No Hamburg No Beatles (2024) Movie Script
(host speaking in foreign language)
..
(lively music)
(crowd cheering)
..
(lively music continues)
Well, gonna write a little letter
Gonna mail it to my local DJ
It's a rocking little record
I want my jockey to play
Roll over Beethoven
Gotta hear it again today
You know my temperature's rising
- [Paul] We were just
kids let off the leash.
(lively music)
- [George]
Well, there's all the gangsters
and there's the transvestite,
and there's the hookers.
It was exciting.
- [Paul]
You're in Hamburg.
You're 18.
You never been abroad in your life.
And you've got a bit of
money in your pocket,
and you go drinking
on a Saturday night.
(lively music)
But by the time you got to Hamburg,
if you've got a girlfriend there,
she's likely to be a stripper.
(lively music)
- [John] The only way
to survive in Hamburg
to play 8 hours a night was to take pills.
The waiters gave you them.
Pills and drink.
I always took more pills
and more of everything
because I'm more crazy.
(lively music)
- Jesus, he looked like Marlon Brando
in "The Wild One" at the time, you know?
(lively music)
- [John] What we generated was fantastic.
When we played straight
rock in Liverpool, Hamburg,
and around the dance halls, you know?
Beethoven
Roll over
- [Astrid] The Reeperbahn is not a place
where young ladies go.
You know, it was not a nice place to go.
Roll over Beethoven
- [Paul] It was only
kind of good, clean fun.
Good, dirty fun, actually.
(siren blaring)
(explosion booming)
- Liverpool and Hamburg had
contrasting wars, I would say.
Liverpool was the main Western seaport,
so it was vital, obviously, for shipping
from through the Atlantic.
And so it was obviously
going to be a target
of German bombing.
- [Reporter 1] Seated on
the hood of a touring car,
the Prime Minister goes on a tonic tour
of the bombed areas of Birkenhead,
Liverpool and Manchester.
- Liverpool was the second
most bombed city in Britain
after London and it lost about 4000 people
in those bombing raids.
(lively music)
- [Reporter 2] One of the
greatest serial stories
of the War, the battering of Hamburg.
By night and day the big German city
was subjected to Allied air assaults
without parallel in history.
- [Frank] Hamburg was
obviously a key German port,
very big in the submarine industry.
Bomber Harris, he was the
head of Fighter Command,
he made Hamburg one of his key targets.
And in 1943 he mounted a
huge bombing raid in July
called Gomorrah, where he
bombed the whole of Hamburg.
- [Reporter 3] Neutral sources report
that in eight heavy
Allied raids on Hamburg,
more than 58,000 people lost their lives
and 180,000 lost their jobs.
- [Frank] More people
died in that bombing raid
probably than in Nagasaki.
(gentle music)
Hamburg is devastated.
Liverpool is sort of damaged but survives.
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
My heart
Longs for moments
With you
- [John] Liverpool was the
second biggest port in England.
Also, it was a very poor city and tough.
But people have a sense of humor
and it's where the sailors would come home
with the blues records
from America on the ships.
- [Paul] Up until that point,
it had been sort of Billy Cotton
and swing and bebop and stuff,
but suddenly rock and roll
kind of burst on the scene.
Lonnie Donegan was the
other big influence.
That's what made all the
kids buy guitars at the time.
Oh, Maggie, Maggie May,
they have taken her away
And she'll never walk
down Lime Street any more
And the judge he guilty
Found her of robbing
a homeward-bounder
- [Paul] John was on stage with
what was then the Quarrymen.
- [John] I met Paul and said,
"Do you want to join my band?"
You know?
- [Paul] And I knew the
words to Eddie Cochran's
Twenty Flight Rock.
That meant I was in.
- [John] And then George joined.
- [Paul] George was a mate of mine.
He went to the same school as
I did, Liverpool Institute.
And so we learned our
first chords together
and got the Bert Weedon songbook
and learned all the chords, you know?
- Suppose the big decision
was Mona's, my mother.
Going to open it as a coffee bar.
She wanted a band for opening night.
Who did they turn out to be?
Quarrymen.
No drummer.
Just four guitars.
Maggie May
Paul McCartney and John Lennon.
(gentle music)
(gentle music continues)
- [Frank] The Germans
call 1945 'Year Zero'
because the devastation
throughout Germany was incredible.
And by the end, you know,
there was no water supply,
there was no electricity.
And certainly nothing
was functioning that well
for the next, you know, ten years really.
- After the war, you know,
everything was so mixed up
in the mind of the people.
So the first pimps with the prostitutes,
were their own wives who
doing the prostitutes job.
Because everybody after the war,
they wanted to earn some money.
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
And everything started
to begin, 55 new clubs.
And there wasn't allowed they
called it 'beauty dancer',
like these young ladies
who dance like striptease.
But it wasn't allowed.
And everything started with the beginning
of the rock and roll music.
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
- [John] Rock and roll was real.
To me it got through as the
only thing, to get through to me
out of all the things that were happening
when I was 15, you know?
- [Paul] And Elvis was
one of the first people
that kind of really made
me take an interest.
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
To me, it seemed like a
whole new direction of music.
(lively music)
John knew Stuart Sutcliffe,
who was at Art School with him
and was a very good painter.
He won an art prize and he
got 75 quid for it, I think,
and we managed to persuade
him to part with this
and get a Hofner bass.
So it became Long John
and the Silver Beatles.
I remember playing at
The Jacaranda, I think,
downstairs at the club
called The Jacaranda.
- Lord Woodbine, was a
very influential person
as a promoter.
I mean, it was my father
and Allan Williams
who were taking the groups like
The Beatles over to Hamburg
long before Brian Epstein
came on the scene.
(lively music)
Beatles would play The Jacaranda.
They played in my dad's
club, The Colony Club.
They played in the strip club.
So he was giving them opportunities
that practically no one
else was giving them.
- I knew that they were
from the Art School.
That was Stuart Sutcliffe and John Lennon.
John and Stuart approached me and said,
"Hey Al, when are you going
to do something for us like?"
- [Paul] Allan was our manager.
Allan was the person that the
German people went through
when they wanted Liverpool
rock and roll groups.
(people singing in German)
- [Rosi] St Pauli at
the end of the fifties,
St Pauli was for elderly people.
- Older people listened to
that middle of the road stuff.
We call Schlager in Germany
and the young turned from swing
into traditional jazz
revival, then to skiffle.
- My thing to remember is
that everything started
with Elvis, Bill Haley, and
Chuck Berry, and all these guys.
(lively music)
And then Bruno Koschmider
opened the Kaiserkeller.
Then all the people who like to dance,
jive or boogie-woogie, they
all went there to jive.
(lively music)
These German groups we had
sometimes, these German singers,
I was the one who said to Bruno Koschmider
"You can forget that.
That is funny, you know,
and that is not authentic."
And then Bruno Koschmider went to England
and he went to London and
to The 2i's Coffee Bar.
And then he booked Tony, Tony Sheridan.
Tony was the first band.
but the second band was
Derry Wilkie and the Seniors.
And Howie Casey was blowing
the horn in that band.
- So we all piled into cars
and drove down to London.
(lively music)
Allan, he hadn't arranged anything.
He was always winging it.
(lively music)
And we got up and did our
thing and it seemed to go well.
And then that was when Allan said,
"I've just met this German
guy, Bruno Koschmider."
And that's how it started.
- The second invasion of Germany
started about four years ago.
This wasn't a military invasion,
but more of a pop invasion
of British beat artists.
The club owners over here in Hamburg
had been looking for a long time
for something new to offer
to the Hamburg youngsters.
They heard from young
seamen who had been in Hull,
Southampton, Liverpool,
such ports in Britain
that an American style
of rock and roll music
was being played over in
Britain by British artists.
Of course, it was too expensive
to bring American artists from the States.
So these club owners decided
to import British artists.
- [Rosi] When the first English band
played in the Kaiserkeller,
the people was running at the place.
They were standing and waiting outside,
but the people were
coming, coming, coming.
(bell chiming)
- The Quarrymen had disappeared.
Unbeknownst to me, they'd
become The Beatles,
so-called Silver Beatles.
They had the offer to go to Germany.
In essence, they needed a drummer.
They'd seen me playing drums,
and I got a phone call off
Paul, which basically said,
"Pete, you interested
in going to Germany?"
As history portrays now,
that was the start of an epic journey.
(tires screeching)
- [Paul] What happened
was some fellow came over
from Hamburg and he wanted
rock and roll groups.
And somehow he got the idea
that they were in London,
at The 2i's.
And someone at The 2i's,
I think, had told him
there were also a couple
of groups in Liverpool.
So Allan Williams became the agent
for all the Liverpool groups.
(lively music)
- [Allan] I had a group
working there already
and The Beatles had no money.
They said, "We haven't got
the money for the train fare
or the boat."
And I said, "Well, okay, then."
I had a minibus.
I said, "I'll take you
all in the minibus."
- We agreed to meet at The
Jacaranda in the morning
would have been the 15th August, 1960.
And going to be on the van
were Beryl, Allan, and myself,
Lord Woodbine, five Beatles,
and that's John, Paul,
George, Stuart Sutcliffe,
and Pete Best.
