{"id":943,"date":"2010-08-09T09:50:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-09T16:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2010\/08\/the-beatles-come-to-hamburg-again.html"},"modified":"2010-08-09T09:50:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-09T16:50:00","slug":"the-beatles-come-to-hamburg-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2010\/08\/the-beatles-come-to-hamburg-again.html","title":{"rendered":"The Beatles Come to Hamburg (Again)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost exactly 50 years ago, the Beatles came to Hamburg’s tawdry Reeperbahn district and, dressed mostly in black leather, transformed themselves into the best rock band in the world. Later this month, a group of American indie rockers will play the band’s old club, the Indra, to commemorate the raw, fast, very early Beatles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Named for an X-rated movie theater where the Liverpudlians stayed when they first hit town, Bambi Kino<\/a> is made up of\u00a0drummer Ira Elliot from Nada Surf, bassist Erik Paparazzi from Cat Power, guitarist Doug Gillard from Guided by Voices, and guitarist Mark Rozzo from Maplewood. (Here<\/a> they are playing “Slow Down” at the Bowery Ballroom, by the way.)<\/span>

<\/span>
[Update: Bambi Kino plays at Taix in Echo Park on Saturday, Oct. 9, which would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday.]<\/span>

<\/span>
Rozzo — a gifted writer I know from the journalist trenches, who is so talented can forgive his wrong-headed advocacy of Paul over John — spoke to the Misread City about the band’s upcoming gig.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What did the Beatles sound like during their Hamburg period and what were their shows like?<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Well, they actually evolved a lot during the 28 months they went back and forth between Liverpool and Hamburg.\u00a0 They started August 17, 1960, at the Indra as a five-piece band with a bass player (Stuart Sutcliffe) who could barely play and a drummer (Pete Best) who hadn\u2019t even been in the band a week.\u00a0 (His big audition number was \u201cShakin\u2019 All Over,\u201d by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates.)\u00a0 They ended New Year\u2019s Eve 1962 at the Star Club with Paul on bass, Ringo on drums, and their first single (\u201cLove Me Do\u201d) climbing the British pop charts.\u00a0 (They were, in fact, pretty bummed to be in Hamburg during that crucial time, but the residency had been booked by Brian Epstein months before.\u00a0 These are the shows captured on the famous Star Club bootlegs.)\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
It\u2019s pretty easy to get an idea of their sound through various bootlegs, audition tapes, and the backing they did with Tony Sheridan in Hamburg in the summer of 1961.\u00a0 It was, to quote John Lennon, \u201cstraight rock\u201d \u2013 a pretty raw and pounding sound.\u00a0 In fact, they seemed to set out to be the loudest, rawest band anyone had ever heard up to that time.\u00a0 But that\u2019s really selling it short.\u00a0 It was quite a mix of rock and roll, R&B, rockabilly, and the odd standard (\u201cSeptember Song,\u201d \u201cOver the Rainbow\u201d), and as time went on they became better and better at showcasing the individual members and, as they went into 1962, started streamlining their sound, in response to some of the newer music coming out of Motown.\u00a0 It\u2019s as if the old 50s tailfins were coming off the chassis.\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n
<\/a><\/div>\n
But the Hamburg shows are famous for the Beatles\u2019 response to the German encouragement to \u201cmach schau\u201d \u2013 to make a show.\u00a0 So they did all kinds of wacky stuff, like playing sets with toilet seats around their necks, stretching out \u201cWhat\u2019d I Say\u201d for half an hour, having a contest with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes (Ringo\u2019s band) to see who could be first to destroy (literally) the stage at the Kaiserkeller club.\u00a0 (The Hurricanes won.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
How did you and others recover these songs and the way they were played… Do recordings exist?<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Many recordings of the Beatles exist from the period of 1960 to 1962, which we\u2019ve claimed as our Bambi Kino turf.\u00a0 You can begin with the home recordings done at Paul McCartney\u2019s house at 20 Forthlin Road in the spring of 1960, which includes early versions of \u201cOne After 909\u201d and \u201cI\u2019ll Follow the Sun,\u201d along with covers like \u201cMatchbox\u201d and \u201cHallelujah I Love Her So,\u201d which they would play for years.\u00a0 Next would be the Tony Sheridan sessions recorded in Hamburg in the summer of 1961, with Paul now playing his trademark Hofner bass.\u00a0 (Think \u201cAin\u2019t She Sweet.\u201d)\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Then there\u2019s the disastrous audition for Decca Records on January 1, 1962, which gives an idea of the Beatles\u2019 almost too-broad set list, which by this time literally ran into hundreds of songs.\u00a0 They did their first BBC broadcast early in \u201962, and then the tests and sessions for EMI at Abbey Road that year, a recording for Granada TV at the Cavern in August of \u201962 (just a day before John Lennon got married and not long after Ringo joined; you can hear the crowd yelling out \u201cWe want Pete!\u201d), and then the Star Club bootleg, from December of 1962.\u00a0 The first LP, \u201cPlease Please Me,\u201d was recorded February 11, 1963, so that gives a good idea of what the band sounded like and what they were playing in 1962.\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
But what really interests me for Bambi Kino is the material that never got recorded, which includes anything from Ricky Nelson\u2019s \u201cLonesome Town\u201d to Duane Eddy\u2019s \u201cRamrod\u201d to the aforementioned \u201cOver the Rainbow,\u201d which they modeled off Gene Vincent\u2019s rockabilly-ballad version.\u00a0 Many of their set lists have been documented and they do total up to hundreds of songs; I couldn\u2019t tell you the exact number.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
What were Hamburg and the Reeperbahn like in the early ’60s?<\/p>\n

