Hamburg Clubs – The Birthplace of British Beat?

Former circus clown, fire-eater, and war veteran Bruno Koschmider, a small, pugnacious club manager from Hamburg, Germany, wanted to book rock ‘n’ roll groups to satisfy the many, high-spending American GIs who regularly attended his clubs during their leave in the city.

The Americans wanted to hear English-speaking rockers, not German imitators, but importing bands from the United States would have been prohibitive. So Koschmider (pictured below) looked to the UK.

Not knowing how to book bands through formal channels in Britain, he made a few enquiries, learned that the 2i’s coffee bar in Soho (London) was the “in” place, flew to London, and wandered round to Old Compton Street.

There he met a young man called Ian Hines, who told him that he was the leader of a band. Koschmider booked him on the spot.

Hines, a keyboard player, didn’t have a group at all, but he quickly gathered some friends: Tony Sheridan (guitar, vocals), Del Ward (vocals), Ricky Richards (guitar), Colin Milander (bass) and Pete Wharton (guitar). Taking the name The Jets, they became the first British rock band to make the foray into Hamburg. The year was 1960.

Koschmider’s hit-and-miss booking methods brought him another group, this time from Liverpool. By accident, a local Mersey club owner, Allan Williams, heard that Koschmider was looking for bands and offered to send him some Liverpool groups.

First off was Derry and the Seniors, but the long hours and low pay didn’t appeal to other bands, who turned the work down. In desperation, Williams booked The Beatles (a group he did not rate highly). The Seniors were furious and wrote to him saying that such a pathetic group would queer the pitch for other bands.

The Seniors were playing at the Kaiserkeller, a decent enough place, but Koschmider initially put The Beatles in a dump of a club called the Indra further along the Grosse Freiheit (pictured below) in the notorious St Pauli red light district.

By playing long hours, the British groups became more polished and their repertoire more extensive. The experience abroad seemed to transform some groups, and they returned to Liverpool with a new dynamism.

They also seemed more worldly-wise after having lived for several months in a city where sex was freely available, bars were open 24 hours a day, and stimulants such as preludin could be bought in chemist shops.

The Jets, The Seniors and The Beatles were only three of many groups that made the journey to Hamburg.

Other acts included Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Searchers, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Billy J. Kramer, The Swinging Blue Jeans, Freddie and the Midnighters and Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes.

“The first time we went to Hamburg we stayed four and a half months,” recalled Paul McCartney. “It’s a sort of blown-up Blackpool, but with strip clubs instead of waxworks; thousands of strip clubs, bars and pick-up joints, not very picturesque.”

“The first time it was pretty rough, but we all had a gear time. The pay wasn’t too fab, the digs weren’t much good, and we had to play for quite a long time. The club was a small place called the Indra and was owned by the proprietor of the Kaiserkeller, where we also played.”

The Beatles’ first trip to Hamburg ended when Koschmider called the police after accusing the group of trying to burn down his cinema, the Bambi, where they slept. The real reason for his wrath, however, was that the Beatles had been lured away to a rival club, the Top Ten.

Located on the Reeperbahn, it had been opened by Peter Eckhorn, who offered groups a better deal and more money.

Tony Sheridan fell in love with the city and stayed when The Jets returned to London. He became resident singer at the Top Ten and The Beatles were among the groups who backed him.

The Mersey bands dubbed him “the teacher” because he was an excellent guitarist, and John Lennon and Gerry Marsden both copied the way he held his guitar. The Beatles, of course, later recorded with Sheridan.

Although Hamburg did much for Mersey bands, the benefits flowed both ways.

The groups had been booked to provide background music in small clubs and were not originally considered attractions.

Suddenly, however, kids from all over Hamburg began pouring into the St Pauli district to hear the Liverpool groups.

They gave a new character, a more youthful and robust vitality, to a part of Hamburg that had previously been noted only for its seedier side.

This development did not go unnoticed by an enterprising club owner named Manfred Weissleder (pictured below), who decided to open a club specifically for rock’n’roll enthusiasts in 1962.

The Star Club would become as famous in Germany as The Cavern was to become in Britain. After his first visit there with The Midnighters at the end of 1963, Freddie Starr reported how “the German audiences accept anyone from Liverpool as their own, and we had a fantastically friendly reception”.

In addition to British groups, Weissleder booked a host of American acts who were flying to Europe to appear at US bases. These acts included the Everly Brothers, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Bill Haley, Ray Charles, Little Richard and Bo Diddley.

The club quickly gained a reputation as the city’s most popular club.

The Star was open from 6 pm üntil 4 am on weekdays, and on Saturdays it opened at 4 pm and closed around 6 am on Sunday. Each group generally played for two hours each evening.

The programme for 24 September 1963 gives a good idea of the type of fare offered:

• 6 pm – Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes
• 7 pm – Mark Peters and the Silhouettes
• 8 pm – Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers
• 10 pm – The Rattles
• 11 pm – Kingsize Taylor
• Midnight – Mark Peters
• 1 am – Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers
• 2 am – Cliff Bennett
• 3 am – The Rattles

Groups were attracted to The Star because they received more money for fewer hours’ work. Weissleder treated them with respect, too – booking them into comfortable hotels, lending them money if they ran short and seeing to their welfare.

The music scenes in the two cities grew closer. In February 1964, 200 patrons of the Star Club spent a weekend in Liverpool. They visited the Cavern and took in an all-night session at the Iron Door. In November, a Cavern party visited Hamburg and saw Tony Sheridan’s act at the Star Club.

Friendships were forged on a more personal level. too. Stuart Sutcliffe, the Beatles’ bass player, stayed in Hamburg to study art and had a relationship with Astrid Kirchherr, who later married Gibson Kemp, the drummer who replaced Ringo Starr in the Hurricanes.

Klaus Voormann, a student, was inspired to become a musician; with Kemp he formed Paddy, Klaus and Gibson (pictured), the first Liverpool-Hamburg band.

He also achieved fame later, as the designer of the Beatles’ Revolver sleeve.

Les Chadwick of The Pacemakers, Brian Griffiths of the Big Three, Bobby Thomson of the Dominoes and Kingsize Taylor all married Hamburg girls, and many British musicians, including Sheridan. Lee Curtis and Taylor, lived in Hamburg for several years.

Adrian Barber also remained. A former member of the top Liverpool band Cass and the Cassanovas, and lead guitarist with the Big Three, Yorkshire-born Barber became stage manager at the Star. A veritable electronics genius, he designed space-age amps for the Beatles and other Liverpool groups. These amps, 6 feet tall and painted black, were quickly nicknamed ‘coffins’.

Barber installed a new sound system at the club and recorded most bands that played there.

Manfred Weissleder soon became the most important figure in the Hamburg scene. Just as Ray McFall of the Cavern built a recording studio, had a stake in the MerseyBeat newspaper, and managed groups, Weissleder recorded bands, launched the Star Club News, acted as agent for groups such as The Rattles (pictured below), and promoted shows throughout West Germany.

But the good times didn’t last. In Liverpool, McFall overstretched himself and went bankrupt, while in Hamburg, Weissleder got into difficulties and had to close the Star Club,

Attempts to revive the Cavern and the Star ended in failure in the Seventies; but by then their place in the story of rock was secure –  as was that of the cities in which they flourished.