The Beatles (39 page)

Upon arriving in Hamburg, the Beatles felt an impulse to appear “professional,” which in England meant well groomed. Eager to look the part, they had taken dress cues from the natty Johnny Gentle, who had impressed upon them the importance of “looking sharp” onstage, and in their own way the Beatles proffered a version of sartorial grace. Dressed in matching lilac-colored sport coats draped over black shirts with a silver stripe on the collar, black slacks, and clay-colored, imitation-crocodile, pointy-toed shoes, or winkle-pickers, they looked more like a Cuban nightclub act. Pete Best, who—perhaps mercifully—joined too late to benefit from the sporty makeover, came up with his own black attire and an Italian navy blue jacket, which put him in the general vicinity of their inelegance.

To their credit, the band never felt self-conscious in the suits, but after playing in them seven nights a week—sweating buckets in them, stretching them out, ripping them,
punishing
them—the inevitable happened: they began to stink and give way at the seams. In place of proper tailoring, the Beatles took them to the Indra’s bathroom attendant, a stocky, sixty-year-old woman named
Rosa Hoffman
, known to one and all as simply “Mutti,” who made emergency repairs during intermissions. But eventually that, too, proved futile, as in no time the fabric had decomposed and the matching clothes “went by the board.”

New suits were out of the question. There wasn’t enough money to spare and, anyway, the whole image suddenly seemed tired—especially in
Hamburg, where the dress code reached new levels of informality. Thanks to Tony Sheridan, who had always gone his own way, the Beatles were introduced to the Texas Shop, at the top of the Reeperbahn, where they found sleek black leather bomber jackets—Luftwaffe, in this case—and hand-stitched cowboy boots. It was exactly the dark, uncompromising image they’d been looking for—part rebel, part street tough, and wholly in tune with the hard-driving music they were playing. Except for Pete, who preferred to play in shirtsleeves, they each bought an outfit and wore them onstage that same night, making an immediate impression.

The new look showed the influence of the more hard-nosed American performers, Gene Vincent in particular. Moreover, their haircuts (or lack thereof) refined this image—a longer, fuller style that crept over their collars and shook loose during long, raucous jams, but not so long that it would induce hostility, let alone an uproar. The Seniors took notice of the changes but didn’t know what to make of them at first. “
We thought they were a pretty scruffy bunch
,” recalls Howie Casey, who, along with Derry Wilkie, initially rejected the Beatles’ streetlike approach. But within days, the Seniors felt awkward in their “cheap, junky suits with bagged-out knees and the asses all slack,” so, says Casey, “we bought jeans and stuff rather than fight what we must have known was the coming trend.”

Somehow the new incarnation motivated the Beatles to play even harder, if that were even possible. They really turned it on—and up—squeezing all they could out of the two tiny Truvoices that pumped out their sound. It wasn’t unusual for Pete Best to crawl into place behind his drum set, only to have John or Paul whisper, “
Crank it up, Pete
, we’re really going for it tonight.” Neighbors complained about the noise, which seemed preposterous, considering the district’s reputation. But because of the Indra’s secluded location, on the perimeter of the Grosse Freiheit, there were residents within earshot. Girlie shows hadn’t disrupted their lives, but the din of rock ’n roll posed real problems.

Normally, Koschmider would have ignored the complaints or used his influence with the police to have them quashed. But the neighbors were mostly elderly, not the least of whom was a widow who lived upstairs and claimed that the music was making her sick. Reluctantly, Bruno ordered the Beatles to tone things down—
the “most absurd request
they’d ever heard.” No one took it seriously enough to reduce the volume. But the requests, friendly at first, turned intense. Day after day, the police fielded increasing complaints and leaned on Koschmider to comply. Finally, Koschmider had had enough, and in one audacious stroke he closed the Indra.

Ordinarily, this would have spelled doom for the Beatles, but Koschmider wasn’t about to lose his new star attraction. (Besides, they had a month left on their contract.) Instead, he offered the young Liverpudlians the opportunity to share the Kaiserkeller stage. They could alternate sets with Derry and the Seniors, who had another week left on their contract. Koschmider outlined the plan to John, hoping to convince the Beatles of its merits, but it proved an easy sell. The Kaiserkeller meant a bigger stage, better sound, wilder crowds, and, hopefully, lighter hours. As far as John and the Beatles were concerned, they were movin’ on up.

