When They Were Boys

by Larry Kane

  In Kirchherr’s world, the Beatles have remained a powerful life force. Perhaps to Professor Fallow, she opened up more about that first moment she saw them, before the pictures, before Stuart, before she ever knew what fate and timing had sealed for her.

  I SAW THESE WONDERFUL FIGURES ON A LITTLE STAGE MADE OUT OF JUST LITTLE PIECES OF WOOD AND THEY WERE JUST SCREAMING THEIR HEADS OFF. . . . WHEN THEY USED TO SING THEIR HARMONIES IT WAS SO PERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL THAT I COULDN’T DESCRIBE HOW I FELT . . . AND THEN SINGING IT AND PERFORMING IT WITH SUCH BEAUTY AND SUCH INNOCENCE WAS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING FOR ME. . . . BUT THE FIRST ONE I REALLY ADORED FROM THE FIRST MINUTE I SAW HIM WAS STUART, BECAUSE HE HAD THIS WONDERFUL DELICATE LOOK AND THESE BEAUTIFUL EYES, AND THE WAY HE WAS STANDING ON STAGE—THAT REALLY KNOCKED ME OUT.

  Their romance is the stuff of legends. But beyond everyone else’s description of the young lovers’ personal relationship is their impact on the boys’ lives and career.

  “John was stunned that Stuart stayed in Hamburg to study art, and love this woman,” Bill Harry remembers. “Along with the early photographs, her continuing work made them look inwards. In some ways, they saw her pictures as the real thing, a portrait of how they really were, scared to death but ready to take on the world.”

  Beatles historian Denny Somach says, “The photographs of Astrid Kirchherr will always be viewed as the way people ‘see’ the Beatles in the beginning.”

  In fact, the perception of the Beatles when they played the famous show at Litherland Town Hall, billed as “The Beatles—Direct from Hamburg,” was a reflection of the early Kirchherr work that captured the boys as slim, adorned in leather, and raw with eyes mysteriously haunting and sexy.

  Kirchherr also helped supply, along with Horst Fascher, the Preludin pills to help the Beatles stay awake during those long Hamburg nights. She was close to all of them, but had what she described as a “sweet bond” with George, who wrote more letters to her than the others. Once again, as he has throughout this work, George stands out as the compassionate one. It was George who accompanied, along with Brian Epstein, Stuart’s mother on the airplane to Hamburg to console Kirchherr, and bring Stuart home.

  Kirchherr’s perspective on the Beatles seems oriented toward them more as people, rather than as rock stars. George’s sister Louise has met her several times. She recalls,

  SHE HAD A SPECIAL FONDNESS FOR GEORGE, ESPECIALLY HIS SENSITIVITY AFTER STUART’S DEATH. WE WERE GUESTS AT A NUMBER OF BEATLE CONVENTIONS TOGETHER, AND IT WAS FUNNY BECAUSE INEVITABLY WHEN THE PANEL WOULD ASK QUESTIONS, SHE AND I WOULD INEVITABLY ANSWER WITH EXACTLY THE SAME ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE BEATLES. WE BOTH HAD A SLIGHTLY MOTHERLY, SISTERLY ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE BEATLES, WHILE OTHER PEOPLE SAW THEM AS A PRODUCT. WE TALKED ABOUT THAT TOGETHER. IT’S AMAZING HOW ALL OF THESE OTHER PEOPLE ARE NOT LOOKING AT THEM AS REAL HUMAN BEINGS. THEY SEE THEM AS A COMMODITY. . . . ASTRID AND I FELT, WELL, OBVIOUSLY I HAD THE BIOLOGICAL CONNECTION, BUT SHE HAD ALMOST AS CLOSE AS A BIOLOGICAL CONNECTION. . . . SHE WAS STILL SEEING GEORGE AND THE OTHERS AS REAL, VULNERABLE, DECENT, CARING, HUMAN BEINGS.

  Kirchherr’s impact on the boys did not end in Hamburg. She gladly worked with the Beatles through the years, a quiet inspiration on film, albums, and design—quiet, that is, until the mid-seventies, when stories of her impact started to emerge.

  In the field of photography and design, Astrid Kirchherr had some welcome and warm support, if not competition.

  Her ex-boyfriend, Klaus Voorman, practically became an unofficial member of the band. He was a power on bass guitar, and accompanied the individual Beatles in the post-Beatles era, his most notable appearance being on his friend John Lennon’s legacy song, “Imagine.” He also won a Grammy for his design of the cover of the epic Beatles album Revolver.

