What with their inadequate washing facilities, soiled laundry and heavy smoking—cigarettes were cheap here and they all smoked up to forty a day—the whole place stank, and so, surely, did they. Still, they were all in it together, and at least they had a common enemy in Koschmider. It prompted a key shift in their collective chant, into one that would endure and serve many other purposes in the months and years ahead. Instead of Paul and George asking Where we going, Johnny? John flipped the question and asked it of his gang, all of them adopting a phoney American accent as if in a cheapo Hollywood exploitation movie:
When we were all depressed—thinking the group was going nowhere and this is a shitty deal and we’re in a shitty dressing-room—I’d say, “Where we going, fellers?” and they’d go, “To the top, Johnny!” in pseudo-American voices. And I’d say, “Where’s that, fellers?” and they’d say, “To the toppermost of the poppermost, Johnny!” I’d say, “Riiiight!” and we’d all cheer up. That was our little mantra that got us through.8
This eventful first full day in Hamburg concluded with four and a half hours on the Indra’s little podium stage, in front of cabaret curtains that so deadened their sound they turned the amps to max. Koschmider had publicity photographs taken of his new attraction—the first photos of the Beatles as John, Paul, George, Stu and Pete, five Liverpool boys, four guitars on the drip, three amplifiers, and two drumsticks in the hands of Pete Best, the boy with the kit bought by his Mo, a hopeful investment dominated by an outsize bass drum. He’s wearing his dark jacket, the other four are in Mr. Richards’ lilac creations; Paul attracts attention by pulling a face and Stu does so with his dark glasses. They look good, and they’re ready to rock.
The Beatles’ first night in Hamburg, August 17, 1960, was twenty years ago, to the day, since the Germans launched their first attack on Liverpool, when Nazi planes dropped bombs on the docks at Toxteth, August 17, 1940. Rock and roll music was taken to Hamburg by the children of the survivors, to be heard in turn by children who’d outlived the Allies’ revenge blitz of 1943. Scorned by adult society as a force for evil and the work of the devil, black rhythm music out of America—and, before there, of course, out of Africa—was bringing harmony where once had been hatred.
The Seniors’ Howie Casey says he managed to get away from the Kaiserkeller for a few minutes to check out the new arrivals from his hometown. He was expecting to sneer, but since the Billy Fury audition they’d been on the Johnny Gentle tour and played sixteen good dates on the Wirral. “My jaw went to the floor. There was such a difference from what I’d seen at the audition. There was something there, a spark, that extra little bit. We did a bit of harmony singing but they were marvelous at it. They were stunning. You knew they were going to go places.”9
Those voices, John and Paul and sometimes George and Stu in different combinations, carried the Beatles forward. This had long been their strength, one that was unique among the groups. To begin with, however, no matter how appealing their harmonies, they simply didn’t have the repertoire. The longest they’d ever had to play in one stretch was about two hours, now they had to do up to six. They were a bar band, and though no customer stuck around all night long, the Beatles set themselves the challenge of not repeating themselves. The result was a brisk broadening of their output, as in “What else can we do? What else do we know?” So they did the whole first Carl Perkins LP, the whole first Johnny Burnette LP, the whole first Buddy Holly and the Crickets LP, the whole first Elvis Presley LP as well as all of Elvis’s Golden Records, and the whole first Gene Vincent LP (one of their favorite numbers was his cover of “Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine”). Songs were also spun out—Paul could make Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say” last fifteen minutes without any difficulty, and John did something similar with Elvis’s “Baby Let’s Play House”: “We’d make it last about ten minutes, singing the same verse over and over again.”10 Paul sang “Summertime” and “Over the Rainbow” (both because of Gene Vincent), they did Phil Spector’s “To Know Her Is to Love Her,” they did all the Chuck Berry numbers they knew, all the Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Coasters, Eddie Cochran, Fats Domino and Larry Williams. John sang Hank Williams country numbers like Honky Tonk Blues, they did oldies like “Moonglow” and “The Harry Lime Theme” and new tunes like “Money,” “Besame Mucho,” “Shakin’ All Over” and “Apache” (but without the Shadows’ dance steps). “We had to learn millions of songs,” George would say, “because we’d be on for hours. Hamburg was really like our apprenticeship, learning how to play in front of people.”11
With little or no prior rehearsal of these songs, there were plenty of ragged renditions. The front line didn’t lack keenness or energy but there were no virtuosos here. George was the kind of guitarist who perfected things over time, laboriously. Improvising a dazzling solo was not his forte, and when forced into that situation his playing could be weak. Paul had a still-unfamiliar and cheap guitar and his exact role was somewhat “in between”—George played lead, John was rhythm … and Paul was rhythm too, though he added lead fills when possible. John was on his way to becoming an accomplished rhythm guitarist but probably hadn’t got there yet; he mostly played by feel, and with unfamiliar songs would have been busking much of the time. And then there was Stu: a bass guitarist only seven months, he wasn’t far beyond a beginner. It was the combination of talents that gave the Beatles their spark: what they sounded like, plus what they looked like, plus their personalities. Left to right and at the back they were interesting.
