The longer Wooler spent in the Beatles’ company, the more fascinated he became with them. He saw how John, Paul and George’s humor was as one: they would latch on to something or someone and not let go of it until they’d picked it up, examined it, poked at it and made fun of it, richly, mercilessly, unforgettably and often beyond the point of pain to another. As he would recall, from experience, “The Beatles were terrible when they ganged up on you—all of them, Pete Best as well. Their tongues could be savage.”43
This toughness wasn’t something they reserved solely for irritating outsiders. New to the setup, with no appreciation yet of their histories, Neil Aspinall watched John allow Paul to bully Stu, even though, clearly, the two were close friends. “Paul tilted at him in a way that John couldn’t argue with, rounding on him for being a crap musician—’For God’s sake, Stu, will you practice? You’re dragging us all down.’ ” Neil saw John leaving Stu to fight his own battles—if he wanted to stay in the group he had to handle it, survival of the fittest. Paul later realized how he was cast as the fall guy, that the others left him to voice concerns which, at some level or other, they all recognized. “I felt he [Stu] was holding us back, musically. It was the same with Pete Best. There were very practical reasons for my not wanting Stu in the group, and everyone else knew them and was fully aware, but I was the man who had to say it. It became my role, and if they [the other Beatles] hadn’t wanted it … All these things were group decisions—I was just the tip of the iceberg with Stu.”44
Despite the joy of having Astrid around, it had not been a happy homecoming for Stuart. The terrible experience of being beaten up had been followed by the mother of all rows with Millie over Astrid’s visit; he’d begun to suffer attacks of heartburn and headaches, and had a grumbling appendix, though he’d been unable to get satisfaction from the local doctor; and then the main purpose of his return—his February 23 interview at the art school—went badly. In spite of his four glory-strewn years here from 1956 to 1960, no place was offered to him on the teaching course for 1961–2. Instead, Stuart decided to make Hamburg his home for a while: he’d go back with the Beatles, or earlier if it could be arranged.
Although his bass playing remained, for some, a contentious drag on the Beatles’ musical progress, his artistic influence held strong. Mike McCartney saw him on stage in the Cavern wearing a curious jacket—a collarless design for women, handmade in corduroy by Astrid after the latest Paris design by Pierre Cardin. “The whole audience, including myself, thought he was a bit daft for doing that,” Mike remembers.45 This wasn’t all. Astrid had also given Stu a new hairstyle—combed down, side parted, grease free—as sported by Klaus Voormann after the look first adopted in their circle by Jürgen Vollmer. It was the Paris style, which Jürgen cut for himself because the Hamburg hairdressers were all too square. It’s said the other Beatles laughed at Stu’s new hairdo, and though this amusement gradually subsided, it wasn’t a look anyone rushed to copy.
The Beatles’ Hamburg return continued to focus their minds. When Astrid went home she made personal calls to the Bundeskriminalamt to get Paul and Pete’s ban overturned, and Allan Williams was still doing what he could in Liverpool. On March 1 he sent a letter to the German Consul in Liverpool, providing his assurance that “all the musicians have very good characters and come from first class families, and they have never been in trouble with the Police in this Country”—which, amazingly, was true. A contract with Eckhorn was typed on March 2 by Williams’ secretary, mostly designed to impress the authorities but also as a means of establishing commission payments to reward his involvement. While their handwritten agreement with Eckhorn provided for a nightly payment of DM35 each, Williams was trying to force through DM40, out of which Eckhorn would deposit £10 sterling (about DM120) every week in Williams’ Hamburg bank account. The money would be docked from the Beatles’ wages—£2 (about DM23) apiece—but this way he’d get his commission and they’d end up slightly better off than before. Bob Wooler later related how Paul told him that, whatever the nightly rate, they weren’t going to pay Williams’ commission because they were cutting him out. “Paul said [to me], ‘I suppose you’re going to tell your mate [Williams] about this.’ I said, ‘Too bloody true.’ ”46 (It isn’t clear if or when Wooler did, however.)
