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Home , Apple Boutique, Bob Wooler, Brian Epstein, Brian Poole, George Martin, Gerry and the Pacemakers

KOCK HOD ROIL 1 HALL OL LAME

The Beatles

istorically s p e a k i n g , t h e b i r t h o f t h e Be a t l e s h a s b e e n group to the paper: "Many people ask what are Beades? Why, Beades? Ugh, traced time and again to Saturday afternoon, July 6th, 1957, at the Beades, how did the name arrive? So we will tell you. It came in a vision - a S t Peter’s parish garden fete in , a suburb. Sev- man appeared on a and said tinto diem, 'From this day on you are enteen-year-old was performing there with a group of Beades.’ 'Thank you, Mister Man,’ they said, thanking him.” school chums who called themselves . They were a T he Beades also caught the eye o f influential locals like the D J , product of the craze - a fad inspired by the primitive wash­ who convinced Ray McFall, owner of die Cavern dub, to book die combo. In board-band sound of ’s hit "” — but theyJuly 1961 the Beades, reduced to a four-piece when Sutcliffe returned to Ham­ displayedH a pronounced bent. Watching the Quarrymen was burg to paint and be with his girlfriend, commenced their legendary lunch-time fifteen-year-old guitarist Paul McCartney, who was introduced to the band cpccinns at the Cavern. That’s where a curious , a record mer­ afterward. W hat broke the ice between the more mature Lennon and the chant and entrepreneur from an affluent Liverpool family, caught up with the cocky McCartney was their mutual enthusiasm for an song. group - and was instandy smitten. Epstein was simply being thorough when he As Paul told biographer Hunter 0avie.s, "I showed them bow to play entered the dank, overheated cellar; a regular customer at his shop had request­ '’ and told them all the words----- I remember this beery ed a 45 of "” by a band called , which Epstein had nev­ old man JJohn Lennon] getting nearer and breathing down me neck as I was er heard of. (Actually, the Beades were only backing up singer Tony Sheri­ playing. 'W hat’s this old drunk doing?’ I thought. Then he said 'Twenty dan on the song.) Here was his chance. Epstein came away with a little more Flight Rock’ was one of his favorites. So I knew he was a connoisseur.” than he had bargained for: he had become the Beatles’ manager, officially Musically speaking, however, the Beatles’ origins should probably be signing a contract on December 13th, 196|||pj|: traced back to the day in 1954 when first stepped into Sun Epstein actively pursued a record deal for the Beades. He transformed the Studios. It was Elvis who inspired Lennon, and youth throughout the U.K., group’s image from scruffy (battered black leather) to dapper (matching gray with his pioneering fusion of country and R&B. As Lennon’s aunt Mimi business suits), but he left the music intact The trademark Beades haircuts had Stanley recalled to , the author of Shout, after Lennon heard preceded Epstein; they were a byproduct of Lennon and McCartney’s trip, after "” in 1956, "I never got a minute’s peace. It was Elvis the summer at the Cavern, to Paris. There they had bummed around Mont­ Presley, Elvis Presley, Elvis Presley. In the end I said, 'Elvis Presley’s all martre, playing the part of struggling ar­ very well, John, but I don’t want him for breakfast, dinner and tea.’ ” In­ tistes. They returned to with the , born October doors, John studied Presley’s records. Outdoors, he observed Liverpool’s infamous "French cut” 9th, 1940, Liverpool, Eng­ street toughs dressed in the Teddy-boy vogue - pompadoured red hair and A t Epstein’s urging, au­ land; died Decem ber 8th, tight jeans - sporting an attitude that suggested style could be the currency ditioned the Beades in . Afidi 1980, New York C ity. where money was scarce. And the sound of that style was rock and roll. man Mike Smith was impressed, but he P aul M cCartney, born June For McCartney rock and roll meant, on the one hand, and was in a position where he could sign only 18th,1942, Liverpool, . his rollicking, uninhibited approach. On the other hand it meant the Everly one band: he had just auditioned