played at his Jacaranda club in Liverpool, and offered The Beatles the Hamburg bookings. He booked them into Bruno Koschmider's Indra club in Hamburg for a season of bookings starting on 12 August 1960, but said that he was not impressed with them as a musical group, and hoped to find a better act to follow them.As they had no permanent drummer, McCartney looked for someone to fill the position, which was difficult, as Lennon later said that drummers were "few and far between", because a set of drums was an expensive item. Harrison had seen Best playing with the Black Jacks in The Casbah Coffee Club. He was regarded as a steady drummer, playing the bass drum on all four beats in the bar, which pushed the rhythm, and was known in Liverpool at the time as being "mean, moody, and magnificent" by female fans, which convinced McCartney he would be good for the group. After the Black Jacks broke up, McCartney asked Best to go to Hamburg, telling him they would earn £15 per week each. Best had the chance to go to a teacher-training college, as he had passed his school exams, unlike Lennon, McCartney and Harrison, who had failed most of theirs, but decided that playing in Hamburg would be a better career move.
The St. Pauli quarter of Hamburg, where the Indra club was located, was well known as a red light district where prostitutes were to be found, and was a dangerous place for anyone that looked different from the usual clientele. McCartney's father, Jim McCartney, was reluctant to let his teenage son go to Hamburg, but relented after a visit from Williams, who told him that he "shouldn't worry". Lennon's aunt, Mimi Smith, was also reluctant to allow Lennon to go to Hamburg, wanting Lennon to continue his studies, but Lennon placated her by exaggerating the amount he would earn. Best had an audition in Williams' Jacaranda club on 15 August 1960, and travelled to Hamburg the next day as a member of the group. Williams later admitted that the audition with Best was not needed, as they had not found any other drummer willing to travel to Hamburg, but did not tell Best in case he asked for more money. The group were to be paid about £100 per week, which was much more than promoters in Liverpool paid. Williams drove the group and their equipment in his Austin J4 minibus which was loaded by crane onto a ferry at Harwich on 16 August 1960, and landed at Hook of Holland.
All five Beatles, Williams and his wife Beryl, her brother Barry Chang, and "Lord Woodbine" were in the minivan, along with Georg Sterner, making a total of ten people, which resulted in a journey that was both uncomfortable and dangerous. As Williams had not obtained German work permits, they were detained at Harwich for five hours. Williams finally convinced the authorities that they were students on holiday, although work permits were later obtained after their arrival in Hamburg.
The Indra Club
The Beatles arrived very early in the morning of 17 August 1960, and made their way to the St. Pauli area of Hamburg. The Indra Club was closed, so a manager from a neighbouring club found someone to open it up, and the group slept on the red leather seats in the alcoves. The group played at the club on the same night, but were told they could sleep in the storeroom of Bambi Kino, which was cold and in very poor condition.McCartney later said, "We lived backstage in the Bambi Kino, next to the toilets, and you could always smell them. 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, with not very much covers—Union Jack flags—we were frozen." Lennon remembered: "We were put in this pigsty. We were living in a toilet, like right next to the ladies' toilet. We'd go to bed late and be woken up next day by the sound of the cinema show and old German fraus pissing next door." After having been awoken in this fashion, the group were then obliged to use cold water from the urinals for washing and shaving. They were paid £2.50 each a day, seven days a week, playing from 8:30–9:30, 10 until 11, 11:30–12:30, and finishing the evening playing from one until two o'clock in the morning. German customers found the group's name comical, as "Beatles" sounded like, which is an infantile word for penis.
Pete Best remembered the Indra as being a depressing place that was filled with a few tourists, and having heavy, old, red curtains that made it seem shabby compared to the larger Kaiserkeller, a club also owned by Koschmider and located nearby at 36 Große Freiheit.