The restrictive clause in John’s five-year passport that terminated it after just six months was deleted in the Liverpool Passport Office on March 3, when John went back to India Buildings, Water Street. Finally, Mimi had given her assent to his international travel. The period since his return from Hamburg had been trying for them both. The guitar (from which he would never earn a living) had been diverting and distracting John since 1956, but at least he’d always done something else at the same time: grammar school, then art school. To see the boy brazenly rejecting all talk of getting a job just so he could play in a silly group was very worrying to Mimi. And the hours! Out every evening, barging in during the middle of the night, waking the lodging students, wanting breakfast after lunchtime …
The Beatles made their nighttime debut in the Cavern on Tuesday, March 21. Slowly but steadily, the club was giving way to beat. In addition to Wednesday Rock Nights, Ray McFall had created a second window on Tuesdays. The Swinging Bluegenes weren’t rock but could play it, straddling several styles, including jazz; McFall gave them their own weekly feature, Bluegenes Guest Night, and booked supporting groups at the smarter end of the rock spectrum. The idea was to produce a halfway-house evening, bringing in a variety of music fans. In this respect, booking the Beatles was like admitting the bull into the china shop.
There were difficulties when they arrived. The Cavern doorman this night was one of the regulars, Paddy Delaney, and he knew his instructions: keep out anyone in jeans. He couldn’t believe it when, one by one, the Beatles turned up in jeans, leather jackets and cowboy boots and said he had to let them through because they were playing. He didn’t until he’d properly checked. The Bluegenes didn’t like the look of them either. Lead singer Ray Ennis says, “All the bands tried to be like professionals in the way that they conducted themselves, but the Beatles were smoking. I remember Stu Sutcliffe sitting on the piano facing Pete Best on the drums and he wasn’t even looking at the audience, he just plonked away as though he was totally disinterested.”47
Shortly after this, Stuart returned to Hamburg with his bass guitar and amp and moved back into his room at 45a Eimsbütteler Strasse. John and George planned to repeat his journey only a few days later … but Paul and Pete still couldn’t go. Stuart now joined Astrid in pushing an appeal with the Bundeskriminalamt.
John and George, though, were heading off, and for the second time in seven months Cyn was reconciled to waving John good-bye for an extended absence … though she also agreed to his suggestion of popping over to Hamburg to see him for at least a couple of weeks. Dot would join her, if Paul ever managed to get there. These two girls had been the dazed spectators of a hurricane in the first quarter of 1961. Their boyfriends were busy most nights, very popular and much fancied. Depending on bookings, they might see them only at weekends, and even then just in the daytime. At other hours, the girls were clueless about what their boys were up to, having no idea of what Paul called “the occasional knee-trembler after a gig” or the females who, as John called it, “would be available for functions.”48
John was loafing in the Jacaranda one day when Bill Harry told him he was planning to start a newspaper, like a What’s-On On Merseyside, to cover all aspects of sport and entertainment, including the local poetry, rock and jazz scenes. The title, he’d decided, would be Mersey Beat—named not for its rock content, or to revive memories of the Echo’s now-finished local music feature, but because he envisaged a policeman walking his beat, noting all the events. A Liverpool businessman put up £50 capital and found Bill a little office above an off-license. Bill himself, 22, was still at art school by day, but his girlfriend Virginia Sowry (they’d met in the Jacaranda) was a full-time employee. F
riends through their art school years together since 1957, Bill and John talked easily, and their conversation turned to the word Beatles. John mentioned (probably with a groan) that people were always asking what it meant and how they’d thought of it, and Bill replied—with Mersey Beat in mind—“Why don’t you tell them?”49
So John wrote the history of the Beatles, and because he and George were knocking around together, he was on hand to contribute. John had been happy to let Paul help him write a comic piece or two in 1958, notably “On Safairy with Whide Hunter,” now he allowed George to get involved in what became known as “Being A Short Diversion On The Dubious Origins Of Beatles.”
Once upon a time there were three little boys called John, George and Paul, by name christened. They decided to get together because they were the getting together type. When they were together they wondered what for after all, what for? So all of a sudden they all grew guitars and formed a noise. Funnily enough, no one was interested, least of all the three little men. So-o-o-o on discovering a fourth little even littler man called Stuart Sutcliffe running about them they said, quote, “Sonny get a bass guitar and you will be alright” and he did—but he wasn’t alright because he couldn’t play it. So they sat on him with comfort ’til he could play. Still there was no beat, and a kindly old aged man said, quote, “Thou hast not drums!” We had no drums! they coffed. So a series of drums came and went and came.