In fact, it was the beginning of the end.

Dismissing Rory Storm in the early sixties was easy. Unlike the performances of Kingsize Taylor or the Big Three (the reconfigured Cassanovas, sans Cass), the Hurricanes were all flash, with none of the slashing intensity that raised the other bands’ emotional stakes another notch or two. They weren’t exquisitely disciplined like Gerry and the Pacemakers or rhythmically precise like Derry and the Seniors. Although Rory was dubbed “
Mr. Showmanship
” by local promoters, evidence suggests that his shows were forgettable, the band a muddle of instrumentation. George Harrison, writing from Hamburg, dismissed the Hurricanes in a single word: “
crumby
.” Rory, he reported, “does a bit of dancing around but it still doesn’t make up for his phoney group.” (“The only person who is any good in the group,” George noted, “was the drummer,” a wiry, bearded lad named Ringo.)

Even so, from the moment they arrived to replace the Seniors, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes were treated like outright stars. A sign outside the Kaiserkeller heralded their engagement in large, striking letters, with a postscript—“
und
the Beatles
”—buried feebly below.
By all accounts, they were paid more
than either the Beatles or the Seniors and were given greater flexibility. They also inherited Derry’s living quarters at the side of the Kaiserkeller stage.

To the Beatles’ credit, the billing mattered naught. Nor were they concerned with the material perks, content that, come what may, they could “
blow these guys off the stage
.” They actually liked the Hurricanes, having often spent hours in Liverpool with them, hanging out, bullshitting in the Storms’—or rather, Caldwells’—crowded parlor. Stormsville (as Rory
insisted on calling his home) was Liverpool Central to the local musicians.
Vi Caldwell, or Ma Storm, as she called herself, kept Paul in cigarettes
when he was broke, which was nearly always, and made John and George “chick butties”—chicken and butter sandwiches, a Scouser staple. George had casually dated Rory’s sister, Iris, considered “
the prettiest girl
in the neighborhood,” since 1959, and for a brief time later Paul would court her in a more serious way. Each of the Hurricanes was regarded fondly by the Beatles. Charles “Ty Brien” O’Brien and Wally “Lu Walters” Egmond, who played lead and bass, respectively, were amiable guys and a wellspring of new songs, having introduced “Fever” and “Summertime” to the communal
repertoire
. Johnny Byrne talked incessantly about rock ’n roll, and John, Paul, and George listened: the more obscure and esoteric the topic, the more enthusiastically they responded. They were friendly, even flattering, toward Rory; moreover, John, who relished tormenting anyone with the slightest handicap, resisted repeated opportunities to ridicule the severely stuttering Rory. In fact, the only Hurricane who eluded the young Beatles (aside from George) was Rory’s drummer, the hound-faced, self-mocking jester from the Dingle named Ritchie Starkey, whom the band fondly called Ringo.

From the opening night on October 4, 1960, the two bands commandeered the Kaiserkeller stage with a red-hot, rough-and-tumble force. For more than seven uninterrupted hours, the bands churned out a string of high-octane rockers that left the capacity crowds in a sweaty, beer-soaked frenzy. “
Every night was another amazing jam fest
,” recalls Byrne. “The music got everyone so cranked up and the whole place just shook, like Jell-O. It was a solid mass of bodies. You couldn’t see through the smoke. Fights would break out on the dance floor or in the seats, and these huge glasses would be flying every which way. The bouncers all had truncheons. If there was a sailor on the floor, you’d see them lay into him, kicking him. And Koschmider would run up, screaming: ‘Don’t stop the music! Play on!’ ”

And play on they did. Every night it got louder and longer—seven o’clock in the evening until five in the morning. “Marathon sessions,” as the two bands mutually termed them, with a “very friendly rivalry” serving to fatten the stakes. If Rory delivered a solid rendering of “Blue Suede Shoes,” John countered with his own crack version; Wally would warble “September’s Song” and Paul would squeeze the sap out of “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin.” One of the Hurricanes recalls how Paul threw them a curve one night by belting out “Bama Lama Bama Loo.”
“
It was such an incredible number
, it just buried us,” he says. “We spent the entire next day at a record store in Hamburg trying to come up with something powerful enough to top that.” There was no letup—and no downtime. If a musician needed a bathroom break or got dehydrated and stopped for a sip of water, Koschmider angrily waved him back onstage, demanding a full ensemble at all times, as stipulated in their contract. “
I pay five men!
” he’d shout, turning red in the face.
“Mach Schau! Mach Schau!”