two, both George H arrufon, born Feb­ of which he liked. H e decided to go after a Brothers and their gender, country-inflected harmonies. (McCartney once ruary 25th, 1943, Liverpool, London-based group, and the tried to get his brother Mike to form an Everlys-style duo with him.) Given E n g la n d . Tremeloes. Rebuffed, Epstein declared that T fnnnn and McCartney’s teenage enthusiasm for American music, it seems Ringo S tarr (R ichard Star- the Beades would one day be bigger than El­ fitting that the Beades would skyrocket to international stardom and trigger key Jr.), born July 7th, a worldwide youthquake once they set foot in the United States. vis. M ost record execs laughed. com­ 1940, Liverpool, England. The journey that resulted in the Beades’ triumphant arrival at Kennedy bos were on the way out, they said; solo Airport on February 7th, 1964 - where a mob of unprecedented proportion singers were coming back in. launched what would become known as - began in Liverpool in In April, of EMI- granted the Beades an audi­ 1958. Apart from regulars Lennon and McCartney, the band had a fluctuat­ tion. "There might ju st be something there,” Martin thought, and he offered ing membership and assorted names, including Johnny and the Moondogs them a deal that summer. At that time, , a well-regarded drummer and the Silver Beades. Lennon, McCartney and company had abandoned with and the Hurricanes, was brought in to replace , skiffle for straightforward rock and roll, which they performed, often for no whose loyal fans rioted upon hearing news of his dismissal Although the Beat­ pay, in local coffee shops, strip joints and halls. The group was gener­ les’ first single, " M e D o” backed with "P.S. I Love You,” made only a ally a five-piece. , a serious student of the guitar and a Q uar­ brief Top Twenty appearance, by the beginning of 1963 the group was on its rymen follower, was absorbed into the group because he knew how to play; art way, with the release of ",” to winning over the U.K. student , the bassist while McCartney was still on guitar, owed his Ip 1963 the Beatles decisively conquered England. They were charming, membership to his resemblance to James Dean, whom Lennon dug. mischievous, bright and spontaneous. They offered disarmingly simple rock The band didn’t have a steady drummer until 1960, when handsome and roll that relied on unfettered spirit as much as craft. Their first LP, Pete Best joined them. Soon after, they were lured to , Please Please M e, went to Number One in three weeks; "I Want to Hold Germany, hungry for any break, and the wilds of the district Your Hand” sold a million copies in three days. By the end of the year the Looking for a permanent name, Sutcliffe suggested "the Beetles,” after London Sunday Times music critic Richard Buckle declared Lennon and ’s Crickets, and Lennon amended "Beet” to "Beat.” The McCartney "the greatest since Beethoven.” choice was an appropriate one because it was Holly’s work that had inspired Until then, America had not been impressed. , EMI’s Lennon and McCartney to write their own songs. American division, allowed both "Please Please Me” and "” In the rough-and-tumble Hamburg bar scene, the Beades relied on musical to be licensed to the smaller labels Vee Jay and Swan. By December, and chemical energy to make it through nighdy marathon sets. They began to though, Capitol, hounded by Epstein and haunted by the Beatles’ British attract upscale German beatniks - called Exis after their embrace of existential­ success, pushed up the release of "I W ant to Hold Your Hand” to the day ism - as well as die Reeperbahn riffraff. It was their training in seedy Hamburg after Christmas. Five weeks later it was Number One. basements that made the difference upon their return to Liverpool. There they The Beatles arrived in New York City in February 1964 amid a mer­ became the toast o f , a fanzine published by another of Lennon’s art- chandising whirlwind. They were heralded by and even school mates, Bill Flarry. Lennon himself contributed an "explanation” o f the The New Yorker. It became instandy clear that these overnight stars were not INDUCTEES