Suddenly, in Scotland, touring with Johnny Gentle, the group (called the Beatles called) discovered they had not a very nice sound—because they had no amplifiers. They got some. Many people ask what are Beatles? Why Beatles? Ugh, Beatles, how did the name arrive? So we will tell you. It came in a vision—a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them, “From this day on you are Beatles with an A.” Thank you, Mister Man, they said, thanking him.b
And then a man with a beard cut off said—will you go to Germany (Hamburg) and play mighty rock for the peasants for money? And we said we would play mighty anything for money.c
But before we could go we had to grow a drummer, so we grew one in West Derby in a club called Some Casbah and his trouble was Pete Best. We called “Hello, Pete, come off to Germany!” “Yes!” Zooooom. After a few months, Peter and Paul (who is called McArtrey, son of Jim McArtrey, his father) lit a Kino (cinema) and the German police said “Bad Beatles, you must go home and light your English cinemas.” Zooooom, half a group. But even before this, the Gestapo had taken my friend little George Harrison (of Speke) away because he was only twelve and too young to vote in Germany; but after two months in England he grew eighteen, and the Gestapoes said “you can come.” So suddenly all back in Liverpool Village were many groups playing in gray suits and Jim said “Why have you no gray suits?” “We don’t like them, Jim” we said speaking to Jim. After playing in the clubs a bit, everyone said “Go to Germany!” So we are. Zooooom. Stuart gone. Zoom zoom John (of Woolton) George (of Speke) Peter and Paul zoom zoom. All of them gone.
Thank you club members, from John and George (what are friends).
John saw Bill Harry in the Jacaranda a day or two later and gave him the finished piece, by which time the Beatles were set to zooooom.
The group’s last performance in this period was at the Casbah on Sunday, March 26. They were booked into the Top Ten Club for a month (or maybe two) from April 1—the Saturday of the Easter weekend. What an odd Beatles it would be, though: just John, George and Stu, “The rhythm’s in the guitars—mark II.” Paul would be missed, but they knew enough songs to get by, and his guitar was negligible anyway; the absence of a drummer and drum kit was more of a problem, but they’d deal with it somehow. These were details, not enough to stop them going, just as John’s passport anxieties the previous August wouldn’t have stopped the others from making the trip without him.
John and George were traveling by rail and boat this time, not in Allan Williams’ minibus. The journey would be quicker, despite having to haul their guitars, amps and luggage by hand. They left on Tuesday, March 28, on the last train to London, pulling out of Lime Street ten minutes after midnight and arriving at Euston six slow hours later. After breakfast, and killing three hours before the Harwich train left Liverpool Street, they sailed the North Sea and were speeding through Holland when, back home, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes were getting the definitive thumbs-up from Butlin’s for their second summer season, to begin in June. The train then delivered the two Beatles into the Hauptbahnhof at 3:16AM on Thursday the 30th. They were back in Hamburg.
It was different this time. They had every idea of what was in store, knowing the people, places, food, faces, come-ons, neon, ciggies, cornflakes, cafés, bars, booze, birds, strippers, sex, whores, rockers, sailors, clubs, owners, waiters, truncheons, fists, knives, guns and gas.
And there at the station, despite the hour, were Astrid and Stu—Astrid sleek in a black leather suit, Stu in something very similar. Everything was tight, including the VW Beetle convertible in which she roared them off to the Reeperbahn.
* * *
* Licensed from the King label of Cincinnati. The Beatles also performed the A-side—the energetic “(I Do the) Shimmy Shimmy”—with John and Paul sharing the lead vocal.
† Historically, though inaccurately, the term “Brill Building” has come to define activities in both places, including Aldon Music. Aldon was named after its owners, Al Nevins and Don Kirshner.
‡ Like Penny Lane, Mathew Street is named after a slave-ship captain.