“It got very funny out there, very fast,” says Johnny Byrne, who helped ignite the appreciable hijinks. “I used to egg John on and he’d swear down the mike, in English, assuming the audience couldn’t understand him. He’d say, ‘Go on, you fucking Krauts, you fucking ignorant German bastards!’ It was all we could do not to piss ourselves.” Other nights Paul performed in a bedsheet. Emboldened, George draped an old, yellowed toilet seat around his neck and goose-stepped across the boards. Word spread through Hamburg that the Beatles were
verrückt
—crazy—their shows insanely unpredictable. In a moment of typical abandon, John paraded jauntily onstage in a pair of “scabby” swimming trunks, selecting a choice moment to moon the unsuspecting audience. According to Pete Best, “
There was a stunned
silence, then the place erupted… [with] people banging bottles on the tables, jumping up and down.”

Onstage, however, that was about as wild as things got. There was lots of clowning and immature antics, obnoxious jokes, the occasional outburst. A musician remembers John picking a fight with a drunken sailor who heckled him from the dance floor—“
the guy tried to climb up
onstage after Lennon offered to flatten his nose”—before the waiters hustled the culprit outside. For years, stories circulated about how the Beatles did horrible things while playing at the Kaiserkeller. Several scenarios were concocted by Allan Williams, who dined out for years on tart, black commentary about the boys, John in particular. But eyewitnesses indicate that wasn’t the case at all. They were simply undisciplined kids away from home for the first time, engaging in as much rude behavior as they could get away with.

Of course, that was fueled in no small way by a constant liquid diet. Everywhere in Hamburg, beer flowed like water, but nowhere was it as copious and affordable as in the Kaiserkeller, where the bands drank for free. To working-class Scousers, free beer was a jackpot, “
like winning the lottery
.” First, being paid a decent wage to play rock ’n roll, and now downing beer as a job benefit! They could hardly believe their good fortune.

Like the Seniors before them, the Beatles went on a bender from the moment they unpacked. Hardly an hour went by without a beer of some
kind. Mostly, they feasted on the cheap watered-down variety, which came in little stubby bottles, and later, after one of the musicians slipped Bruno Koschmider’s Danish cellarman a few extra bob, “
he fixed [them] up
with the good stuff.” During those first weeks in Hamburg, they drank as much as quickly as possible, not believing it would last. One after the next, they downed bottles, fortifying themselves through the overheated sets. And after a series of hard, raunchy numbers, when the dance floor was jumping, club patrons would send drinks up to the stage, big trays balanced with foaming steins that the band was expected to chug. “
German customers would say
, ‘You must drink, boys, you must finish the drink,’ ” Pete Best recalled, “and there’d be some sessions, especially at the weekend, when the drinks were coming up faster than our playing.”

Musicians had to be careful about what and whom they refused in St. Pauli. In some cases, fear replaced common sense when they were offered yet another round of drinks, especially when it involved the club owners or their associates who were regarded—and rightly so—as violent “gangsters.” Paul McCartney remembered how the
mobsters “would come in late at night
… and send a little tray of schnapps”—called
doppelkorn
—“up to the band,” demanding that they drink it down straightaway. At first, the Beatles were reluctant, desperately trying to talk their way out of it without offending anyone, but it was hopeless and certainly not worth provoking a confrontation. “There were gas guns and murderers amongst us, so you weren’t messing around here,” McCartney recalled. “So we’d drink the schnapps and they’d occasionally send up pills.”

The pills, of course, were amphetamines. They were available over the counter in the form of diet pills, called Preludin, and favored by overweight housewives, but most were repackaged for recreational use by the German underworld, which controlled the market with an iron fist. “Prellies” and Purple Hearts, another form of speed, were the drugs of choice on the Reeperbahn. Within the next three years, they would be joined by virtually the entire line of narcotics, with Hamburg eventually becoming the gateway for heroin into Russia. But during the Beatles’ stay there, it was limited to speed and just about every musician put it to good use.