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Kaiserkeller
Kaiserkeller is a music club in the St. Pauli quarter of Hamburg, Germany, near the Reeperbahn. It was opened by Bruno Koschmider on 14 October 1959. The Beatles had a contract with Kaiserkeller to play there in 1960. History A Caribbean steel band that had played at Allan Williams' The Jacaranda club in Liverpool took an offer to play in Hamburg. After receiving letters enthusing about Hamburg's club scene, Williams made contact with Koschmider, offering to act as a booking agent, to which Koschmider agreed. Koschmider had previously booked Derry and the Seniors after seeing them perform in London, and as they were successful in Hamburg, he asked Williams to look for additional groups.Cynthia Lennon – “John” 2006 p76 Rory Storm and The Hurricanes were Williams' first choice, but as they were committed to a season at a Butlins holiday camp, they turned his offer down, as did Gerry & The Pacemakers, so Williams sent The Beatles to Hamburg instead.Spitz 2005 p202 They were ...
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Indra Club
The original lineup of the Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best regularly performed at different clubs in Hamburg, West Germany, during the period from August 1960 to December 1962; a chapter in the group's history which honed their performance skills, widened their reputation, and led to their first recording, which brought them to the attention of Brian Epstein. The Beatles' booking agent, Allan Williams, decided to send the group to Hamburg when another group he managed, Derry and the Seniors, proved successful there. Having no permanent drummer at the time, they recruited Best a few days before their departure. After breaking their contract by playing at another club, Harrison was deported for being underaged, and McCartney and Best were arrested and deported for attempted arson. The Beatles first met Astrid Kirchherr in Hamburg, who was instrumental in their adoption of the mop topped Beatle haircut. During their period in ...
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Astrid Kirchherr
Astrid Kirchherr (; 20 May 1938 – 12 May 2020) was a German photographer and artist known for her association with the Beatles (along with her friends Klaus Voormann and Jürgen Vollmer) and her photographs of the band's original members – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best – during their early days in Hamburg. Kirchherr met artist Stuart Sutcliffe in the Kaiserkeller bar in Hamburg in 1960, where Sutcliffe was playing bass with the Beatles, and was later engaged to him, before his death in 1962. Although Kirchherr shot very few photographs after 1967, her early work has been exhibited in Hamburg, Bremen, London, Liverpool, New York City, Washington, D.C., Tokyo, Vienna, and at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. She published three limited-edition books of photographs. Early life Kirchherr was born in 1938 in Hamburg, Germany, and was the daughter of a former executive of the German branch of the Ford Motor Company. Dur ...
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Pete Best
Randolph Peter Best (né Scanland; born 24 November 1941) is an English musician known as the drummer of the English rock band the Beatles who was dismissed immediately prior to the band achieving worldwide fame. Fired from the group in 1962 after playing drums as a Beatle for the previous two years in Germany and England, he started his own band, the Pete Best Four. He later joined and started many bands over the years. He is one of several people who have been referred to as a fifth Beatle. Best's mother, Mona Best (1924–1988), opened the Casbah Coffee Club in the cellar of the Bests' house in Liverpool. The Beatles (at the time known as the Quarrymen) played some of their first concerts at the club. The Beatles invited Best to join the band on 12 August 1960, on the eve of the group's first Hamburg season of club dates. Ringo Starr eventually replaced Best on 16 August 1962 when the group's manager, Brian Epstein, fired Best at the request of John Lennon, Paul McCart ...