  Kirchherr and Jürgen Vollmerr together produced early photographs of the boys that inspired the band, and the fans. And Vollmerr was the inspiration for the boys’ famous early haircuts, although, as you will learn, there are several viewpoints on that.

  But on the Beatles’ first trip to Hamburg, the “dynamic trio,” as I will call them, was an inspiration to the young musicians from Merseyside.

  Style was the centerpiece of the trio’s lives, and a great influence on others.

  Kirchherr was the love of Stuart Sutcliffe’s life, a soul mate who intimately defined a daily life of love and work. She shaped Stuart by designing his clothing, and doing his hair much like hers. The boys laughed at Stu’s newly coiffed locks, a bit longer and sculptured, but they didn’t laugh for long.

  The young woman’s observations of her man and the Beatles, and the dynamic between them all, was fascinating: “John would taunt Stuart, but he loved him.”

  She told Beatles biographer Philip Norman, “When Stu and John had a row . . . you could still feel the affection that was there. But when Paul and Stu had a row, you could tell Paul hated him.”

  Of course, in those days Paul wanted to be bass guitarist, and Stuart was an irritant to him. Although Paul may have had his misgivings about Stuart, about one thing there was general agreement among them all: Kirchherr, through her art, photography, and sense of style, was a force.

  Even Stuart’s sister Pauline will concede her influence, although she wants people to know that this “sweetheart” of a brother had his own powerful convictions about life, love, and art. “He was,” she says, “his own man who made a decision to leave the band, the only early band member who was not pushed out.”

  Jürgen Vollmer, who was along on that first visit by the trio to the Kaiserkeller, was also influential in a way that secured an unusual niche for the original “Fab Five”: John, Paul, Stu, George, and Pete. It was all about the hair.

  Like all Beatles “legends,” there is disagreement and controversy about the hair. Liverpool’s cultural ambassador and Brian Epstein’s friend Joe Flannery insists with great emphasis that John, visiting the Flannery house late one night after a gig, saw a picture of Joe’s mother as a young woman in the 1920s, and that was the pivotal moment. The picture was colored by hand, as was the custom in those days. His mother’s hair, Flannery tells me, “resembled a helmet. . . . The bangs were rather large, and deep down on her forehead.”

  To this day, Flannery, who shared so many moments with the group as Brian Epstein staged their transformation in the early days, is convinced that it was his mother Agnes’s picture that inspired the haircuts.

  “Larry,” he says, looking directly at me. “Larry, the picture was the inspiration. There is no question. It was more than a loving picture of my mother—it was the inspiration. At my flat, John picked up her picture. He looked at it. He admired it and said, ‘That’s the way I want my hair to look.’”

  Flannery adds, “The fact is that Brian took them to Horne Brothers [barber shop] in Liverpool, and one of the barbers created the look. Astrid herself has told me several times that she did not create the cut.”

  In pre-Epstein days, the boys toyed around with various hairstyles, especially Stuart, with Kirchherr occasionally styling his hair in a longer look—a cut that was so ridiculed by the other Beatles that Stuart would sometimes try to flatten down his hair with water. It is ironic that John and Pete, who laughed uproariously, would one day have a stylish cut that would actually change the world.

  The style of their hair was certainly not top of mind when, without telling George and Pete, John used some gift money to travel on vacation to Spain with Paul. They never reached Spain, instead deciding to go to Paris following a letter from Stu, who was living in Hamburg with Kirchherr, stating that Jürgen Vollmer was also headed to Paris. They liked Vollmer. He liked them. There was something adventurously romantic about the avant-garde Vollmer.

  It was the summer of 1961, and Paris was steamy, filled with existentialists like Vollmer, who bedded down in the bohemian Montmartre district, where he cheerily greeted Paul and John. They hung out in an atmosphere of artists, writers, and so-called beatniks who were trying to illuminate the real meaning o
f life’s existence.

  They were also fascinated by Vollmer’s French hairstyle, asking him to cut their hair in the same style.

  “It was a very popular style with the young in France those days,” remembers Bill Harry, describing a flattened-down hairstyle with a fringe in the front.

  Vollmer has his own distinct confirmation. “I gave both of them their first ‘Beatle’ haircut in my hotel room. I gave them the haircut. It was their idea to have it the same as mine. They left Paris, and never brushed their hair back again. That’s the real story of the haircut. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

  And in an interview later, when George Harrison was asked how the Beatles haircut came about, he said, “I only brushed my hair forward after John and Paul came back from Paris.”

