Original subtitles

(host speaking in foreign language)

Downloaded from YTS.MX

(lively music) (crowd cheering)

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

(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.

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- [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.

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- 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.

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- 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)

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- 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)

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- 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.

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- 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)

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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."

(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)

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