When They Were Boys (23 page)

 

F
ar away. There are no comforts of home. Sleeping with a flush for an alarm clock. The girls who looked like girls but, wait a minute, why were they so willing? Going “all the way” from the art school and institute to the school of real life. The language was different, but the sex was the same and the Jacaranda man played “pox doctor” every few days. The boys paid a price for sowing their seeds. The so-called keepers of the flame—Paul and Pete as pyromaniacs? Angry thugs force them out as young George gets the boot, and Horst comes to the rescue. John stays under the radar; that's a change. And Stu chooses love over fate.

Rock 'n' roll lives, and the pills keep a-poppin', with a trio of friends on hand to give food, ideas, fashion, and the best four-letter word ever: hope. In the dark alleys and bright stages, they get to know Rory. Rory, who set the pace, and whose own sadness parallels their early triumphs.

Things are sloppy, but so is life among the ruins of drugs, insomnia, and sex, more of the latter than the former.

The music? The boys and girls who wander under the glow of the red lights keep coming back. It's a good sign, but life turns quickly and scary fists and truncheons are close by. The lights go dark for the young Beatles, but fate follows them like an invisible guardian.

When they come back home in self-imposed disgrace and depression, Mama Mona and a curious promoter help save the bitter-cold days of early winter with a trip to a place called Litherland, which can only be remembered as the boys' dramatic and scintillating December Surprise.

CHAPTER SEVEN

HAMBURG PART 1—THE WILD SIDE

“In truth, Allan Williams smuggled us into Germany. No papers.

Nothing legal. And that's the way the first trip ended.”

—Pete Best

“George described it like ‘the black hole of Calcutta.'”

—Louise Harrison, George Harrison's sister

H
OME IN
H
AMBURG WASN
'
T PRETTY
.
So once again, fate and timing enter the boys' world. Fearing the unknown and yet deciding to hurtle toward it, they left school, left their jobs, and made a creaky, pothole-filled journey to Germany. Once again they would soon be convinced that they were failing. But in reality, they were quietly creating a juggernaut—they just didn't know it.

The world is filled with cities that project the sinister aspects of life, and neighborhoods that have little subtlety in their efforts to satisfy sexual appetites. Paris has Montmartre; New York City had 42nd Street; and Hamburg has St. Pauli. The red-light districts of the world have always been a sideshow, and in many cases the show includes drugs and violence and other dangers to the mind and body. It's an irony that the most clean-cut of bands in the British Invasion of 1964 cultivated its raw talent in the seedy surroundings and hostile environment of Hamburg. It is also, as you will learn, somewhat of a minor miracle that the boys survived Hamburg at all.

It was there, also, that they met “the Enforcer,” the “dynamic trio,” and many forgotten lovers. And through long hours and unfathomable conditions, the Beatles, talented and frightened, turned their desperation and their hunger into something that had until then eluded them—an electrifying act. They just didn't know it at the time. In fact, they didn't have a clue. They were too busy playing music, eating sparingly, smoking their lungs out, whoring into the morning hours, and popping prelude [Preludin] pills,
washed down with beer, to keep themselves awake. There was plenty of violence, an occasional fistfight between Paul and Stu, and some later attacks by goons. In fact, if you look at the Beatles in 1960, you might surmise that with all the sex, drinking, and fighting, they may have been the world's first punk rock band. They were so involved in human degradation that it was only when they returned to Liverpool in the late fall of 1960, depressed and disoriented, that they discovered the seedy Hamburg nights, with all the muck and madness, had helped them create a real “act.”

And this discovery came after an intense period of soul-searching, where the very survival of the group was being discussed, and aggressively at that. Think what might not have occurred if the Beatles had not played and grown in Hamburg. Think where the boys might have wound up if not for the experience of their first performances in Germany, and the love/hate dynamic they developed toward the city offering the wildest of opportunity, as they ate, slept, and played in surroundings of mediocrity with such alacrity.