- [Paul] He took us in
his van, first of all.
- [Allan] Liverpool 220
miles and arrived in London.
Directly from there to Harwich.
Made a seven hour crossing from Harwich
straight across the
channel to Hook of Holland.
(lively music)
And made our way to Arnhem
where there are hundreds
or thousands of graves
of soldiers from a famous battle in 1944.
After we paid our respects there,
then it was a direct route
from Arnhem to Hamburg.
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
- [Paul] And dropped us at the club.
Thank you very much.
(lively music)
- [Allan] I think we got to
Hamburg round about one o'clock
in the morning.
(lively music)
- [Paul] Because we were just schoolboys.
So we got to Hamburg, this Flesh Pot City.
Well, we had a bit of fun.
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
- You know, the first time we
got into the St Pauli area,
it was the biggest red
light district in the world
at that time.
Another great learning curve for us.
But that's what we wanted
from rock and roll.
(police man speaking German)
- [George] Well, there's
all the gangsters,
and there's transvestite,
and there's the hookers.
It was exciting.
- [Paul] At that time we were just kids,
let off the leash, really.
Come straight from Liverpool to Hamburg,
and we were used to these Liverpool girls.
But by the time we got to Hamburg,
if you've got a girlfriend there,
she's likely to be a stripper.
They're the only kind of people
who are around at the time,
we were around late at night.
So for someone who not really had much sex
in their lives before,
which none of us really had,
to be suddenly involved
with a sort of hardcore striptease artist
who obviously knew a
thing or two about sex
was quite an eye opener.
- [George] Everything
else was such a buzz,
you know, being right in the middle
of the naughtiest city in
the world at 17 years old,
it was kind of exciting.
- When we actually
approached the Reeperbahn,
that to us was like mini America
because it was just a maze of neon lights,
strip clubs, bars.
And even when we turned
into the Grosse Freiheit,
that was still the same.
We thought when we jumped
out and ran down steps again
into the Kaiserkeller we were
going to be playing there,
rearing to start.
Koschmider who was the manager
turned around and said,
"No, you're not playing the Kaiserkeller,
you're playing The Indra".
There was a church.
Everything was dark,
a cinema at the end, the Bambi Kino,
which ended up being our
fleapit and The Indra.
No neon lights, no noise coming from it.
We all waltzed in there
and Bruno Koschmider
turned around and said, "This is The Indra
and this is where you're going to play.
You are going to turn this
into another Kaiserkeller."
- Yeah, they were five in the
beginning when they came here.
It was John, Paul, and George,
Stuart Sutcliffe on bass,
and Pete Best on drums.
And Pete only joined the band
two days before they came to Hamburg.
And the only reason he was in the band
was that he had a drum set. (laughs)
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
- [Rosi] The Indra was a strip club
and Koschmider owned that Indra club.
He thought before somebody
else does a second place,
he would do second place.
And so they were playing 30 minutes music
and 30 minutes striptease.
(lively music)
- [Horst] The door to the
Bambi Kino was that door.
- We come to this concrete dungeon.
And what we think is a bed, on
the other side, but no light.
That was our sleeping quarters.
- [Paul] We stayed in this
place called the Bambi Kino,
and we had just a little room
right next to the toilet.
So it was really kind
of, you know, forget it.
I mean, they wouldn't
have allowed it actually.
We used to sleep under
this Union Jack flag,
you know, because it was cold.
There was no heating.
And this is winter in Germany.
- And they stayed there
like tramps, you know?
And when I think about it,
I still get mad to this
Koschmider bastard.
(lively music)
- When I met The Beatles the first time,
I was still a barmaid in the Kaiserkeller
and I went to The Indra
because people were saying,
"Oh, they are so nice and they look nice."
And so all these young girls
and when I went there and I thought,
"Well, good looking guys."
But with the music that
wasn't so good then.
George was only 17 and
the others not much older.
They didn't have so much experience then.
- [Paul] Yeah, so that first
time we went out there,
we played at The Indra
and what happened was
we were thrown in the deep end in Hamburg.
There'd be no one in the club.
Roll it over
You played quite long hours.
Some nights you do 8 hours, you know?
So we learned a lot of stagecraft
in getting people in and we gradually did,
you know, we'd learn tricks.
- [George] I think that's
where we found our style.
We developed our style
because of this fellow
there he used to say,
"You've got to make a
show for the people."
He used to come up every night shouting,
"Mach schau."
So we used to mach schau and
John used to dance around
like a gorilla.
Roll over Beethoven
Roll over Beethoven
- [Paul] We had these purple jackets
that I had made up by Mr. Richards.
Used to live next door
to us who was a tailor.
And I bought the material.
Black jeans and like winkle picker shoes,
which really seemed amazing at the time.
And all the waiters there,
"Where you get your shoes please?
You send me some."
- [Rosi] This is what
happens very quickly.
That first of all, nobody knew.
But then by talking after
a week or even 14 days,
the place was crowded.
(lively music)
(crowd cheering)
- There were complaints from the neighbors
that it was too loud.
And then after six weeks,
live music wasn't allowed here anymore.
Bruno Koschmider then said,
"Okay, now you can come
to my bigger club."
His first club, at the Kaiserkeller.
(lively music)
- [Paul] After The Indra,
we moved along to another
club called the Kaiserkeller
which means the King's Cellar.
So we had to do the
whole thing over again.
Then we had to build
up our audience there,
and it was a bigger club.
So you had to build more people.
- Bruno Koschmider,
I think that he was a tragic figure.
He was gay or queer man.
How do you say it now, I don't know?
And that was forbidden then,
you know, to go in jail.
He wasn't such a happy person,
but he had these ideas
with open the first place for the youth,
the Kaiserkeller.
This is what Bruno Koschmider does.
- [Horst] Koschmider he
was a disabled person.
He had a stiff leg.
But also he had always a chair leg.
Here where he had his stiff
leg to hit people on the head.
(lively music)
- [Reporter 4] And it's here
along one of the most
celebrated streets in the world
that the sailors make their way
in search of the lurid
pleasures of Hamburg's nightlife
on the Reeperbahn.
- [Paul] In Grosse
Freiheit, which is a street
just off the Reeperbahn,
probably the toughest area in Hamburg.
(lively music)
- [Rosi] This was a time
when the fist was the law.
(lively music)
The gangsters all get together
and you couldn't do anything
in St Pauli club owner.
- Because every club
along the Grosse Freiheit
had a porter.
Really, in uniform with
the hat and all that.
And they were the information system.
(lively music)
- The first don here was Paul Hen Mueller
and his Black Gang.
Horst Fascher was in that Black Gang.
(lively music)
- [Gibson] No one would
go against the system
and if they did, they
didn't last very long.
- [Howie] But you're dealing
with gangsters here, you know?
(lively music)
You find yourself in the Elbe.
(water splashing)
(lively music)
And especially they
like show biz and music
and that type of thing.
That's why a lot of them open clubs.
(lively music)
- [Rosi] After the war, it
was the big thing boxing.
They were the waiters in the Kaiserkeller.
And later on in the Star Club as well.
- So these are hard case
gangsters, you know?
But they were fine with us
because when you were there,
you're under their protection.
- We were told when we got
into any sort of bother
to mention the word
'Capella' meaning band,
and we would be protected.
(lively music)
(no audio)
(lively music)
- And here right behind me,
we have a print of the original poster
that announced The Beatles in 1960.
The funny thing is, of course,
The Beatles are second on the bill.
The big name was this
other band from Liverpool,
Rory Storm and the Hurricanes.
And they are very important
in Beatles history
because the drummer of Rory
Storm's band was Ringo Starr.
So they met Ringo here.
(lively music)
- The Reeperbahn
definitely was not a place
for Hamburg youth.
Hamburg youth were not
allowed by their parents
to even go there.
- [Astrid] Because the Reeperbahn
is not a place where young
ladies in the fifties or sixties
were to be seen or go there.
You know, it was not a nice place to go.
- So I knew pretty much all
extraordinary people in Hamburg,
artistic types, which were
called Existentialists.
Exies they were actually called.
And our biggest enemies were rockers.
- By the end of the fifties,
fights in Hamburg between
the Exies and the Rockers.
- [Jurgen] I went to Art School,
and that's where I met Klaus and Astrid.
- [Astrid] The first
time I met The Beatles
was through my former
boyfriend, Klaus Voormann,
who saw them one night when he
was wandering around Hamburg.
(lively music)
Then he heard this beautiful
sound of rock and roll music,
and he went down into a quite dark,
filthy cellar where
these boys were standing
on a very, very tiny stage
and performed in such way
that he was absolutely,
let's call it knocked out.
- And he told us about it,
he was so enthusiastic and but
we were afraid to go there,
you know, but he convinced us to go there.
So the next day we three went there.
- [Astrid] When I went down the stairs
and looked at the stage,
I was just amazed how
beautiful these boys looked
and being a photographer then
it was a photographer's dream.
- [Paul] And it was
Astrid, Astrid Kirchherr,
who Stu was to fall in love with,
and she was to fall in love
with Stu and Jurgen and Klaus.