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Bruno Koschmider
Bruno Koschmider (1926 – 2000) was a German entrepreneur in Hamburg, best known for employing the Beatles in the early 1960s. He controlled various businesses, such as the Bambi Kino, which was a cinema, the Indra club and the Kaiserkeller. Personal life Koschmider was born in 1926 in Danzig (Gdańsk) and died in 2000 in Hamburg, Germany. The Beatles Allan Williams booked the Beatles (in May 1960) into Koschmider's Indra club.Miles. p56. The Beatles first played at the Indra club, while living in small, dirty rooms behind the movie screen in the Bambi Kino cinema. After the closure of the Indra, they played at the larger Kaiserkeller, also owned by Koschmider.Miles. pp. 57–58. In October 1960, they left the Kaiserkeller to work at the "Top Ten Club",Cynthia Lennon, ''John''. p93. which was run by Peter Eckhorn.Miles. pp. 71–72. When Paul McCartney and Pete Best went back to the Bambi Kino to get their belongings they found it in total darkness.Miles. p72. Attaching ...
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Klaus Voormann
Klaus Otto Wilhelm Voormann (born 29 April 1938) is a German artist, musician, and record producer. Voormann was the bassist for Manfred Mann from 1966 to 1969, and performed as a session musician on a host of recordings, including " You're So Vain" by Carly Simon, Lou Reed's ''Transformer'' album, and on many recordings of the former members of the Beatles. As a producer, Voormann worked with the band Trio on their worldwide hit " Da Da Da". Voormann's association with The Beatles dates back to their time in Hamburg in the early 1960s. He lived in the band's London flat with George Harrison and Ringo Starr after John Lennon and Paul McCartney moved out to live with their respective partners. He designed the cover of their 1966 album ''Revolver'', for which he won a Grammy Award. He also designed the graphics for the sheet music of songs from Revolver. Following the band's split, rumors circulated of the formation of a group named the Ladders, consisting of Lennon, Harrison, S ...
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Rory Storm
Rory Storm (born Alan Ernest Caldwell; 7 January 1938 – 28 September 1972) was an English musician and vocalist. Born in Liverpool, Storm was the singer and leader of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, a Liverpudlian band who were contemporaries of The Beatles in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Ringo Starr was the drummer for the Hurricanes before joining the Beatles in August 1962. The Hurricanes were one of the most popular acts on the Liverpool and Hamburg club scenes during their existence, although their attempt at a recording career was not successful. They released only two singles (and one additional compilation track) during their early 1960s heyday, and none of their material made the charts. Their second and final single was a version of the ''West Side Story'' song "America", and was produced by the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein. Early years Rory Storm was the stage name of Alan Caldwell, born 7 January 1938, in Oakhill Park Estate, Stoneycroft, Liverpool to ...
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Allan Williams
Allan Richard Williams (21 February 1930 – 30 December 2016) was a British businessman and promoter who was the original booking agent and first manager of the Beatles. He personally drove the van to take the young band to Hamburg, Germany, in 1960, where they gained the vital show business experience that led to their emergence on the world stage. Williams was also a promoter and agent of a number of other Liverpool rock acts, helping stoke the Merseybeat boom of the early 1960s. Ancestry and early life Williams was born in Knowsley Road, Bootle. His father was Richard Edward Williams, a local council building inspector and dance promoter, and his mother was Annie Cheetham; Williams traced part of his ancestry back to Owen Williams (Owain Gwyrfai), a Caernarfonshire millwright, poet and pioneer lexicographer in the Welsh language. His mother died when he was very young and his father remarried to Millie Twigg, the family living in Litherland and being completed by Williams's ...
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Top Ten Club
The Top Ten Club was a music club in Hamburg's St. Pauli district at Reeperbahn 136, which opened on 31 October 1960 and kept its name until 1994. In 1961, the Beatles performed 92 times at the Top Ten Club. History At the beginning of the 20th century, Reeperbahn 136 was the location of the ''Grand Hippodrom and Café'' of Carl Richter Later it was called ''Hippodrom'' and belonged, together with the bar, to Herbert Eckhorn. In 1960, the heir to the hippodrome, Peter Eckhorn (* 12 February 1939 in Hamburg; † 19 May 1979), decided to close the hippodrome, rebuild it and reopen it with a new name as a music club. The Top Ten Club was opened on 31 October 1960 by Peter Eckhorn and his manager Horst Fascher. After disagreements, Peter Eckhorn separated from Horst Fascher shortly afterwards. Fascher then worked as a waiter in a restaurant in the ''Große Freiheit'', where he persuaded Manfred Weissleder to turn the former ''Stern'' cinema into a music club, the Star-Club, becom ...