mere teen-mag fodder. They were clever, as the press corps quickly discov­ per’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is a measure o f the extent to which the Beades’ ered, and they had strong personalities and opinions. And while America saga merged with the retelling o f pop cultural history. Sgt. Pepper was recalled was digesting year-old material, the group was already starting to push back not merely as the Beades’ creative apotheosis and as a watershed for rock but as the boundaries of what pop could sound like. a symbol, even the catalyst, for the Summer o f Love. People could remember understood what was happening. "They were doing things no­ where they were when they first heard it, how they felt, what drug they were body was doing,” he has remarked. "Their chords were outrageous, just outra­ taking, the ways in which the music changed them. The ’s success had geous, and their harmonies made it all valid. . . . Everybody else thought they confounded conventional pop wisdom: the Beades had withdrawn from the were for die teenyboppers, that they were gonna pass right away. But it was ob­ public and become more popular than ever. Sgt. Pepper melded elements o f four vious to me that they had staying power. I knew they were pointing the direc­ distinct personalities - Lennon’s add-tinged stream of consdousness, McCart­ tion where music had to go.” Dylan himself soon picked up an electric guitar. ney’s music-hall melodies, Ringo’s pub-mate amiability, George’s icy mysticism The Beatles grew as and as stars when they should have start­ — into a singularly audacious work. W ith George M artin’s savvy production, the ed to become obsolete. In the summer of 1964 their ability to win over group stretched studio technology to its limits. skeptics was underscored by the reception the establishment press accorded Yet something had ended for the Beades. As the Summer of Love drew A Hard Day’s Night, a film in which I^ingo in particular demonstrated an af­ to a close, Brian Epstein was found dead in his London town house and the finity for acting. "This is going to surprise you,” the critic Bosley Crowther Beades were finally on their own. Paul organized the , a warned his readers in The New York Times. "It may knock you right out of TV special conceived as a cross between a British holiday excursion and a your chair - but the new film with those incredible chaps, the Beades, is a few days on the bus with the Merry Pranksters; George penned some suh- whale of a comedy. . . . I wouldn’t have believed it either if I hadn’t seen it versively psychedelic tunes for the film Yellow Submarine. Near the end of with my own astonished eyes.” 1967 the Beades opened up the short-lived and in January The Beatles’ legacy as a concert attraction in this period is distinguished of 1968 formed a company called Ltd. - an attempt, as John primarily by the staggering prices they could command and the size of the put it, to see "if we can get artistic freedom within a business structure.” arenas they could fill - being the m ost obvious example - at a This flamboyant enterprise quickly became the stuff of legend on staid Sav- time when rock and roll was not presented on such a scale. Because of poor ile Row. The more serious business at hand, however, was the release in acoustics, inadequate equipment, the circuslike atmosphere and the sheer November 1968 of The Beatles, a double-album package better known as the exhaustion of performing live, the Beatles turned their back on the stage af­ White Album. It was raw and sprawling, a highly personal, often oblique ter their American tour in the summer of 1966. By then they had already in­ document of the Beades’ dissolution. It was also a revelation in terms of dicated that they were outgrowing even concert halls. George’s growing songwriting prowess. , released in ’65, and R evolver, released the following year, T he Beades were leading increasingly separate lives. John globe-trotted with couldn’t be re-created live by the quartet alone. Discussing Revolver, McCartney in pursuit of world peace; Paul retreated to his form with his new has remarked, "These are sounds that nobody else had done yet . . . I mean wife, Linda; Ringo parlayed his ingenuous charm into a series of film roles; nobody . .. ever.” The Beades were making , not just long-playing rec­ George delved into the music and philosophy of India. L e t I t B e, recorded in ords to showcase a couple of hits; they approached as pop art - 1969, was intended to reunite the Beatles by recalling the spirit that first which meant the old standards for popular music were rendered null and void. brought them together. But the project was temporarily shelved, and the more The record industry had to face artists with careers, not just hits; radio had to polished , recorded later, preceded it into the marketplace. When consider albums on which each song was given equal weight; the audience had L et I t B e finally reached the public, this attempt to look back fondly had become to face the challenge o f a rock and roll that had become musically expansive, a farewell. On April 10th, 1970, Paul McCartney announced his departure lyrically sophisticated and difficult to pigeonhole. from the Beades, and the group quiedy came to an end. Though the Beades were influenced by Dylan, the Byrds, the San Fran­ W hen John Lennon recorded his solo album later that year, cisco groups, even , they gave away as much as they re­ he declared, in a bid to restore the Beades to human size, "The dream is over.” ceived. It was as if an invisible line of communication had been stretched W hen John was shot down outside his apartment building in New York City in across the Atlantic, allowing the most daring of artists to react as one to the 1980, the world mourned the man and celebrated his music The magnitude of musical and social turbulence that surrounded them. The Beades, though, the response to his death suggested that the dream he spoke of was something were always at the center of the experimentation. coundess people shared, something they had all imagined together. And it is The reaction, in the summer of ’87, to die twentieth anniversary of Sgt. Pep­ something that comes to life every time they hear a Beades song. ■ © ROCK AND ROLL 1 HALL OF FAME THE STAR CLUB STORY By Siegfried Loch