As I recall, it was the three
of them the first night.
And they looked so cool.
- [Astrid] After that first night,
I went nearly every night to see them.
And that's how it started.
(lively music)
- [Paul] The first promoter that we'd had
at The Indra and the Kaiserkeller,
Bruno Koschmider,
we stopped working for him
and went to work for
another fella up the road.
- Basically what happened
was we found out Sheridan
was playing at the Top Ten.
We went there.
Eckhorn realized we were The Beatles
who were pulling the
crowds from the Top Ten
around the corner into
the Grosse Freiheit.
(lively music)
He said, I want you to play
at the Top Ten with Sheridan.
Koschmider turned round and
said, not mincing his words,
"If you played the Top Ten Club,
you will not work Germany ever again."
So typical of us, we turned round and said
"And you as well."
- [Rosi] And when they
played the first night
in the Top Ten Club,
Bruno Koschmider went to the police.
You know, for George, it was different.
He was only 17 then.
- [Paul] When we were actually
going to move out of our
old digs, me and Pete Best,
we nailed something up to
the wall, like I don't know.
And we set fire to it.
- [Pete] There were no lights.
And we had some rubbers with us, condoms.
We stuck the rubbers on the wall.
Lit them.
It was to give us light.
- [Paul] Literally there
was about six inches around,
black scorched around this
nail where we burnt this thing.
It was a kind of defiant act, you know,
the bad conditions we had.
(siren blaring)
(tires screeching)
(door thuds)
- [Pete] Six o'clock in the morning
woken up by two German policemen
and yanked off to
Davidstrasse police station.
And then when we got charged,
they said, we're going to deport you.
(plane whirring)
You know, handcuffed to one another,
dragged onto the plane like convicts.
Everyone looking at us,
sitting on the plane,
and you're never coming back to Germany.
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
- [Paul] Sometimes we used to
play about an eight hour day,
but at the time it wasted us
and totally kinda wrecked us.
And I remember getting home to England.
My dad really thought I
was half dead, you know,
I must have looked like a skeleton.
But I hadn't noticed the change.
I was just having such a ball,
you know, staying up late for a young kid.
- [George] Anyway, we
got back to Liverpool
and all the groups there were doing
this sort of Shadows type of stuff,
and we came back leather
jackets and jeans.
Funny hair.
'Maching Schau'.
(lively music)
- Stuart had elected to
stay in Hamburg with Astrid,
so the rest of the guys came back
and they needed a bass player.
(lively music)
- On the 27th of December 1960,
I was at Litherland Town Hall
and saw for myself The Beatles.
(lively music)
- [Paul] We came back
and people in Liverpool
thought we were German
because in one of the adverts it said,
"Direct from Hamburg, The Beatles."
So a lot of the girls came there and said,
you know they said.
(speaking German)
We're from here, don't worry.
- But the show was just wild,
totally different from what
other bands were doing.
All the amps were on 11.
- [Dave] They were all
in jeans and leathers.
Jeans were never allowed in
the dance halls in those days.
In actual fact, a lot of the
dance halls you couldn't get in
unless you have a tie.
(lively music)
- When they saw these five
guys stamping on the ground
or kicking all sorts
out of the amplifiers,
shouting in the background.
They were going to be the
reincarnations of the early Elvis
or James Dean or something like that.
They wanted to go back to the beginning.
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
- So we're here right at
the famous Reeperbahn,
the main street here in St Pauli.
And right on the other side
of the street over there
is the former Top Ten Club.
- [Reporter 5] The Top Ten
was started by Peter Eckhorn,
a young Hamburger four years ago.
Before he took over it
used to be a nightclub
where customers could ride on horseback
in a ring in the middle of the floor.
- [Ulf] And his father ran
a Hippodrome on Reeperbahn.
He asked his father if he
could convert that Hippodrome
into a rock and roll club.
- [George] We first went to
a place called The Indra,
which was shut down, and then
we went to the Kaiserkeller
and then we went to the Top Ten,
which is probably the best
one on the Reeperbahn.
And it was really,
at that time it was fantastic.
Echo on the microphone.
You know, it was really a gas.
- They lived on top of the building.
They lived under the roof in a small room.
This is where John, Paul, and George
showed their complete
Hamburg rocker outfits
with black leather suits and
gold and silver cowboy boots.
They were the band of Tony Sheridan there.
So Tony was the big star.
The Beatles were his band.
It was their second engagement in Hamburg.
They played there for 92 nights in a row
at the Top Ten Club.
(lively music)
Every day
Everywhere
I know that love is there to stay
'Cause I like it
Woo, I like it
- [Paul] Tony was the sort of star.
He'd been in Germany quite a while,
and he was very well known
and he could speak very good German.
- [Pete] So of course
when we out to Germany,
we were at the Top Ten Club.
There's another of our
idols from the television.
English rock and roll.
You don't see many of them.
- I was with Tony when Tony
was at the Kaiserkeller.
After 14 days, Tony and me,
we knew we were getting married.
- [Ulf] Tony Sheridan
from my point of view,
was the musical king of St Pauli.
(lively music)
And everybody wanted to be
like Tony, even The Beatles.
The young English musicians
used to call him 'The Teacher'.
- I mean, for three months,
every night, 8 hours,
C, C Paul C,
or a B-flat, B-flat, or an E minor.
- In their early recordings
when George was really young,
you can find a lot of
licks Tony played before.
(lively music)
(lively music)
So many hours a night, day
after day or night after night.
That's horrible.
But it taught them to entertain
people and to survive.
- [George] And we got very good as a band
because we had to play 8 hours a night.
- [Paul] What you'd have
was you'd have the fellows
who owned the clubs,
would have what they called 'Prellie'.
It was Preludine, which
was a slimming tablet.
You know, and so that got
everyone talking a lot.
Oh they're great these aren't they?
- [John] The only way
to survive in Hamburg,
to play 8 hours a night was to take pills.
The waiters gave you them.
Pills and drink.
- You take three or four on a Friday
and go to sleep on Tuesday.
- [John] I've always
needed a drug to survive.
You know, and the others too.
But I always had more, you know?
I always took more pills
and more of everything
because I'm more crazy.
I mean, like in Hamburg,
I used to sleep on stage.
We used to eat on stage.
We used to swear onstage.
We were absolutely 'au naturale'.
(lively music)
- [Paul] We were always
searching B-sides of records
for sort of odd little things.
We'd come on with slightly more R&B stuff.
- They were a cover band.
We were all American cover bands.
(lively music)
- [George] We used to do
all those Barrett Strong,
you know, Money and all the sort of tunes
that weren't popular particularly,
but were quite heavy
and all the Chuck Berry,
Little Richard, all the
rock and roll things.
- Yeah.
- And we just kept doing that
when that sort of period had died out.
- And you could feel when
they rehearsed or something
that they were very eager
and they wanted to do it
really as good as possible.
Paul was getting very angry
if Stuart played a wrong bass note.
Or somebody made a mistake
and played a wrong chord,
he got very pissed off
- [Paul] As I say, I did like
Stu a lot, but we had tussles.
I mean it even came to an onstage tussle.
It was actually more
locked in a deadly embrace
than anything because we
wouldn't let each other go
to sort of punch.
And all the old German,
'cause the gangsters
were like laughing at us, you know?
- He got a scholarship in Germany,
which was very rarely done then
for a not-German person.
That is why he left The Beatles then
to become a student of the
College of Art in Hamburg.
(lively music)
- [Paul] So the group was
going to continue minus Stu.
And that just became a reality.
And they kind of voted
me as the bass player.
So I just started to learn bass, really.
And then I got my own, what
became the Beatle bass.
I bought that in Hamburg.
It was a little Hofner violin bass.
(lively music)
My Bonnie lies over the ocean
My Bonnie lies over the sea
- [George] So the second time
we went back when I was 18,
that's when we were
backing up Tony Sheridan.
And at that point this
fella came into the club,
this famous record producer and musician.
He was called Bert Kaempfert.
And his claim to fame was
he had a number one hit
in America, Wonderland by Night.
And I remember this buzz went around.
We've got to be good.
Play really good.
We may get a chance to record.
- [Paul] One night Bert
Kaempfert was in there
and he liked us.
So he had a recording
studio and we went down
to this big barn of a
place, like a big gymnasium.
It was called Tony
Sheridan and the Beat Boys,
they didn't like the name Beatles,
and we recorded a couple of titles,
one of which was My Bonnie.
That was the one they liked.
My Bonnie lies over the ocean
My Bonnie lies over the sea
Well, my Bonnie lies over the ocean
Bring back my Bonnie to me
- [Paul] Because Brian's dad
owned a shop called NEMS,
North End Music Stores.
So the only record was
this one, My Bonnie,
which a fellow went in and asked for it
at Brian's record shop, and
Brian hadn't heard of it.
- [Brian] I assumed for
some reason that they were
from Germany.
Anyway, he told me that
they were a Liverpool group
and they just in fact
returned from Germany
and that they were playing
in a club called The Cavern.
About 100 yards away from my office.
(lively music)
- After their second visit to Hamburg,
and they returned to
Liverpool in the July of '61,
the transformation was unbelievable.