  John and Paul enjoyed the trip to Paris, but at a price. George and Pete were angry. After all, they had caused the band to miss several scheduled gigs. The 1961 summer vacation flap almost split up the band. Again, there were talks about dissolving, and in retrospect, a breakup would have happened only months before Brian Epstein entered the scene. But although destructive in one way, the excursion to France cemented a relationship with Vollmer, whose early photographs of the Beatles live on as some of the pictures that helped develop their legend.

  During a 1975 visit to Philadelphia, John discussed his solo album, Rock ’n’ Roll, with me.

  “That is Jürgen’s picture on the cover, Larry. He was the first photographer to capture . . . I think . . . to show what we were all about. No one else [comes] quite as close to what we were all about. I think the photographs tell the story of the kind of attitude we had. And also, I might add, the look in Hamburg.”

  “The look in Hamburg.” It was so critical to the future success. Hamburg brought the boys unbearable conditions, a grotesque setting that allowed them to scream their lungs out and take onstage risks, without worry or concern that they were going over the top, which they did, and quite spectacularly.

  But in the end, it was the relationships that affected them the most—Stu’s love for Astrid, the boys’ fascination with Vollmer, and most of all, the lifelong association with Klaus Voorman, not to mention the protection and friendship of Horst Fascher.

  Voorman could not have known how his stop at the Kaiserkeller that one fateful night would change his life. In their visits to Hamburg, the Beatles and Voorman became inseparable. As time progressed, Voorman designed album covers for them (Rubber Soul and Beatles Anthology), joined them on stage through the decades, and even lived in London with George and Ringo. Inspired by the Beatles, he took up bass guitar and appeared with the individual Beatles at concerts and on records, and most notably played bass guitar on the recording of John’s “Imagine.” Later he became a key member of John and Yoko’s Plastic Ono Band, continuing a close legacy friendship with John. There were even reports after the band’s breakup that Voorman would replace Paul and join the others in a new band. It was pure speculation and juicy gossip—that’s all.

  In addition to his talents and drive, Voorman was “always there,” as John would say, for three of the Beatles—John, George, and Ringo—even during the insecure days.

  Yoko adds, “Klaus was a close friend to us. He is a very sincere man, who John always felt was one of us.”

  During an extended interview with me in May 1975, John talked about his musical friends: “[Harry] Nillson, Klaus [Voorman], George, Elton [John], the Beatles, and so so many more, along the way.”

  Artist. Rocker. Writer. Entrepreneur. Voorman was a renaissance man, but there is one aspect of his life that cannot be measured by levels of performance. In a time of uncertainty, from 1960 to late 1962, Klaus Voorman was a friend, pure and simple, a young man who inspired the five Beatles to stay the course. He gave them a high-spirited lesson in learning how to be more confident, even when they were disheartened and inclined to walk away. That, in itself, was the most important contribution of the dynamic trio.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  FORGOTTEN FRIEND—HURRICANE RORY

  “He was athletic, thin, and dynamically physical. His act made Elvis look tame. For a while, he owned Liverpool and almost all Merseyside.

  But he had a problem.”

  —Jim Turner, legendary Merseyside manager and agent

  “He was very sensitive. A very caring man.”

  —Allan Williams

  “Rory Storm was Rod Stewart before Rod Stewart was Rod Stewart.”

  —Ron Ellis

  THE INIMITABLE RORY STORM. HE GAVE RINGO A HOME.

  Ringo eventually left for the Beatles.

  Allan Williams insists that Storm’s decline began when Ringo left. “He was making progress on his stammer. But when Ringo left, the stammer came back.”

  Along with the Ringo factor, Rory Storm’s life story intertwines with the Beatles in different ways, including a brief but critical interlude, a time when he gave them an important lesson in the art of stage charisma.

  It was just a momentary decision, because, he told friends, the money was better. In a few months he would join up in Hamburg, but in the summer of 1960, the leader of the Hurricanes would take his successful young group to perform at Butlin’s family camp. So, Allan Williams, faced with a brief vacancy, took the Beatles to Hamburg instead. Storm opened the door to Johnny’s boys, who grew to adore him, and to look back at his decision with the minds of individuals who had defied fate, and all of its uncertainty.