EST GERM ANY^ THE In M arch 1962 the city of Hamburg start of the Sixties: D a s was plastered with posters announcing Wirtschaftswunder was in full that the Star Club would open on Fri­ swing, and the war babies day, April 13th. O n opening night the were bored with the music kids lined up for half a mile to see six of their parents. The W est bands, including the Beades. GermanW pop-music market was totally The Beades had been in England, dominated by German-language record­ but Stu Sutcliffe had decided to stay in ings. Even international hits could suc­ Ham burg with his German girlfriend, ceed only in German versions; such art­ Astrid Kircherr, and study art at the ists as Paul Anka and Connie Francis local university^He died of a brain had hits with German re-recordings of hemorrhage the day before the group their songs. The rock and roll of the Fif­ returned to Hamburg. Despite their ties in its original form was obtainable sadness, the Beades gave one of their only in specialty record stores that carried best performances The band imported discs. In 1958, Bill Flaley and played the club four times a night for a His Comets had embarked on a tour of period o f six weeks. It was during this W est Germany, but the Berlin Sportpa- period that Brian Epstein, upon re­ last was trashed by hooligans at one turning to London, sent the band a show. The incident was used by officials telegram: "Congratulations boys, EMI as an excuse to ban American rock and request recording session. Please re­ roll horn the concert halls and from the hearse new material.” government-controlled radio stations. It was also at this time that the But lads found an alternative by listening Beatles played some of their original to the BFN and the AFN, the British Forces Network and die American Forces material for the very first time in public. The rest is history. In August, Network, which beamed the beat of the new international music drummer Pete Best was fired, and Ringo Starr joined the group. On Sep­ Hamburg was the biggest seaport in Europe, and its red-light district, the Ree­ tember 11th, George Martin produced the Beatles’ first single, "Love Me perbahn, was Europe’s sin city. It was in 1960 that the Reeperbahn started to attract Do,” backed with "P.S. I Love You,” which was released on October 5 th in young English musicians, most of whom came from Liverpool and the U.K. on the Parlophone label. , two young English rock and rollers, first appeared in Hamburg in a When the Beades returned to Hamburg on November 1st, they had com­ small dub called the . Soon two other small striptease joints, Studio X pletely changed their image. Their dirty, scruffy jeans and leather jackets were and the Indra Club, were converted into rock and roll dubs. It was on August 17th, replaced by neat suits, ties and white shirts. But their performances were as 1960, at the Indra Club, that the five Beatles — P a d McCartney, John Lennon, abandoned as before. George Harrison, Pete Best and Stu Sutcliffe - played Hamburg for the first time. The Beades’ third and final Star Club engagement was the last two weeks of But Tony Sheridan had already established himself as the king of the strip, and he 1962. The Star Club had become a Mecca for young English bands, a place was the first on the scene to get a where they could work under professional conditions in front o f enthusiastic au­ Sheridan was probably also the first map who saw the Beatles’ potential. diences. Performers like the Searchers, , the Swing­ The next time the Beades came to Hamburg — to play at ing Blue Jeans, Ian and the Zodiacs, Alvin Lee, and the Under­ — Sheridan invited them to be his backing group for his first recording ses­ takers learned their trade by playing in Hamburg. sion for Polydor, in May 1961. They recorded more than a dozen songs, in­ The Star Club also booked the stars who had inspired those musicians. Gene cluding "Ain’t She Sweet” and "My Bonnie.” Vincent appeared at the club in May 1962, backed by the Outlaws, whose guitarist By now, Ham burg was ready for something bigger. T he music needed more was Ritchie Blackmore. Bill Flaley, Litde Richard, , , space to expand. At this time, Manfred Weissleder came into the picture. The , Chubby Checker and followed. To celebrate the first former electrician had the idea of changing the Reeperbahn into a family anniversary of the club, Weissleder booked Ray Charles. H e allowed only a few amusement quarter (a mission at which he ultimately foiled). H e happened to hundred of the club’s regulars into the show, which he considered the greatest like American rock and roll; he therefore liked the English musicians playing night in the history of the Star Club, next to the opening night. In a year, the the Hamburg clubs, because, without exception, they copied their American he­ dub had become a must for rock stars visiting Europe; it would soon be the roes. Weissleder bought the old Stem Kino ("Star Cinema”), a movie theater most famous rock and roll club in Europe. next to a church in the of the Reeperbahn district, and turned it into a Soon after the club opened, I was able to convince both Manfred Weiss­ T he place had a capacity o f 1200, a proper stage, good lighting — in leder and that live recordings should be made at the Star Club. short, it was for superior to the clubs most young rock musicians were used to. The first recording released as an album was called Twist at the Star Club; it fea- R O C K 4 « D ROLL 1 H 4 L l OF F 4 M E