They were dressed from head
to toe in black leather,
black leather jackets,
black leather trousers,
black Cuban heeled boots.
But their harmonies were exceptional.
It was like a private party
every time they played
because of the close proximity
from the audience to the stage.
- [Paul] Because we were building
a lot of public attention,
you couldn't miss it.
I mean, when Brian found us,
we were very hot in The Cavern.
We were pulling big audiences in.
- We knew who Brian was
because we bought all
our records from him.
He was impeccably groomed,
well-spoken, well-dressed.
So he did stand out like a sore thumb.
- [Brian] I was amazed
by this dark, smokey,
dank atmosphere, this
beat music playing away.
The Beatles were then just four lads
on the rather dimly lit
stage, somewhat ill-clad,
and their presentation
left a little to be desired
as far as I was concerned.
Amongst all that, something
tremendous came over.
- [Paul] My major recollection then,
there was a meeting fixed to
go round to NEMS after hours
to talk to Brian about him
impossibly managing us.
(lively music)
- You know, I moved to
Paris in September '61.
John and Paul came to visit me
just after I had been there one month.
- [Paul] I mean, we
knew Jurgen from Hamburg
and he was a good friend of ours.
He had his hair sort of like this.
We said, "Can you cut
our hair like yours?"
That was the beginning
of the Beatle haircut.
- But because it was a
long piece of hair fringe
going across the forehead,
the boys kept doing this with their head
and this is where the
famous head shake came from.
There was a fan club
night down at The Cavern.
So The Beatles went on stage
in their full leathers.
Did their first set.
Went off into the band room
and we waited and the next thing is,
The Beatles come back on stage in suits.
- [Paul] And Brian suggested
that we just sort of wore ordinary suits.
- But no, we never saw the leathers again.
(no audio)
(lively music)
- So here we are right in
front of the famous Star Club.
Or what used to be the Star Club,
because the building is not there anymore.
It's probably still the
most famous German club
all over the world.
And it's, of course,
famous for The Beatles.
- Manfred Weissleder had
a club called Star Club.
Horst Fascher, who used to be the manager
of the Top Ten and lost his
job and wanted a new one.
So he talked Weissleder into
having a rock and roll club.
- [Horst] And then I told
him about The Beatles,
that The Beatles were in
Hamburg in the Top Ten
and they went down so well.
If I would go over now
and try to get The Beatles
for the Star Club, we would
have the biggest opening
we could ever think of.
So we had to go to Brian
Epstein to deal with him.
(gentle music)
(dramatic music)
- [Paul] So what happened was
Stu fell in love with Astrid,
who was the German girl
that he'd met out there,
and she was very beautiful
little German girl.
And he sort of took on a bit
of this German student look,
became very fashionable, actually,
wildly fashionable, he was fantastic.
We said, Stu!
God, I mean, he really looked great.
It was quite a major change in his life.
But while he was out there,
he started getting these headaches.
(dramatic music)
- [Pete] First time we'd flown over
and we were expecting Stu and Astrid
to meet us at the airport.
And when we got off the
plane, we saw Astrid there.
You always expected Stu to be with her.
She just said that Stuart died
a couple of days before we
actually got in to Hamburg.
(dramatic music)
- [Paul] But he eventually
died of a brain hemorrhage.
- Pete just bursted out in tears.
Paul was just holding me,
and John just freaked out.
He completely freaked out.
He freaked out as far as just
laughing until tears came.
(dramatic music)
(lively music)
- Manfred Weissleder, the
owner of the Star Club
took all these St Pauli
stars from the Top Ten Club.
And so he had Tony
Sheridan and The Beatles.
- Manfred was a gentleman.
I wouldn't have got on the
wrong side of him. (laughs)
(lively music)
Horst Fascher was the sort of manager,
fixer, and whatever,
and he had an offsider called Ali.
They looked after the bands,
also looked after the audience
when there was any sort of
trouble in the audience.
It never lasted longer
than about 40 seconds.
They were real heavy.
(lively music)
- Weissleder had everybody
who was important
in rock and roll.
Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Gene Vincent.
- Chubby Checker, Little Richard,
everyone who was famous, they
used to go via the Star Club.
- [Paul] For me the first
wild high voice I ever heard
was Little Richard.
(lively music)
I got a gal
- [Paul] But we met him in Hamburg.
That was the real time we got to know him.
Was getting wild
Breakfast in the morning
And dinner at night
Everything she do
- [Paul] And it was just after his kind of
evangelistic period.
We used to say, "Is it true
you threw all your rings off
the bridge and gave all your money away?"
"Well, of course it's true child!"
- [Little Richard] You know,
so I went to Hamburg, Germany,
with them.
- [Paul] He used to get
in front of the mirror.
He'd do this Vick
treatment for his throat.
You know, you put a towel over your head,
you get Vick and the hot water,
and he'd come up.
"Oh, you're so beautiful.
I can't help because I'm so beautiful.
Oh, Richard!"
Boogie, swing it right
Having a ball on Saturday night
Said what you want us to play
- Paul was so nice.
You know, John used to
like to mess with me
in my dressing room,
you know, quite a bit.
I can't say on television
what he did, you know?
He was something else.
In fact, I never met nobody like him.
- [Host] Really?
- I don't think nobody
met nobody like him.
I don't mean he was bad.
Listen, I'm not saying
nothing bad about him.
God bless his soul.
But he was all right.
But he would mess with me.
He wouldn't let me out
of my dressing room.
He would hold the door
and I'd be screaming.
- [Paul] He said to him, "Little Richard!"
(lively music)
- The Star Club was sort
of the starting point
for the British invasion
because they learned their trade there
and went to the world.
Because becoming bigger, bigger, bigger.
And that was the end of the Star Club,
because they couldn't
afford these acts anymore.
(lively music)
(crowd cheering)
(lively music)
- We didn't find out until
we came down to The Cavern
on the 19th of August '62,
Pete was missing off the drums
and Ringo was in his place.
Now, we knew Ringo from
Rory Storm and Hurricanes.
Why's Ringo here?
Where's Pete?
- [Paul] It's one of those
moments that you see dramatized,
you know, where they're
groups of mates and everything
and the big producer
just wants two of them.
- [George] I decided that Pete
wasn't a very good drummer,
so I went to Brian. I said,
"Look, there's no reason why
to the public Pete Best
shouldn't be part of the group.
But as far as records
are concerned he's out."
- [Paul] George Martin had been used to
more professional drummers, you know,
that were actually out of pit orchestras
and people who'd been
making records for years.
- [Pete] The reason that they gave
was they felt that I wasn't
a good enough drummer
and that Ringo was better.
And this doesn't hold water
as far as I'm concerned.
- Pete was a fiercely good looking guy.
He had a big following of fans.
- [Paul] It became obvious
that we weren't going to be
able to continue with Pete,
and it was like a major
scandal at the time
because Pete had a lot of fans.
- Talk filtered through,
"Oh, he's been replaced."
And of course once we heard that,
we all started to chant,
"Pete forever, Ringo never."
(lively music)
- [Pete] The success they had
I should have been part of.
I mean, it's as simple as that.
- [Paul] Anyway, Ringo was very
polished with his drumming.
- But we gradually accepted it.
We didn't have a choice, we had to.
(lively music)
- The Beatles played here
three engagements in 1962.
They played on the opening night
and they stayed for two months,
played every night,
and then they came back in
November and December 1962
already with Ringo on drums then.
To play their last two
shorter engagements.
- They played the Star Club three times.
The last time they didn't
really want to play there.
They had to because there were a contract.
- Their last show at the Star
Club was New Year's Eve 1962,
and then they leave Hamburg
and almost immediately
become big stars in England
because the first number
one, Please Please Me,
comes out only 11 days after they played
their last show at the Star Club.
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
- How do you become a Beatle?
I said, "Well, first of
all, you go to Hamburg,
you work seven nights a week.
The playing times are
something like 7 and 8 hours
at weekends."
That's where they learned their trade.
It wasn't Liverpool that made The Beatles.
- Well, I used to call it
the University of the Street.
The musical part, but also the Reeperbahn
Grosse Freiheit part.
My heart's beating a rhythm
A-shaking out rhythm and blues
- [Paul] At that time we were
just kids let off the leash.
- Another great learning curve for us,
but that's what we wanted
from rock and roll.
Shot of rhythm and blues
My heart's beating a rhythm
- But maybe they had
to go through this all
to became what they were in the end.
The biggest in the world.
But here where it starts.
- That's the hardest
school you could have.
And they had it.
My heart's beating a rhythm
A-shaking out rhythm and blues
- [George] In my opinion,
our peak for playing live
was in Hamburg.
- [John] In Liverpool, Hamburg,
and around the dance halls, you know?
And what we generated was fantastic
when we played straight rock
and there was nobody to touch
us in Britain, you know?
But as soon as we made it, we made it.
The edges were knocked off.
Rhythm and blues
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
- Hamburg didn't change The Beatles.
Hamburg changed everyone.
St Pauli changed everyone here.
Everyone who was there at that time.