The first night at the Indra was also the first night of the Beatles with Pete Best, at least their fourth drummer in thirteen weeks. Though he looked the part, and projected that studied sullenness observed at the Casbah, he was very much a novice, with precious little group time under his belt and just a fraction of the stage time experienced even by Stu. None of this was a surprise to John, Paul and George—they realized all along Pete was a beginner and that they’d have to carry him, and show him their ways.
It was readily apparent that Pete had trouble maintaining an even tempo—a common problem for drummers, speeding up and slowing down and generally not noticing the difference. Stuart was of little practical help: the backbone of a rock group is typically the bass and drums locking together, and both were erratic. Finding a solution, however, also found the Beatles a style. As George said, “We’d often turn around and stamp on the stage, to keep the tempo going right.”12 They actively encouraged Pete to keep hitting the pedal of that big bass drum, boom-boom-boom-boom, because it was the one thing he could do at an even beat. In this way, almost from the start here in Hamburg, the Beatles became all about stamping feet and clapping hands, to generate noise and excitement and keep themselves musically together. “We kept that big heavy four-in-a-bar beat going all night long,” George said.
For Bruno Koschmider, this triggered an unforeseen problem. There was an old woman who lived above the Indra; whether or not she’d been troubled by its transvestite cabaret isn’t known, but it hadn’t disturbed her night’s sleep. The Beatles had three amplifiers and did all this terrible foot-stomping well into the wee hours, and she complained. Koschmider’s Geschäftsführer—day-to-day manager at the Indra—was an older man named Wilhelm “Willi” Limpinsel, and he told the Beatles to cut their volume. Conditions being what they were at the Bambi, their response was two short words.
Though boom-boom-boom-boom suited many of the songs, difficulties arose when the Beatles went for variety. John, Paul and George saw how Pete struggled with other styles and tempos; all they could do was hope it would improve over time. Right now, right here at the Indra, they could get by. They were far from home, having fun, and rocking like they’d never done in their lives.
Every night at 9:45 the house PA broke across whatever was going on, even through the middle of their singing, to announce “Wir machen darauf aufmerksam, dass um zehn Uhr alle Jugendlichen unter achtzehn Jahren das Lokal verlassen haben müssen!” On the first nig
ht, the Beatles looked at one another, wondered what it meant, then carried on; fifteen minutes later, at 10PM, all young people had to show an identity card and those under 18 were made to leave. It was the Ausweiskontrolle, the identification check, and it didn’t take long for the pfennig to drop: kids under 18 were being forced to go, and George was only 17. He did his best to look inconspicuous until the Piedels shouted one–two–three–four! and could carry on stomping.‖
In Hamburg for the long haul, they got to know the St. Pauli quarter like the back of their hands. Its busiest street was the Reeperbahn (literally, “a rope-maker’s way”), home to the majority of the nightclubs, bars, eating-places and the newly opened Top Ten Club; most of the venues had barkers outside to bring in business, men not easily resisted. The main part of Hamburg had townhouses, fine shops and the great Alster lakes, but St. Pauli, the dockside district, was rough, working-class, cosmopolitan, the haunt of gangsters, thieves, prostitutes and pimps, providing entertainment for sailors with a pocketful of back-pay stuffed into their blue bell-bottoms.
