How Hamburg changed The Beatles forever
The Fab Four may have been born in Liverpool, but they were made in Hamburg. While venues like The Cavern Club certainly played their part, The Beatles had a hard time finding reliable gigs elsewhere in the city. That’s what Germany offered: a chance for them to hone their stage and songcraft with a nightly residency. Here, we’ll be exploring how the group’s trips to Hamburg and their experiences in clubs like The Star and The Indra opened up a world of possibility, introducing the young members of the Silver Beatles – as they were then known – to the wonders of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.
The Beatles arrived in Hamburg on the evening of August 17th, 1960, for the first of 48 consecutive nights at a small club called The Indra. They were leaving rubble at home for rubble abroad. Like Liverpool, Hamburg had been decimated during the bombing raids of the Second World War. Indeed, more bombs were dropped on Hamburg in a single weekend than on London during the entirety of the Blitz. The city that emerged in the years after the war was one of vice and criminality. In other words, the perfect place for young men longing to escape their hometown.
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best had a Liverpudlian businessman and music promotor called Allan Williams to thank. Williams had already successfully sent Derry and the Seniors to Hamburg, where the group were enjoying huge success. Hoping to build on this momentum, he decided to send another group to Germany. His first choice was a blues outfit called Rory Storm and The Hurricanes, for whom Ringo Starr was drumming for at the time. However, The Hurricanes were already booked for shows at a Butlins holiday camp, so Williams approached The Silver Beatles instead.
The offer didn’t need much consideration; it was an opportunity where there had previously been none. Indeed, when the owner of The Indra offered the boys a regular spot at his club, they jumped at the chance. Of course, when they arrived in Hamburg, the reality of their situation became abundantly clear. “We lived backstage in the Bambi Kino, next to the toilets, and you could always smell them, Paul later said of their accommodation. The room had been an old storeroom, and there were just concrete walls and nothing else. No heat, no wallpaper, not a lick of paint, and two sets of bunk beds, with not very much covers—Union Jack flags—we were frozen.”
The Indra paid The Beatles 30 Deutschmarks a night for a seven-hour gig lasting until the early hours of the morning. McCartney would later describe the band’s experience in Hamburg as “800 hours in the rehearsal room”. The intensity of their workload bred a need for artificial stimulants, and it wasn’t long before The Beatles were popping amphetamines on a nightly basis, with some (i.e. Lennon) taking more than others. “The waiters always had these pills [Preludin], so when they saw the musicians falling over with tiredness or drink, they’d give you the pill,” McCartney later said of his first experience of ‘prellies’. “You could work almost endlessly until the pill wore off, and then you’d have another.”
The band’s regular seven-hour sets meant there was a near-constant need for new material. This engendered a strong work ethic that would stay with the band until their dissolution. New songs were being written every day, allowing the band to finesse and experiment with their sound and expand their setlist. “We had to play for hours and hours on end,” Lennon said of that time. “Every song lasted twenty minutes and had twenty solos in it. That’s what improved the playing. There was nobody to copy from. We played what we liked best, and the Germans liked it as long as it was loud.”
But the rumble of Rory Storm and The Hurricanes was even louder. Prior to the Hurricanes’ arrival, The Beatles had been told to pull their socks up “because Rory Storm and the Hurricanes are coming in, and you know how good they are. They’re going to knock you for six.” In the end, the band’s arrival proved equally pivotal, introducing The Beatles to drummer Ringo Starr at a time when they were desperate to replace their absentee drummer Pete Best.
After securing residencies in other clubs around Hamburg and exploiting the free and easy atmosphere of “the naughtiest city in the world,” as Harrison put it, The Beatles managed to get themselves deported, the guitarist having previously been sent home for underage drinking. Harrison turned 18 back in Liverpool, and the group returned to Germany in March 1961, by which time Sutcliffe and his girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr had managed to secure the group a 92-night residency at the Top Ten Club.
Upon their return to England in the autumn of 1961, they were spotted by a Liverpool record store owner called Brian Epstein, who, recognising the group’s commercial potential, made their manager and began sending their recordings to British music companies like EMI and Parlophone. By the time the group landed their second stint at The Star Club, they were performing with Ringo Starr, having successfully ejected Pete Best. Things were hotting up, and it wouldn’t be long until London came calling. To this day, Hamburg remains proud of the role it played in shaping The Beatles. In fact, if you go to the city’s old red light district, you’ll find a small club with a sign reading: “Indra — where the Beatles played first”.
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