(dramatic music)
(dramatic music continues)
(dramatic music)
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
(lively music continues)
(lively music continues)
(lively music continues)
(lively music continues)
(lively music continues)
(lively music continues)
(lively music continues)
(lively music continues)
(lively music continues)
(lively music continues)
(lively music continues)
(lively music continues)
..
(lively music)
(crowd cheering)
..
(lively music continues)
Well, gonna write a little letter
Gonna mail it to my local DJ
It's a rocking little record
I want my jockey to play
Roll over Beethoven
Gotta hear it again today
You know my temperature's rising
- [Paul] We were just
kids let off the leash.
(lively music)
- [George]
Well, there's all the gangsters
and there's the transvestite,
and there's the hookers.
It was exciting.
- [Paul]
You're in Hamburg.
You're 18.
You never been abroad in your life.
And you've got a bit of
money in your pocket,
and you go drinking
on a Saturday night.
(lively music)
But by the time you got to Hamburg,
if you've got a girlfriend there,
she's likely to be a stripper.
(lively music)
- [John] The only way
to survive in Hamburg
to play 8 hours a night was to take pills.
The waiters gave you them.
Pills and drink.
I always took more pills
and more of everything
because I'm more crazy.
(lively music)
- Jesus, he looked like Marlon Brando
in "The Wild One" at the time, you know?
(lively music)
- [John] What we generated was fantastic.
When we played straight
rock in Liverpool, Hamburg,
and around the dance halls, you know?
Beethoven
Roll over
- [Astrid] The Reeperbahn is not a place
where young ladies go.
You know, it was not a nice place to go.
Roll over Beethoven
- [Paul] It was only
kind of good, clean fun.
Good, dirty fun, actually.
(siren blaring)
(explosion booming)
- Liverpool and Hamburg had
contrasting wars, I would say.
Liverpool was the main Western seaport,
so it was vital, obviously, for shipping
from through the Atlantic.
And so it was obviously
going to be a target
of German bombing.
- [Reporter 1] Seated on
the hood of a touring car,
the Prime Minister goes on a tonic tour
of the bombed areas of Birkenhead,
Liverpool and Manchester.
- Liverpool was the second
most bombed city in Britain
after London and it lost about 4000 people
in those bombing raids.
(lively music)
- [Reporter 2] One of the
greatest serial stories
of the War, the battering of Hamburg.
By night and day the big German city
was subjected to Allied air assaults
without parallel in history.
- [Frank] Hamburg was
obviously a key German port,
very big in the submarine industry.
Bomber Harris, he was the
head of Fighter Command,
he made Hamburg one of his key targets.
And in 1943 he mounted a
huge bombing raid in July
called Gomorrah, where he
bombed the whole of Hamburg.
- [Reporter 3] Neutral sources report
that in eight heavy
Allied raids on Hamburg,
more than 58,000 people lost their lives
and 180,000 lost their jobs.
- [Frank] More people
died in that bombing raid
probably than in Nagasaki.
(gentle music)
Hamburg is devastated.
Liverpool is sort of damaged but survives.
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
My heart
Longs for moments
With you
- [John] Liverpool was the
second biggest port in England.
Also, it was a very poor city and tough.
But people have a sense of humor
and it's where the sailors would come home
with the blues records
from America on the ships.
- [Paul] Up until that point,
it had been sort of Billy Cotton
and swing and bebop and stuff,
but suddenly rock and roll
kind of burst on the scene.
Lonnie Donegan was the
other big influence.
That's what made all the
kids buy guitars at the time.
Oh, Maggie, Maggie May,
they have taken her away
And she'll never walk
down Lime Street any more
And the judge he guilty
Found her of robbing
a homeward-bounder
- [Paul] John was on stage with
what was then the Quarrymen.
- [John] I met Paul and said,
"Do you want to join my band?"
You know?
- [Paul] And I knew the
words to Eddie Cochran's
Twenty Flight Rock.
That meant I was in.
- [John] And then George joined.
- [Paul] George was a mate of mine.
He went to the same school as
I did, Liverpool Institute.
And so we learned our
first chords together
and got the Bert Weedon songbook
and learned all the chords, you know?
- Suppose the big decision
was Mona's, my mother.
Going to open it as a coffee bar.
She wanted a band for opening night.
Who did they turn out to be?
Quarrymen.
No drummer.
Just four guitars.
Maggie May
Paul McCartney and John Lennon.
(gentle music)
(gentle music continues)
- [Frank] The Germans
call 1945 'Year Zero'
because the devastation
throughout Germany was incredible.
And by the end, you know,
there was no water supply,
there was no electricity.
And certainly nothing
was functioning that well
for the next, you know, ten years really.
- After the war, you know,
everything was so mixed up
in the mind of the people.
So the first pimps with the prostitutes,
were their own wives who
doing the prostitutes job.
Because everybody after the war,
they wanted to earn some money.
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
And everything started
to begin, 55 new clubs.
And there wasn't allowed they
called it 'beauty dancer',
like these young ladies
who dance like striptease.
But it wasn't allowed.
And everything started with the beginning
of the rock and roll music.
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
- [John] Rock and roll was real.
To me it got through as the
only thing, to get through to me
out of all the things that were happening
when I was 15, you know?
- [Paul] And Elvis was
one of the first people
that kind of really made
me take an interest.
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
To me, it seemed like a
whole new direction of music.
(lively music)
John knew Stuart Sutcliffe,
who was at Art School with him
and was a very good painter.
He won an art prize and he
got 75 quid for it, I think,
and we managed to persuade
him to part with this
and get a Hofner bass.
So it became Long John
and the Silver Beatles.
I remember playing at
The Jacaranda, I think,
downstairs at the club
called The Jacaranda.
- Lord Woodbine, was a
very influential person
as a promoter.
I mean, it was my father
and Allan Williams
who were taking the groups like
The Beatles over to Hamburg
long before Brian Epstein
came on the scene.
(lively music)
Beatles would play The Jacaranda.
They played in my dad's
club, The Colony Club.
They played in the strip club.
So he was giving them opportunities
that practically no one
else was giving them.
- I knew that they were
from the Art School.
That was Stuart Sutcliffe and John Lennon.
John and Stuart approached me and said,
"Hey Al, when are you going
to do something for us like?"
- [Paul] Allan was our manager.
Allan was the person that the
German people went through
when they wanted Liverpool
rock and roll groups.
(people singing in German)
- [Rosi] St Pauli at
the end of the fifties,
St Pauli was for elderly people.
- Older people listened to
that middle of the road stuff.
We call Schlager in Germany
and the young turned from swing
into traditional jazz
revival, then to skiffle.
- My thing to remember is
that everything started
with Elvis, Bill Haley, and
Chuck Berry, and all these guys.
(lively music)
And then Bruno Koschmider
opened the Kaiserkeller.
Then all the people who like to dance,
jive or boogie-woogie, they
all went there to jive.
(lively music)
These German groups we had
sometimes, these German singers,
I was the one who said to Bruno Koschmider
"You can forget that.
That is funny, you know,
and that is not authentic."
And then Bruno Koschmider went to England
and he went to London and
to The 2i's Coffee Bar.
And then he booked Tony, Tony Sheridan.
Tony was the first band.
but the second band was
Derry Wilkie and the Seniors.
And Howie Casey was blowing
the horn in that band.
- So we all piled into cars
and drove down to London.
(lively music)
Allan, he hadn't arranged anything.
He was always winging it.
(lively music)
And we got up and did our
thing and it seemed to go well.
And then that was when Allan said,
"I've just met this German
guy, Bruno Koschmider."
And that's how it started.
- The second invasion of Germany
started about four years ago.
This wasn't a military invasion,
but more of a pop invasion
of British beat artists.
The club owners over here in Hamburg
had been looking for a long time
for something new to offer
to the Hamburg youngsters.
They heard from young
seamen who had been in Hull,
Southampton, Liverpool,
such ports in Britain
that an American style
of rock and roll music
was being played over in
Britain by British artists.
Of course, it was too expensive
to bring American artists from the States.
So these club owners decided
to import British artists.
- [Rosi] When the first English band
played in the Kaiserkeller,
the people was running at the place.
They were standing and waiting outside,
but the people were
coming, coming, coming.
(bell chiming)
- The Quarrymen had disappeared.
Unbeknownst to me, they'd
become The Beatles,
so-called Silver Beatles.
They had the offer to go to Germany.
In essence, they needed a drummer.
They'd seen me playing drums,
and I got a phone call off
Paul, which basically said,
"Pete, you interested
in going to Germany?"
As history portrays now,
that was the start of an epic journey.
(tires screeching)
- [Paul] What happened
was some fellow came over
from Hamburg and he wanted
rock and roll groups.
And somehow he got the idea
that they were in London,
at The 2i's.
And someone at The 2i's,
I think, had told him
there were also a couple
of groups in Liverpool.
So Allan Williams became the agent
for all the Liverpool groups.
(lively music)
- [Allan] I had a group
working there already
and The Beatles had no money.
They said, "We haven't got
the money for the train fare
or the boat."
And I said, "Well, okay, then."
I had a minibus.
I said, "I'll take you
all in the minibus."
- We agreed to meet at The
Jacaranda in the morning
would have been the 15th August, 1960.