Though considered the appendix of the Reeperbahn, Grosse Freiheit (“Great Freedom”) had its own action, and a little way down, on the corner with the Kaiserkeller, was Schmuckstrasse, where transvestite prostitutes loitered in the doorways of still bomb-damaged buildings. All this behavior was tolerated in Hamburg only so long as it was confined strictly to St. Pauli. It was like a separate society. Decent Hamburg citizens kept away and insisted their children did likewise; newspaper reports spelled out the dangers. On September 20, when the Beatles had been there a month, a Grosse Freiheit barman killed a Norwegian sea captain by striking him several times with an ashtray, and the court allowed him to walk free because he claimed self-defense, saying the customer had come at him with a bottle.13
It was this violent. The disaffected, the angry, the sadistic and the cruel gravitated to St. Pauli along with boxers, bodybuilders and embittered war-scarred Nazis, many to become white-jacketed waiters who flew at the chance to put down their tray of drinks and get stuck into a fight. “Troublemakers” were attacked with great brutality and in full view of everyone: there was no attempt at disguise. One common cause of trouble was the Nepp. This was the process by which a mug was parted from his money with vastly inflated drinks bills. Most clubs and bars practiced it, and every trick was used to make the scam as slick as possible, “hostesses” ensuring the punter was properly fleeced … and if he protested, he was beaten up. The Beatles thought Wilson Hall and Grosvenor Ballroom were bad, but they were tea parties, as George would recall:
All the club owners were like gangsters, and all the waiters had tear-gas guns, truncheons, knuckle-dusters. They were a heavy crew. Everybody around that district were homosexuals, pimps, hookers. Being in the middle of that when I was seventeen [laughs] was good fun … [When] the seamen and soldiers came into town they’d all get drunk and inevitably it ended in blood and tears. And tears for the band, too, with the gas in our faces.14
Sex was everywhere, and figured high on the Beatles’ menu. There was no chance they’d match the fidelity demanded of girlfriends back home. And yet, because so much happened to the Beatles in Hamburg—and because, supposedly, every excess was available here so easily—detaching fact from fiction just isn’t possible. As John would reflect in 1980, “There was a lot of heavy boys’ fun when we were in Hamburg, but the stories built out of all proportion—over the years they became like legends”15 … and, after 1980, those legends would grow exponentially. To give just one example, Pete Best—an honest man, prone to understatement rather than exaggeration—has talked of all the Beatles having sex simultaneously at the Bambi Kino, but George, speaking of the unforgettable occasion he lost his virginity, clearly describes John, Paul and Pete being in the room at the same time, in bunk beds, which was a 1961 situation. Accordingly, as unlikely as this is, it appears George managed to go through the entire, extraordinary Hamburg experience of 1960 without having sex, despite the mass of opportunities, a healthy sexual appetite and Stu describing him in print as a Casanova.16
While being cautious of legend, though, it’s clear there was plenty of action—mostly with barmaids and sometimes with strippers. In his own words, Paul got into being a musician “to get out of having a job and to pull the birds,” and here in Hamburg he fulfilled both desires to an unimagined degree.17
Already close buddies at home, the Beatles became very close, tighter than ever, here in Hamburg. There was no privacy and they all witnessed the others in intimate situations. As Paul says, “I’d walk in on John and see a little bottom bobbing up and down with a girl underneath him. It was perfectly normal: you’d go, ‘Oh shit, sorry,’ and back out the room.”18
Then there was Herbertstrasse, where prostitutes draped themselves in windows. Hamburg law stipulated that the street had to be blocked off to passersby, signs prohibiting entry to anyone under 18: every time the Beatles went down there, George had to put up with taunting. Which of them used the whores isn’t known for sure, but all kinds of stories have been written as fact, some of which are probably true.19