When Rory Storm and the Hurricanes decided to stay and play in the UK for the summer, Allan Williams took the Beatles to Hamburg instead. This first trip was exciting and scintillating because, while the boys were experiencing more work and stage time than they expected, they also traveled a parallel life of dirt, daring, and risk-taking that most ordinary people would find not just breathtaking, but dangerous. Storm would eventually join them in Hamburg in the fall of 1960, but he got top billing, and in comparison, much better lodgings. The sleeping quarters ranged from primitive and creaky beds to lounge chairs, not to mention a close proximity to bathrooms, odor and all. It was hardly the stuff that dreams are made of.

As in all stories of adventure, there are heroes and villains. The primary villain in this case is Bruno Koschmider, the smart and somewhat sinister owner of nightclubs and porn theaters. The hero is “the Enforcer,” a man with much experience—sailing the world at the age of fifteen, becoming featherweight boxing champ of the Hamburg region at the age of twenty, and by his twenty-first birthday, spending nine months in jail for the unintentional killing of a sailor on the streets of the St. Pauli quarter. There is also Allan Williams, a most unlikely manager. And three young
Germans you will meet, a trio better fit for existentialism and the freewheeling beatnik culture than they were for five boys from Liverpool who took a daring, devilish trip into life's ugly underground, and a most outlandish neighborhood.

Today St. Pauli is a thriving neighborhood of homes and condominiums, with an invigorated restaurant district, but it remains synonymous with the sex stores and prostitutes on the Reeperbahn, its most infamous street.

The Beatles made five trips to Hamburg, the last one a brief stop in 1966, several years after they had taken over the music world. Their second through fourth journeys had the greatest impact on their music, but the first, in the summer and fall of 1960, changed their fortunes. They came and they played music, and they played in other ways, and in retrospect they were lucky to get out in good health—or even alive.

Allan Williams describes the boys' first trip to Hamburg as a journey to remember. The king of the Jacaranda had graduated from small-time promoter to hard-drinking darling of the big London talent bookers. After early success in Hamburg with the group Derry and the Seniors, Williams was asked to send over a second group. With Liverpool's hottest group, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, temporarily engaged at Butlin's, a well-known and friendly family campsite back in the UK, he took a risk. He would instead book his self-proclaimed “coffeehouse layabouts,” the Beatles.

As the morning sun shines through the windows of Liverpool's Hard Day's Night Hotel in present day, Williams sips his red wine and recalls how, in the beginning, he decided to help them out. After all, the coffeehouse regulars who painted the bathrooms and cleaned up after hours deserved a break.

B
UT IN THOSE DAYS, THE
B
EATLES WERE THAT HARD UP
. . . . T
HEY HADN
'
T GOT THE TRAIN FARE
. . . . S
O
I
THOUGHT WHEN
I
CAME BACK THAT
I'
D TAKE THEM THERE MYSELF IN THE MINIBUS—THAT WAS A JOURNEY TO REMEMBER
. . . .

T
HERE
'
S ACTUALLY A FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPH
, I
THINK IT
'
S IN MY BOOK, BUT IT
'
S BEEN PRODUCED MANY TIMES
. I
T WAS THE FIRST TIME THE
B
EATLES HAD EVER BEEN ABROAD
. T
HE VAN BROKE DOWN AFTER WE GOT
OFF THE FERRY
. I
T WAS A HORRIBLE TRIP
. A
T ONE POINT, THEY ALL BURST OUT LAUGHING AND
I
SAID
, “W
HAT
'
S THE JOKE
?” R
EMEMBER, THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THAT THEY
'
D EVER BEEN ABROAD
. I
T SEEMS THEY WERE LAUGHING SO HARD BECAUSE
L
ENNON HAD STOLEN A MOUTH ORGAN FROM A MUSIC SHOP, A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT SHOP
. I
THOUGHT
, C
HRIST, THE WAY THEY
'
RE BEHAVING WE
'
RE NOT EVER GOING TO MAKE IT TO
H
AMBURG; WE
'
RE GOING TO FINISH UP IN JAIL WITH THIS
. T
HESE THIEVES
.

John once told me that he loved playing the harmonica, especially at the Shea Stadium concert in 1965. At the time, I never knew that he loved the “mouth organ,” as he called it, enough to steal one and risk arrest on that first minibus journey to Hamburg. Williams, who would later warn Brian Epstein about the alleged dishonesty of John's group, seems even today to have a love-hate emotional connection to the boys. But this author sees it more as love, and an affectionate nostalgia for the rough-and-tumble Beatle boys. If he didn't love them then, Williams certainly loves them now.