And going to be on the van
were Beryl, Allan, and myself,
Lord Woodbine, five Beatles,
and that's John, Paul,
George, Stuart Sutcliffe,
and Pete Best.
- [Paul] He took us in
his van, first of all.
- [Allan] Liverpool 220
miles and arrived in London.
Directly from there to Harwich.
Made a seven hour crossing from Harwich
straight across the
channel to Hook of Holland.
(lively music)
And made our way to Arnhem
where there are hundreds
or thousands of graves
of soldiers from a famous battle in 1944.
After we paid our respects there,
then it was a direct route
from Arnhem to Hamburg.
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
- [Paul] And dropped us at the club.
Thank you very much.
(lively music)
- [Allan] I think we got to
Hamburg round about one o'clock
in the morning.
(lively music)
- [Paul] Because we were just schoolboys.
So we got to Hamburg, this Flesh Pot City.
Well, we had a bit of fun.
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
- You know, the first time we
got into the St Pauli area,
it was the biggest red
light district in the world
at that time.
Another great learning curve for us.
But that's what we wanted
from rock and roll.
(police man speaking German)
- [George] Well, there's
all the gangsters,
and there's transvestite,
and there's the hookers.
It was exciting.
- [Paul] At that time we were just kids,
let off the leash, really.
Come straight from Liverpool to Hamburg,
and we were used to these Liverpool girls.
But by the time we got to Hamburg,
if you've got a girlfriend there,
she's likely to be a stripper.
They're the only kind of people
who are around at the time,
we were around late at night.
So for someone who not really had much sex
in their lives before,
which none of us really had,
to be suddenly involved
with a sort of hardcore striptease artist
who obviously knew a
thing or two about sex
was quite an eye opener.
- [George] Everything
else was such a buzz,
you know, being right in the middle
of the naughtiest city in
the world at 17 years old,
it was kind of exciting.
- When we actually
approached the Reeperbahn,
that to us was like mini America
because it was just a maze of neon lights,
strip clubs, bars.
And even when we turned
into the Grosse Freiheit,
that was still the same.
We thought when we jumped
out and ran down steps again
into the Kaiserkeller we were
going to be playing there,
rearing to start.
Koschmider who was the manager
turned around and said,
"No, you're not playing the Kaiserkeller,
you're playing The Indra".
There was a church.
Everything was dark,
a cinema at the end, the Bambi Kino,
which ended up being our
fleapit and The Indra.
No neon lights, no noise coming from it.
We all waltzed in there
and Bruno Koschmider
turned around and said, "This is The Indra
and this is where you're going to play.
You are going to turn this
into another Kaiserkeller."
- Yeah, they were five in the
beginning when they came here.
It was John, Paul, and George,
Stuart Sutcliffe on bass,
and Pete Best on drums.
And Pete only joined the band
two days before they came to Hamburg.
And the only reason he was in the band
was that he had a drum set. (laughs)
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
- [Rosi] The Indra was a strip club
and Koschmider owned that Indra club.
He thought before somebody
else does a second place,
he would do second place.
And so they were playing 30 minutes music
and 30 minutes striptease.
(lively music)
- [Horst] The door to the
Bambi Kino was that door.
- We come to this concrete dungeon.
And what we think is a bed, on
the other side, but no light.
That was our sleeping quarters.
- [Paul] We stayed in this
place called the Bambi Kino,
and we had just a little room
right next to the toilet.
So it was really kind
of, you know, forget it.
I mean, they wouldn't
have allowed it actually.
We used to sleep under
this Union Jack flag,
you know, because it was cold.
There was no heating.
And this is winter in Germany.
- And they stayed there
like tramps, you know?
And when I think about it,
I still get mad to this
Koschmider bastard.
(lively music)
- When I met The Beatles the first time,
I was still a barmaid in the Kaiserkeller
and I went to The Indra
because people were saying,
"Oh, they are so nice and they look nice."
And so all these young girls
and when I went there and I thought,
"Well, good looking guys."
But with the music that
wasn't so good then.
George was only 17 and
the others not much older.
They didn't have so much experience then.
- [Paul] Yeah, so that first
time we went out there,
we played at The Indra
and what happened was
we were thrown in the deep end in Hamburg.
There'd be no one in the club.
Roll it over
You played quite long hours.
Some nights you do 8 hours, you know?
So we learned a lot of stagecraft
in getting people in and we gradually did,
you know, we'd learn tricks.
- [George] I think that's
where we found our style.
We developed our style
because of this fellow
there he used to say,
"You've got to make a
show for the people."
He used to come up every night shouting,
"Mach schau."
So we used to mach schau and
John used to dance around
like a gorilla.
Roll over Beethoven
Roll over Beethoven
- [Paul] We had these purple jackets
that I had made up by Mr. Richards.
Used to live next door
to us who was a tailor.
And I bought the material.
Black jeans and like winkle picker shoes,
which really seemed amazing at the time.
And all the waiters there,
"Where you get your shoes please?
You send me some."
- [Rosi] This is what
happens very quickly.
That first of all, nobody knew.
But then by talking after
a week or even 14 days,
the place was crowded.
(lively music)
(crowd cheering)
- There were complaints from the neighbors
that it was too loud.
And then after six weeks,
live music wasn't allowed here anymore.
Bruno Koschmider then said,
"Okay, now you can come
to my bigger club."
His first club, at the Kaiserkeller.
(lively music)
- [Paul] After The Indra,
we moved along to another
club called the Kaiserkeller
which means the King's Cellar.
So we had to do the
whole thing over again.
Then we had to build
up our audience there,
and it was a bigger club.
So you had to build more people.
- Bruno Koschmider,
I think that he was a tragic figure.
He was gay or queer man.
How do you say it now, I don't know?
And that was forbidden then,
you know, to go in jail.
He wasn't such a happy person,
but he had these ideas
with open the first place for the youth,
the Kaiserkeller.
This is what Bruno Koschmider does.
- [Horst] Koschmider he
was a disabled person.
He had a stiff leg.
But also he had always a chair leg.
Here where he had his stiff
leg to hit people on the head.
(lively music)
- [Reporter 4] And it's here
along one of the most
celebrated streets in the world
that the sailors make their way
in search of the lurid
pleasures of Hamburg's nightlife
on the Reeperbahn.
- [Paul] In Grosse
Freiheit, which is a street
just off the Reeperbahn,
probably the toughest area in Hamburg.
(lively music)
- [Rosi] This was a time
when the fist was the law.
(lively music)
The gangsters all get together
and you couldn't do anything
in St Pauli club owner.
- Because every club
along the Grosse Freiheit
had a porter.
Really, in uniform with
the hat and all that.
And they were the information system.
(lively music)
- The first don here was Paul Hen Mueller
and his Black Gang.
Horst Fascher was in that Black Gang.
(lively music)
- [Gibson] No one would
go against the system
and if they did, they
didn't last very long.
- [Howie] But you're dealing
with gangsters here, you know?
(lively music)
You find yourself in the Elbe.
(water splashing)
(lively music)
And especially they
like show biz and music
and that type of thing.
That's why a lot of them open clubs.
(lively music)
- [Rosi] After the war, it
was the big thing boxing.
They were the waiters in the Kaiserkeller.
And later on in the Star Club as well.
- So these are hard case
gangsters, you know?
But they were fine with us
because when you were there,
you're under their protection.
- We were told when we got
into any sort of bother
to mention the word
'Capella' meaning band,
and we would be protected.
(lively music)
(no audio)
(lively music)
- And here right behind me,
we have a print of the original poster
that announced The Beatles in 1960.
The funny thing is, of course,
The Beatles are second on the bill.
The big name was this
other band from Liverpool,
Rory Storm and the Hurricanes.
And they are very important
in Beatles history
because the drummer of Rory
Storm's band was Ringo Starr.
So they met Ringo here.
(lively music)
- The Reeperbahn
definitely was not a place
for Hamburg youth.
Hamburg youth were not
allowed by their parents
to even go there.
- [Astrid] Because the Reeperbahn
is not a place where young
ladies in the fifties or sixties
were to be seen or go there.
You know, it was not a nice place to go.
- So I knew pretty much all
extraordinary people in Hamburg,
artistic types, which were
called Existentialists.
Exies they were actually called.
And our biggest enemies were rockers.
- By the end of the fifties,
fights in Hamburg between
the Exies and the Rockers.
- [Jurgen] I went to Art School,
and that's where I met Klaus and Astrid.
- [Astrid] The first
time I met The Beatles
was through my former
boyfriend, Klaus Voormann,
who saw them one night when he
was wandering around Hamburg.
(lively music)
Then he heard this beautiful
sound of rock and roll music,
and he went down into a quite dark,
filthy cellar where
these boys were standing
on a very, very tiny stage
and performed in such way
that he was absolutely,
let's call it knocked out.
- And he told us about it,
he was so enthusiastic and but
we were afraid to go there,
you know, but he convinced us to go there.
So the next day we three went there.
- [Astrid] When I went down the stairs
and looked at the stage,
I was just amazed how
beautiful these boys looked
and being a photographer then
it was a photographer's dream.