§ It may have been their response to the Wooler-conceived name Stupendous, Stompin’ Big Beat Beatles. It isn’t known if BEATLES ROCK COMBO was still written on Pete’s bass drum head or if it had been removed by now. All 1961 Beatles photos (mostly taken after the spring) show it as blank.
‖ The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Remo Four, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, King-Size Taylor and the Dominoes, the Big Three, Dale Roberts and the Jaywalkers, Derry and the Seniors, Ray and the Del Renas, the Pressmen, Johnny Rocco and the Jets, and Faron and the Tempest Tornadoes.
a There were three arched tunnels at the Cavern. The center was for music and a seated audience; the right had the cloakroom, snack bar and standing room; the left was for standing or dancing. At the far end of the left tunnel, adjacent to the stage, was the tiny bandroom and the nook from which Bob Wooler played records and made his announcements.
b The likeliest spark for “flaming pie” was the Elvis film Flaming Star, which played in Liverpool 12–18 March. Royston Ellis claims he inspired the line (and is therefore the “Mister Man” mentioned) because he accidentally set fire to a chicken pie he cooked for John, Stu and possibly George in the Gambier Terrace flat in June 1960. This seems fanciful and no one else has confirmed it, and Ellis ties it to his claim to have given them the Beatles spelling with the “a”—which has been disproved. Paul says the flaming pie reference was purely “Goon humor and biblical joking, like ‘The Lord said “Come forth” and he came fifth.’ That’s very Liverpool, very much the humor that was going around at the time.” (Author interview, November 7, 1995.)
c The man was Allan Williams. In and out of the Jacaranda when John and George were writing this, he’d just adopted a clean-shaven look for the opening of the Blue Angel on March 22. The article didn’t have a title. “Being A Short Diversion On The Dubious Origins Of Beatles” was added by Bill Harry for publication—it ran on page two of the first issue of Mersey Beat, July 6, 1961, with the byline “Translated from the John Lennon.”
NINETEEN
APRIL–JUNE 1961
PIEDELS ON PRELLIES
Second day in Hamburg, John and George renewed their comradeship with the Krauts—and the Krauts were delighted to have them back.
It was Good Friday, March 31, and the two of them spent several hours relaxing with Jürgen Vollmer and a couple of his friends. They drove the city looking for a bar not closed on this religious holiday and eventually found one in fashionable Mühlenkamp; over beers, they resumed asking J
ürgen about his cool Paris clothes and combed-down hairstyle, and managed to squeeze in a crack or two about his nationality. “There was always a reference to Hitler,” he remembers.1
They were a day from playing with Stu as a drummerless trio … but the two other Beatles were finally on their way, having left Liverpool the instant they received a communiqué from the Hamburg police department. Dated March 28, sent in a pouch to the German Consulate in Liverpool and picked up by Allan Williams on the 30th, this explained that their pardon was temporary and would expire after a year. They were on probation, would have to show their passports at the Hamburg immigration office on arrival, and pay DM195 for expenses arising from their expulsion.
This second Beatles party repeated the journey of the first but two days behind, more quietly and less comfortably. Scrambling onto the midnight train at Lime Street as the whistle blew, Paul and Pete found all the second-class seats taken and ended up in the guard’s van. It was only after an uncomfortable hour that they gate-crashed first-class and spent the rest of the ride to London waiting to be turfed out. When they crawled into Hamburg after twenty-eight hours’ traveling it was the dead of night, no one was there to meet them, they were definitively cold, wet, hungry and exhausted, couldn’t raise anyone at the Top Ten Club and spent several hours shivering in the venue’s turquoise-tiled entry passage with their gear and baggage. Finally, their door-knocking was answered by Tony Sheridan, they grabbed a little sleep, and that night—Saturday, April 1—the five Beatles were back together again to plug in and kick off their second Hamburg season.
They worked much harder this time. In 1960, Bruno Koschmider had them on stage six nights a week, thirty hours in total; Peter Eckhorn made them spend fifty-one hours in the Top Ten across all seven nights and they played for thirty-eight—7PM to 2AM weekdays, 8PM to 4AM weekends, with a fifteen-minute pause in every hour. This was what they’d been hankering for since the turn of the year?
Tune In Page 63