tured Tony Sheridan, the Searchers, the Ratdes (Germany’s most popular rock and roll band) and with the Nashville Teens. Some critics have called it one o f the best live rock and roll albums o f all time. In 1964, Star Club Records was launched as a label with releases by many o f the Star Club house bands, including the Ratdes, Lee Curtis, the Liverbirds, Ian and the Zodiacs and Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes. It was a constant struggle to keep the dub open, because die more popular it became, the more dty officials used every trick in the book to dose it down. Moreover, by 1964 many of the early English rock and roll bands had become international superstars, and the limited capadty of the place didn’t allow the management to be competitive with other concert promoters, who were by now able to present bands in community concert halls. Nonetheless, the d ub contin­ ued to attract new English groups on the edge of stardom, induding die Spen­ cer Davis Group, the Walker Brothers, , the Small Faces, Manfred Mann, the Nice and Yes. and Mike Kellie spent a long time in Hamburg as part of the VIPs and returned to the Star Club as , giving some brilliant performances. In 1967, Manfred Weissleder left the Star Club in the hands of a former man­ ager. This was the beginning of a slow death. The old spirit returned only occasion­ ally. Both and Cream played the dub a number of times before they reached international stardom. O n December 31st, 1969, the Star Club presented its last rock concert It be­ came a striptease joint, like die rest o f the neighboring establishments. The building had been empty for four years when it finally burned down in 1983. The church next door is still open, waiting to save the occasional sinful souL ■ English rock and roller Johnny KU d

L ittle Richard in perform ance a t the S tar Club in 1962 ROCK AND ROLL 1 HALL OF LAME

The S tar Club becam e a M ecca fo r young English bands, a place where they could work under profes­ sion al conditions in fron t o f enthusiastic audiences.

The Searchers played the S tar Club after the success th ereof th eir fellow Liverpudlians the B eatles.