- [Paul] And it was
Astrid, Astrid Kirchherr,
who Stu was to fall in love with,
and she was to fall in love
with Stu and Jurgen and Klaus.
As I recall, it was the three
of them the first night.
And they looked so cool.
- [Astrid] After that first night,
I went nearly every night to see them.
And that's how it started.
(lively music)
- [Paul] The first promoter that we'd had
at The Indra and the Kaiserkeller,
Bruno Koschmider,
we stopped working for him
and went to work for
another fella up the road.
- Basically what happened
was we found out Sheridan
was playing at the Top Ten.
We went there.
Eckhorn realized we were The Beatles
who were pulling the
crowds from the Top Ten
around the corner into
the Grosse Freiheit.
(lively music)
He said, I want you to play
at the Top Ten with Sheridan.
Koschmider turned round and
said, not mincing his words,
"If you played the Top Ten Club,
you will not work Germany ever again."
So typical of us, we turned round and said
"And you as well."
- [Rosi] And when they
played the first night
in the Top Ten Club,
Bruno Koschmider went to the police.
You know, for George, it was different.
He was only 17 then.
- [Paul] When we were actually
going to move out of our
old digs, me and Pete Best,
we nailed something up to
the wall, like I don't know.
And we set fire to it.
- [Pete] There were no lights.
And we had some rubbers with us, condoms.
We stuck the rubbers on the wall.
Lit them.
It was to give us light.
- [Paul] Literally there
was about six inches around,
black scorched around this
nail where we burnt this thing.
It was a kind of defiant act, you know,
the bad conditions we had.
(siren blaring)
(tires screeching)
(door thuds)
- [Pete] Six o'clock in the morning
woken up by two German policemen
and yanked off to
Davidstrasse police station.
And then when we got charged,
they said, we're going to deport you.
(plane whirring)
You know, handcuffed to one another,
dragged onto the plane like convicts.
Everyone looking at us,
sitting on the plane,
and you're never coming back to Germany.
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
- [Paul] Sometimes we used to
play about an eight hour day,
but at the time it wasted us
and totally kinda wrecked us.
And I remember getting home to England.
My dad really thought I
was half dead, you know,
I must have looked like a skeleton.
But I hadn't noticed the change.
I was just having such a ball,
you know, staying up late for a young kid.
- [George] Anyway, we
got back to Liverpool
and all the groups there were doing
this sort of Shadows type of stuff,
and we came back leather
jackets and jeans.
Funny hair.
'Maching Schau'.
(lively music)
- Stuart had elected to
stay in Hamburg with Astrid,
so the rest of the guys came back
and they needed a bass player.
(lively music)
- On the 27th of December 1960,
I was at Litherland Town Hall
and saw for myself The Beatles.
(lively music)
- [Paul] We came back
and people in Liverpool
thought we were German
because in one of the adverts it said,
"Direct from Hamburg, The Beatles."
So a lot of the girls came there and said,
you know they said.
(speaking German)
We're from here, don't worry.
- But the show was just wild,
totally different from what
other bands were doing.
All the amps were on 11.
- [Dave] They were all
in jeans and leathers.
Jeans were never allowed in
the dance halls in those days.
In actual fact, a lot of the
dance halls you couldn't get in
unless you have a tie.
(lively music)
- When they saw these five
guys stamping on the ground
or kicking all sorts
out of the amplifiers,
shouting in the background.
They were going to be the
reincarnations of the early Elvis
or James Dean or something like that.
They wanted to go back to the beginning.
(lively music)
(lively music continues)
- So we're here right at
the famous Reeperbahn,
the main street here in St Pauli.
And right on the other side
of the street over there
is the former Top Ten Club.
- [Reporter 5] The Top Ten
was started by Peter Eckhorn,
a young Hamburger four years ago.
Before he took over it
used to be a nightclub
where customers could ride on horseback
in a ring in the middle of the floor.
- [Ulf] And his father ran
a Hippodrome on Reeperbahn.
He asked his father if he
could convert that Hippodrome
into a rock and roll club.
- [George] We first went to
a place called The Indra,
which was shut down, and then
we went to the Kaiserkeller
and then we went to the Top Ten,
which is probably the best
one on the Reeperbahn.
And it was really,
at that time it was fantastic.
Echo on the microphone.
You know, it was really a gas.
- They lived on top of the building.
They lived under the roof in a small room.
This is where John, Paul, and George
showed their complete
Hamburg rocker outfits
with black leather suits and
gold and silver cowboy boots.
They were the band of Tony Sheridan there.
So Tony was the big star.
The Beatles were his band.
It was their second engagement in Hamburg.
They played there for 92 nights in a row
at the Top Ten Club.
(lively music)
Every day
Everywhere
I know that love is there to stay
'Cause I like it
Woo, I like it
- [Paul] Tony was the sort of star.
He'd been in Germany quite a while,
and he was very well known
and he could speak very good German.
- [Pete] So of course
when we out to Germany,
we were at the Top Ten Club.
There's another of our
idols from the television.
English rock and roll.
You don't see many of them.
- I was with Tony when Tony
was at the Kaiserkeller.
After 14 days, Tony and me,
we knew we were getting married.
- [Ulf] Tony Sheridan
from my point of view,
was the musical king of St Pauli.
(lively music)
And everybody wanted to be
like Tony, even The Beatles.
The young English musicians
used to call him 'The Teacher'.
- I mean, for three months,
every night, 8 hours,
C, C Paul C,
or a B-flat, B-flat, or an E minor.
- In their early recordings
when George was really young,
you can find a lot of
licks Tony played before.
(lively music)
(lively music)
So many hours a night, day
after day or night after night.
That's horrible.
But it taught them to entertain
people and to survive.
- [George] And we got very good as a band
because we had to play 8 hours a night.
- [Paul] What you'd have
was you'd have the fellows
who owned the clubs,
would have what they called 'Prellie'.
It was Preludine, which
was a slimming tablet.
You know, and so that got
everyone talking a lot.
Oh they're great these aren't they?
- [John] The only way
to survive in Hamburg,
to play 8 hours a night was to take pills.
The waiters gave you them.
Pills and drink.
- You take three or four on a Friday
and go to sleep on Tuesday.
- [John] I've always
needed a drug to survive.
You know, and the others too.
But I always had more, you know?
I always took more pills
and more of everything
because I'm more crazy.
I mean, like in Hamburg,
I used to sleep on stage.
We used to eat on stage.
We used to swear onstage.
We were absolutely 'au naturale'.
(lively music)
- [Paul] We were always
searching B-sides of records
for sort of odd little things.
We'd come on with slightly more R&B stuff.
- They were a cover band.
We were all American cover bands.
(lively music)
- [George] We used to do
all those Barrett Strong,
you know, Money and all the sort of tunes
that weren't popular particularly,
but were quite heavy
and all the Chuck Berry,
Little Richard, all the
rock and roll things.
- Yeah.
- And we just kept doing that
when that sort of period had died out.
- And you could feel when
they rehearsed or something
that they were very eager
and they wanted to do it
really as good as possible.
Paul was getting very angry
if Stuart played a wrong bass note.
Or somebody made a mistake
and played a wrong chord,
he got very pissed off
- [Paul] As I say, I did like
Stu a lot, but we had tussles.
I mean it even came to an onstage tussle.
It was actually more
locked in a deadly embrace
than anything because we
wouldn't let each other go
to sort of punch.
And all the old German,
'cause the gangsters
were like laughing at us, you know?
- He got a scholarship in Germany,
which was very rarely done then
for a not-German person.
That is why he left The Beatles then
to become a student of the
College of Art in Hamburg.
(lively music)
- [Paul] So the group was
going to continue minus Stu.
And that just became a reality.
And they kind of voted
me as the bass player.
So I just started to learn bass, really.
And then I got my own, what
became the Beatle bass.
I bought that in Hamburg.
It was a little Hofner violin bass.
(lively music)
My Bonnie lies over the ocean
My Bonnie lies over the sea
- [George] So the second time
we went back when I was 18,
that's when we were
backing up Tony Sheridan.
And at that point this
fella came into the club,
this famous record producer and musician.
He was called Bert Kaempfert.
And his claim to fame was
he had a number one hit
in America, Wonderland by Night.
And I remember this buzz went around.
We've got to be good.
Play really good.
We may get a chance to record.
- [Paul] One night Bert
Kaempfert was in there
and he liked us.
So he had a recording
studio and we went down
to this big barn of a
place, like a big gymnasium.
It was called Tony
Sheridan and the Beat Boys,
they didn't like the name Beatles,
and we recorded a couple of titles,
one of which was My Bonnie.
That was the one they liked.
My Bonnie lies over the ocean
My Bonnie lies over the sea
Well, my Bonnie lies over the ocean
Bring back my Bonnie to me
- [Paul] Because Brian's dad
owned a shop called NEMS,
North End Music Stores.
So the only record was
this one, My Bonnie,
which a fellow went in and asked for it
at Brian's record shop, and
Brian hadn't heard of it.
- [Brian] I assumed for
some reason that they were
from Germany.
Anyway, he told me that
they were a Liverpool group
and they just in fact
returned from Germany
and that they were playing
in a club called The Cavern.