  Rory Storm. He was a star who helped pave the way for the biggest stars, but he really didn’t know it at the time.

  Alan Caldwell was his real name. Like Jim Turner, the manager and operator of a large talent and entertainment agency who helped develop his career, he was a “steeplechaser” in his youth, a runner, with slick moves. In fact, the two competed, and vigorously. Caldwell was a definitive athlete. His legs could move on ground, and in swimming competitions. In the water, he glided through the lanes to victory. Although he had a speech communication problem that was barely tolerated during his time, young Alan Caldwell betrayed his disability by expressing himself with his extraordinary physical ability. Speed was his power, and breathless, he took home trophy after trophy.

  The charismatic Storm used his physical attributes well, and sometimes dangerously. In Hamburg he competed with the Beatles to see who could crack a precarious wooden stage at the Kaiserkeller. Jumping up and down, the uproarious Storm caused the stage to collapse. Along with Richie Starkey’s drum set, Storm vanished below the stage. Engaged in unbridled laughter, the Hurricanes and the Beatles joined together for a morning meal, interrupted by Bruno Koschmider’s goons, who beat them up. Storm also was a man of daring delights—jumping into a swimming pool at the end of a song, falling once through a glass skylight, and fracturing his leg when he fell near a balcony at the famed Majestic Ballroom in Birkenhead.

  From the time he joined the rock revolution, his verbal limitations, marked by a bad stutter, were quickly overshadowed by a gyrating, scintillating body that would make the girls moan and the boys scream for more. Given his physical abilities, he was a perfect onstage tutor to the boys, both at the Cavern and in the dirty nightclubs of Hamburg. They played on the same stages, and his influence on their animalism and sense of the audience was unlimited.

  Friend and former manager Jim Turner sentimentally recalls two people in one body. “He had this stage panache . . . he out-Elvised Elvis. His eyes were James Dean blue. . . . He was daringly handsome and he reeked sex appeal. The music was pure dynamite, and he was electricity personified in a body. As long as he was singing and dancing and shaking, he was okay. But when he began a conversation, his personality changed. He became a second personality, filled with fear, and terrified of the reaction.”

  Allan Williams fondly remembers Hurricane Rory.

  “He was very sensitive . . . a caring man. But he didn’t show it on stage. There, he seemed fearless.”

  Fellow rock man Billy Kinsley of the Merseybeats thought that if
there was fear, Rory Storm never showed it.

  RORY STORM DIDN’T HAVE THE BEST VOICE IN THE WORLD, IT WAS A BIT RAW, BUT AS A SHOWMAN THERE WAS NO ONE LIKE HIM. IN THE SIXTIES, HE WAS SO DYNAMIC, THE WAY HE MANEUVERED ACROSS THE STAGE. HE WAS SO ATHLETIC AND TRIM AND HE HAD MORE GYRATIONS THAN ELVIS OR JERRY LEE. IF YOU WANT TO TRY TO PICTURE, THINK OF ROD STEWART. ACTUALLY OVER THE YEARS, ROD STEWART HAS REMINDED ME SO MUCH OF RORY. DID HE AFFECT ALL OF US? NO QUESTION. HE MADE US MORE DARING, OR WILLING TO BE MORE DARING. IT’S JUST HIS SPEAKING THAT POSED A PROBLEM.

  Stuttering or stammering, still difficult, remains out in the open in the modern day. It is a disability. But in the fifties and sixties, it was difficult to overcome. Rory could sing without hesitation, but speaking was anguishing, especially in his later careers as a deejay, salesman, and water-skiing instructor, all three jobs where clear communication was a prerequisite.

  Former manager Turner, a Liverpool regular who at one time managed the Odd Spot Club, a local favorite, remembers the dilemma: “He was so confident, but the confidence went away when he started talking. It was so much of a contrast. Either way, he was likeable, and loved by his loyal friends, but it was difficult to connect with strangers, so difficult. It’s one of the saddest things, Larry, because although he was insecure, he brought so much joy to people.”

  “Rory was a favorite, after the group disbanded, as a deejay at bar mitzvahs and school events. I booked some of them,” recalls Southport’s Ron Ellis. “He was easy to work with and the kids loved him. So did the parents. But, internally, he was a sad man. It is an irony because in his day, he was so electric on stage, his voice was so unique, he took so many physical risks, that, in effect, Rory Storm was Rod Stewart before Rod Stewart was Rod Stewart.”