<\/i><\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Hamburg was then all of 15 or 16 years out from being leveled by an Allied bombing raid.\u00a0 I believe it was then perhaps the largest port in Europe.\u00a0 But much like today, the city had an educated, bourgeois population despite the gritty reputation.\u00a0 It was no accident that the Beatles\u2019 first avid fans were so-called \u201cexis\u201d \u2013 self-styled existentialist art students from middle-class backgrounds, most famously embodied by Astrid Kirchherr (Sutcliffe\u2019s beautiful photographer girlfriend) and Klaus Voorman (who would go on to play bass with Manfred Mann and collaborate with various Beatles on various projects).\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Then as now, the Reeperbahn was the most notorious sex district in Europe.\u00a0 The Beatles used to like walking down the walled-off Herberstrasse, where prostitutes still hang out of windows in states of undress and fire squirt-bottles full of urine at women who dare enter.\u00a0 Many of the young Beatles\u2019 fans and friends were drawn from the local population of sex workers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/a><\/div>\n
This is kind of a below-the-radar indie supergroup… What was the thinking in putting the band together?<\/p>\n

<\/i><\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
We didn\u2019t want to be a traditional tribute band that dresses up, does all the mannerisms, plays everything note for note. \u00a0That can be a fun experience, but sometimes you end up paying more attention to the haircuts and boots.\u00a0 I liked the idea of drawing great musicians from great American bands; musicians who have made albums and written songs and toured and generally had experiences of being actual musicians.\u00a0 Musicians with personality and creativity to bring to the project.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Everyone has a favorite Beatle. For these gigs you play guitar — George’s instrument — but you are a dedicated Paul guy. What draws you to him over the others?<\/p>\n

<\/i><\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

Remember, John Lennon also played guitar.\u00a0 And Paul McCartney played guitar in the band until the spring of 1961 (and then, of course, later on many Beatles recordings).\u00a0 We don\u2019t do role-playing in the band (I know, it sounds like SM), so each of us might sing songs originally sung by John, Paul, George, Pete, or Ringo.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>

<\/span>
I\u2019m not sure I\u2019m a dedicated Paul guy.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think I\u2019d ever say that, but I\u2019d always gravitated toward him for whatever reason.\u00a0 I think when I was younger my singing voice most closely matched his and I do think he\u2019s a melodist of a very high order and quite obviously the most capable and complete musician in the band.\u00a0 He was essentially the Beatles\u2019 musical director and the way I\u2019ve said it before is that McCartney is a musical genius while Lennon was a pure artist.\u00a0 In Bambi Kino, I sing many more John songs than Paul songs.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have the top of my range that I used to have (remember:\u00a0 Little Richard sang \u201cLong Tall Sally\u201d in F and McCartney raised it up a notch, to G!) and, since I play guitar, there\u2019s something more organic about singing John\u2019s stuff.\u00a0 (Although, just to get annoyingly technical, John\u2019s and Paul\u2019s vocal ranges were much more closely matched than most people assume.)\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>

<\/span>
And yet\u2026 oddly enough, when Maplewood was opening for America on some shows last month, a lady came up to me after we played and said, in a mega Jersey accent, \u201cYou remind me of Pool McCawtney!\u201d\u00a0 Um, OK.\u00a0 Not that I see it!<\/span>

<\/span>
Photos show Sutcliffe and Harrison up top, George, Paul and John below.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Almost exactly 50 years ago, the Beatles came to Hamburg’s tawdry Reeperbahn district and, dressed mostly in black leather, transformed themselves into the best rock band in the world. Later this month, a group of American indie rockers will play the band’s old club, the Indra, to commemorate the raw, fast, very early Beatles. Named […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[163,171,220,38],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-943","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-60s","7":"category-beatles","8":"category-germany","9":"category-rock-music","10":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}