When Allan Williams's van finally arrived in Hamburg, nightclub owner Bruno Koschmider brought them to the Indra club, not the larger Kaiserkeller, as planned. Williams was furious.

I
T WAS A STRIP CLUB
. T
HE
B
EATLES HAD ALREADY PLAYED IN A STRIP CLUB OF MINE IN
L
IVERPOOL AND
I
THOUGHT
, “I
DON
'
T KNOW
. W
E DIDN
'
T COME ALL THE WAY TO PLAY FOR STRIPPERS IN
H
AMBURG
.” I
EXPLAINED THIS TO THE GUY WHO OWNED IT
, [
WHO SAID
] “O
H NO, THIS IS THE LAST NIGHT OF STRIPPERS; TOMORROW IT WILL BE A ROCK
'
N
'
ROLL CLUB
.” S
O THEY WERE A BIT PLEASED
. S
O WE GOT AN ACCOMMODATION, WHICH WAS ATROCIOUS
. H
E OWNED A CINEMA
—K
OSCHMIDER—WHICH HE TURNED FROM A CINEMA INTO A NIGHTCLUB
. Y
OU CAN IMAGINE WHEN IT WAS A CINEMA OR A THEATER, THE DRESSING ROOMS WERE AT THE BACK OF THE STAGE AND, OF COURSE, HE HADN
'
T CLEANED IT IN, OH, TWENTY OR THIRTY YEARS
. T
HE DUST WAS ABOUT AN INCH THICK EVERYWHERE
. T
HEY WERE SO GRATEFUL THAT THEY WOULD HAVE SLEPT ON THE FLOOR
. S
O THEY WERE SETTLED IN
.

“Settled in” might have been an exaggeration. In the ensuing four months,
the boys, including newcomer Pete Best, slept near bathrooms, stages, rodents, and sheer filth. The place was called “Bambi Kino.” It remains to this day the Beatles' filthiest memory.

“I never really slept anywhere so horrible,” Pete Best exclaimed to a crowd at the Fest for Beatles fans in New Jersey in 2005.

“You felt dirty, always,” Pete remembered.

“George described it as like the ‘black hole of Calcutta,'” recalls his sister, Louise Harrison.

Promoter Koschmider's “accommodations” resembled the squalor-filled surroundings of child labor in a Dickens novel.

Paul has assorted memories of the storeroom that they called home. “It was awful . . . you might say. No heat . . . some basic beds with no sheets. We were . . . frozen . . . and the room was at the toilet. . . . You could always smell them.”

George was stunned and unhappy. “We did most of our washing in the washbasin in the bathroom. I think that's why we always felt dirty.”

John shared this grotesque memory with me in the mid-seventies: “Knowing that we had to go back to that fucking little house was enough to make you stay and work. Sometimes, after all those little pills, I would be wide awake staring around, wondering if the dirt would cake up inside of me. Sleep was an escape. You shoulda been there, Larry.”

Daily life was a combination of little food, lots of drink, and the obsessions of the boys: rocking hard and sexing hard, not necessarily in that order. There were scenes of decadence that stayed around, for hours and for years, in the vivid memory of one's own flight to danger. In
Fifty Years Adrift
, Derek Taylor's amazing memoir, “editor” George Harrison remembers the perils and sheer terror of life in Hamburg with John Lennon.

“John would go out in Hamburg for nights without sleep. And then we'd be trying to get to sleep and he would come in. One night, he came in and some chick was in bed with Paul and he cut up all her clothes with a pair of scissors and was stabbing the wardrobe. Everybody was lying in bed thinking, ‘Oh fuck, I hope he doesn't kill me.' A frothing mad person, he knew [how to] have ‘fun.'”

Stuart had less of a problem with the vagaries of an unleashed, undisciplined John Lennon, although he would experience his love-hate dynamic later on. Stuart fell in love in Hamburg, real love, which also had some real benefit for the boys. It is no wonder that Stuart's early romance with Hamburg photographer Astrid Kirchherr helped provide an escape from life in the Bambi Kino.