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Stuart Sutcliffe
Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe (23 June 1940 – 10 April 1962) was a Scottish painter and musician best known as the original bass guitarist of the English rock band the Beatles. Sutcliffe left the band to pursue his career as a painter, having previously attended the Liverpool College of Art. Sutcliffe and John Lennon are credited with inventing the name "Beetles" (sic), as they both liked Buddy Holly's band, the Crickets. They also had a fascination of group names with double meanings (as Crickets, for example, the word referring to both an insect as well as a sport), so Lennon then came up with "The Beatles", from the word '' beat'' (though Lennon's original spelling was "Beatals"). As a member of the group when it was a five-piece band, Sutcliffe is one of several people sometimes referred to as the "Fifth Beatle". When he performed with the Beatles in Hamburg, he met photographer Astrid Kirchherr, to whom he was later engaged. After leaving the Beatles, he enrol ...
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Horst Fascher
Horst Fascher (born 5 February 1936) is a German music business figure who was a friend and business associate of the Beatles during their early career playing in Hamburg, Germany. Biography Early life Horst Fascher was born in Hamburg, Germany, on 5 February 1936. His mother was a cleaning lady and his father was a seaman who fought in World War II, subsequently being held as a prisoner of war by the Soviet Union until 1951. As a young man, Fascher was a promising amateur boxer, becoming flyweight champion of West Germany. He had been expected to represent his country at the 1960 Olympics, but after accidentally killing a sailor in a street fight he served six months in prison and was given a lifetime ban from boxing. After his release, Fascher became involved in the emerging rock and roll scene around Hamburg's Reeperbahn, working as a barman and bouncer in the music clubs and managing groups. The Beatles When the Beatles (including original drummer Pete Best and bassist ...
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Ringo Starr
Sir Richard Starkey (born 7 July 1940), known professionally as Ringo Starr, is an English musician, singer, songwriter and actor who achieved international fame as the drummer for the Beatles. Starr occasionally sang lead vocals with the group, usually for one song on each album, including " Yellow Submarine" and " With a Little Help from My Friends". He also wrote and sang the Beatles songs " Don't Pass Me By" and " Octopus's Garden", and is credited as a co-writer of four others. Starr was afflicted by life-threatening illnesses during childhood, with periods of prolonged hospitalisation. He briefly held a position with British Rail before securing an apprenticeship as a machinist at a Liverpool school equipment manufacturer. Soon afterwards, Starr became interested in the UK skiffle craze and developed a fervent admiration for the genre. In 1957, he co-founded his first band, the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, which earned several prestigious local bookings before the fad ...
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Große Freiheit
The Große Freiheit (German for: "Great Freedom") is a cross street on the North Side to Hamburg's Reeperbahn road in the St. Pauli quarter. It is part of the red-light district. History The street was named in 1610 after the fact that Count Ernest of Schaumburg and Holstein-Pinneberg had granted religious freedom to non-Lutherans such as Mennonites and Roman Catholics to practise their faith here and commercial freedom for handcrafters not enrolled in the else compelling guilds. At that time this district was part of the city of Altona within the county of Holstein-Pinneberg, and did not yet belong to Hamburg. When the Duchy of Holstein-Glückstadt annexed Holstein-Pinneberg in 1640 the comital freedoms were confirmed. Non-Lutherans were forbidden to publicly practise their religions in Lutheran Hamburg proper. The street has still a Catholic church (St. Joseph), situated among rather unholy businesses. The Mennonite church, established in 1611, moved into another neighbourh ...
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