About 100 yards away from my office.
(lively music)
- After their second visit to Hamburg,
and they returned to
Liverpool in the July of '61,
the transformation was unbelievable.
They were dressed from head
to toe in black leather,
black leather jackets,
black leather trousers,
black Cuban heeled boots.
But their harmonies were exceptional.
It was like a private party
every time they played
because of the close proximity
from the audience to the stage.
- [Paul] Because we were building
a lot of public attention,
you couldn't miss it.
I mean, when Brian found us,
we were very hot in The Cavern.
We were pulling big audiences in.
- We knew who Brian was
because we bought all
our records from him.
He was impeccably groomed,
well-spoken, well-dressed.
So he did stand out like a sore thumb.
- [Brian] I was amazed
by this dark, smokey,
dank atmosphere, this
beat music playing away.
The Beatles were then just four lads
on the rather dimly lit
stage, somewhat ill-clad,
and their presentation
left a little to be desired
as far as I was concerned.
Amongst all that, something
tremendous came over.
- [Paul] My major recollection then,
there was a meeting fixed to
go round to NEMS after hours
to talk to Brian about him
impossibly managing us.
(lively music)
- You know, I moved to
Paris in September '61.
John and Paul came to visit me
just after I had been there one month.
- [Paul] I mean, we
knew Jurgen from Hamburg
and he was a good friend of ours.
He had his hair sort of like this.
We said, "Can you cut
our hair like yours?"
That was the beginning
of the Beatle haircut.
- But because it was a
long piece of hair fringe
going across the forehead,
the boys kept doing this with their head
and this is where the
famous head shake came from.
There was a fan club
night down at The Cavern.
So The Beatles went on stage
in their full leathers.
Did their first set.
Went off into the band room
and we waited and the next thing is,
The Beatles come back on stage in suits.
- [Paul] And Brian suggested
that we just sort of wore ordinary suits.
- But no, we never saw the leathers again.
(no audio)
(lively music)
- So here we are right in
front of the famous Star Club.
Or what used to be the Star Club,
because the building is not there anymore.
It's probably still the
most famous German club
all over the world.
And it's, of course,
famous for The Beatles.
- Manfred Weissleder had
a club called Star Club.
Horst Fascher, who used to be the manager
of the Top Ten and lost his
job and wanted a new one.
So he talked Weissleder into
having a rock and roll club.
- [Horst] And then I told
him about The Beatles,
that The Beatles were in
Hamburg in the Top Ten
and they went down so well.
If I would go over now
and try to get The Beatles
for the Star Club, we would
have the biggest opening
we could ever think of.
So we had to go to Brian
Epstein to deal with him.
(gentle music)
(dramatic music)
- [Paul] So what happened was
Stu fell in love with Astrid,
who was the German girl
that he'd met out there,
and she was very beautiful
little German girl.
And he sort of took on a bit
of this German student look,
became very fashionable, actually,
wildly fashionable, he was fantastic.
We said, Stu!
God, I mean, he really looked great.
It was quite a major change in his life.
But while he was out there,
he started getting these headaches.
(dramatic music)
- [Pete] First time we'd flown over
and we were expecting Stu and Astrid
to meet us at the airport.
And when we got off the
plane, we saw Astrid there.
You always expected Stu to be with her.
She just said that Stuart died
a couple of days before we
actually got in to Hamburg.
(dramatic music)
- [Paul] But he eventually
died of a brain hemorrhage.
- Pete just bursted out in tears.
Paul was just holding me,
and John just freaked out.
He completely freaked out.
He freaked out as far as just
laughing until tears came.
(dramatic music)
(lively music)
- Manfred Weissleder, the
owner of the Star Club
took all these St Pauli
stars from the Top Ten Club.
And so he had Tony
Sheridan and The Beatles.
- Manfred was a gentleman.
I wouldn't have got on the
wrong side of him. (laughs)
(lively music)
Horst Fascher was the sort of manager,
fixer, and whatever,
and he had an offsider called Ali.
They looked after the bands,
also looked after the audience
when there was any sort of
trouble in the audience.
It never lasted longer
than about 40 seconds.
They were real heavy.
(lively music)
- Weissleder had everybody
who was important
in rock and roll.
Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Gene Vincent.
- Chubby Checker, Little Richard,
everyone who was famous, they
used to go via the Star Club.
- [Paul] For me the first
wild high voice I ever heard
was Little Richard.
(lively music)
I got a gal
- [Paul] But we met him in Hamburg.
That was the real time we got to know him.
Was getting wild
Breakfast in the morning
And dinner at night
Everything she do
- [Paul] And it was just after his kind of
evangelistic period.
We used to say, "Is it true
you threw all your rings off
the bridge and gave all your money away?"
"Well, of course it's true child!"
- [Little Richard] You know,
so I went to Hamburg, Germany,
with them.
- [Paul] He used to get
in front of the mirror.
He'd do this Vick
treatment for his throat.
You know, you put a towel over your head,
you get Vick and the hot water,
and he'd come up.
"Oh, you're so beautiful.
I can't help because I'm so beautiful.
Oh, Richard!"
Boogie, swing it right
Having a ball on Saturday night
Said what you want us to play
- Paul was so nice.
You know, John used to
like to mess with me
in my dressing room,
you know, quite a bit.
I can't say on television
what he did, you know?
He was something else.
In fact, I never met nobody like him.
- [Host] Really?
- I don't think nobody
met nobody like him.
I don't mean he was bad.
Listen, I'm not saying
nothing bad about him.
God bless his soul.
But he was all right.
But he would mess with me.
He wouldn't let me out
of my dressing room.
He would hold the door
and I'd be screaming.
- [Paul] He said to him, "Little Richard!"
(lively music)
- The Star Club was sort
of the starting point
for the British invasion
because they learned their trade there
and went to the world.
Because becoming bigger, bigger, bigger.
And that was the end of the Star Club,
because they couldn't
afford these acts anymore.
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- We didn't find out until
we came down to The Cavern
on the 19th of August '62,
Pete was missing off the drums
and Ringo was in his place.
Now, we knew Ringo from
Rory Storm and Hurricanes.
Why's Ringo here?
Where's Pete?
- [Paul] It's one of those
moments that you see dramatized,
you know, where they're
groups of mates and everything
and the big producer
just wants two of them.
- [George] I decided that Pete
wasn't a very good drummer,
so I went to Brian. I said,
"Look, there's no reason why
to the public Pete Best
shouldn't be part of the group.
But as far as records
are concerned he's out."
- [Paul] George Martin had been used to
more professional drummers, you know,
that were actually out of pit orchestras
and people who'd been
making records for years.
- [Pete] The reason that they gave
was they felt that I wasn't
a good enough drummer
and that Ringo was better.
And this doesn't hold water
as far as I'm concerned.
- Pete was a fiercely good looking guy.
He had a big following of fans.
- [Paul] It became obvious
that we weren't going to be
able to continue with Pete,
and it was like a major
scandal at the time
because Pete had a lot of fans.
- Talk filtered through,
"Oh, he's been replaced."
And of course once we heard that,
we all started to chant,
"Pete forever, Ringo never."
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- [Pete] The success they had
I should have been part of.
I mean, it's as simple as that.
- [Paul] Anyway, Ringo was very
polished with his drumming.
- But we gradually accepted it.
We didn't have a choice, we had to.
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- The Beatles played here
three engagements in 1962.
They played on the opening night
and they stayed for two months,
played every night,
and then they came back in
November and December 1962
already with Ringo on drums then.
To play their last two
shorter engagements.
- They played the Star Club three times.
The last time they didn't
really want to play there.
They had to because there were a contract.
- Their last show at the Star
Club was New Year's Eve 1962,
and then they leave Hamburg
and almost immediately
become big stars in England
because the first number
one, Please Please Me,
comes out only 11 days after they played
their last show at the Star Club.
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- How do you become a Beatle?
I said, "Well, first of
all, you go to Hamburg,
you work seven nights a week.
The playing times are
something like 7 and 8 hours
at weekends."
That's where they learned their trade.
It wasn't Liverpool that made The Beatles.
- Well, I used to call it
the University of the Street.
The musical part, but also the Reeperbahn
Grosse Freiheit part.
My heart's beating a rhythm
A-shaking out rhythm and blues
- [Paul] At that time we were
just kids let off the leash.
- Another great learning curve for us,
but that's what we wanted
from rock and roll.
Shot of rhythm and blues
My heart's beating a rhythm
- But maybe they had
to go through this all
to became what they were in the end.
The biggest in the world.
But here where it starts.
- That's the hardest
school you could have.
And they had it.
My heart's beating a rhythm
A-shaking out rhythm and blues
- [George] In my opinion,
our peak for playing live
was in Hamburg.
- [John] In Liverpool, Hamburg,
and around the dance halls, you know?
And what we generated was fantastic
when we played straight rock
and there was nobody to touch
us in Britain, you know?
But as soon as we made it, we made it.
The edges were knocked off.
Rhythm and blues
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- Hamburg didn't change The Beatles.
Hamburg changed everyone.
St Pauli changed everyone here.
Everyone who was there at that time.
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