For all these reasons, St. Pauli was the perfect place for an ambitious evangelist to preach a few firebrand sermons, to save souls with the words of Jesus. Into Hamburg in September 1960 strode Billy Graham, the Southern Baptist from America, on one of his now-regular international crusades. At the end of one of his rallies, he led a honking motorcade the length of the Reeperbahn and drew to a halt at the top of Grosse Freiheit. Standing on a podium, he looked right down this street of sin, with its neon invitations (as far as that great elephant), taking in its strip clubs, the belligerent drunkards in the bars and the rock and rollers who played for them. “Repent your sins!” Graham commanded them, “Repent your sins!” A brass band played and everyone sang Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. The Beatles were most likely inside the Indra and missed it all (they never mentioned seeing Billy Graham there), but it’s not impossible they were among the crowd described in the Hamburger Echo’s report, the “slightly shivering couples, youths with Caesar haircuts, crash-helmet devotees in leatherneck uniforms and lots of cheerful seamen.”20
• • •
At the opposite end of the scale from all the prostitutes and strippers, the Beatles also began to attract a few ordinary young Hamburg girls, who took a shine to these exotically foreign rockers and became their first local fans. They were nice girls who for one reason or another were in St. Pauli even though most kept away: they grew to love seeing the Beatles at the Indra, though they had to leave at the 10PM Ausweiskontrolle curfew. No other group or musicians here had such followers, only the Beatles; the girls offered a little romance and warmth without giving themselves. One of them, Corri, whose family owned the Blockhütte restaurant next door to the Indra, started going out with Paul; a girl called Monika Paulsen was sweet on George, and she says John was friendly with a girl named Renate, and Pete with a blonde called Helga. “When the musicians wanted sex—or at least more than kisses and cuddles—they could get it elsewhere,” says Monika, “and we were never jealous.”21 Stuart turned down several who came his way, telling a former girlfriend that he found Hamburg girls “beautiful and graceful but lacking in quality.”
Stuart was a prolific writer from Hamburg. In a letter back to Liverpool dated September 22, he hinted the Beatles might be away beyond October (“I expect to be home about Christmas”) and said he planned to leave the group to take up his ATD course in Liverpool in 1961. Of his present position, he wrote, “I suppose a lot of people consider me a fool, but this is a personal escape which I felt was necessary to free me from a lot of uneasyness [sic] …” One who certainly thought Stuart a fool, and told him so, was his tutor Arthur Ballard, who was appalled this most brilliant artist had given up his studies, even temporarily, to go and play silly rock and roll for £15 a week. The pair corresponded regularly.22
When the Beatles weren’t working—Mondays, and in the late hours after they finished (at 1:30, 2 or 3AM)�
��they usually ate, drank and talked or watched music. To begin with, for the first few weeks, the five of them went around together, but Pete then peeled off. He was, they assumed, seeing a girlfriend—he had a long relationship with a stripper—and most of the time they just socialized without him. The real closeness in the Beatles here was felt by the four friends from Liverpool, not five, just as they were around the art school and Institute. Instead of the Cracke it was Gretel und Alfons, instead of being thrown out at half-ten the place only began to get lively after midnight, and instead of some old gent telling you to keep the noise down if you shouted too much, here you just shouted louder.
Booze was plentiful and the main source of revenue in St. Pauli, many customers aiming to get out of their heads as quickly as possible. Foaming beer cascaded from high taps and was guzzled from bottles in rough taverns packed with raucous drunks. The Beatles were at first surprised by and then quickly accustomed to being sent free drinks while playing. A tray of Schnaps or a crate of beer or ersatz champagne would arrive on the Indra’s little stage together with a request to sing a particular song. They usually had to toast their benefactor with a Prost. Performing blotto and belching, farting, chewing, swearing, smoking, drinking and making lewd signs fast became the norm, the way to do it, done six long nights every week. Rapidly, all the stage time they’d ever had was matched and multiplied.
They still had the niggling problem of volume, but every time Limpinsel asked them to play quieter they imagined (or delivered) two fingers. When feeling particularly hard done by they hit on a work-to-rile strategy: if the Indra had customers, the Beatles stood still, barely moving at all, and when the place was empty they jumped around.
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