Fifty years Beatles in Hamburg

Hamburg, August 17th, 1960. Strictly speaking the following message would just be a marginal note of the music business: On August 17th, 2010, a yet completely unknown band named Bambi Kino will play in Hamburg's music club Indra. But as a matter of fact this is a rather unique event. Because exactly on this day fifty years ago in exactly the same club, (in a neighbourhood which is probably the most famous in the world), the Beatles kicked off their career. Two shabby back rooms of the Bambi Kino (Bambi Cinema) right around the corner were their lodging then and the members of the band Bambi Kino, who are world famous musicians in their own right, will re-create exactly the songs the Beatles performed on that very day. So on August the 17th 2010, pop history will be brought back to life in the music metropolis of Hamburg. Beatles fans from all over the world will jump at the chance to experience this anniversary concert and after that explore what else Hamburg has to offer. From The Beatles to Hamburg's new fresh pop music sound.

The Hamburg Sound. Back in the Sixties no cool music club awaited the Beatles, rather a seedy strip joint. Their audience did not consist of hip night owls or enthusiastic music fans but of prostitutes and their punters. And they themselves were not the main attraction of the programme, but the stopgaps between the performances of the strippers. When Bruno Koschmider, owner of the Indra, finally thrust their contract into their hands, they were shocked. On weekdays they where supposed to play four and a half hours, during the weekend even six. Ignoring the fact that their repertoire could fit barely one hour and rehearsals with Pete Best hadn't even begun. A world collapsed — a world career was about to begin. The following two and a half years passed with 281 gigs played. Nowhere did the Beatles play more often during their whole career than in Hamburg — laying the foundation for what this band was to become: a blueprint of pop music.

The Hamburg experience. Every year thousands of festival guests curiously inspect the historic poster at the entrance of the Große Freiheit 36, which announced the Beatles as supporting act of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, whose drummer happened to go by the name of Ringo Starr. "Those guys had to practice for another year before I was interested in joining them," he joked later on. But somebody else was spontaneously attracted by them: the designer and musician Klaus Voormann. He dragged his whole circle of friends into the Kaiserkeller, including Astrid Kirchherr and Jürgen Vollmer, both photographers and like Voormann members of the "Exis," Hamburg's existentialists. They styled the Beatles with their typical hairstyle, which later on became famously known as the mop top.

From the Top-Ten to the Star-Club. Back then, in the beginning of the Sixties, the band helped two more of Hamburg's musical institutions to hit the big time. During 89 nights in 1961 they played their biggest continuous guest slot in the brand new Top-Ten. Where nowadays the Moondoo tempts sultry dancers with Black Music and House Tracks, in previous years the Hippodrome attracted large crowds by showcasing naked ladies riding horseback in the ring or playing tag in the mud. 1962 saw Manfred Weißleder opening the legendary Star-Club at Große Freiheit 39. His sensational programme presented lots of international acts, many of them soon-to-be stars or even already established. This job is nowadays very well done by the tiny but very creative Molotow at Spielbudenplatz 5. Bands like the White Stripes, Vampire Weekend, LCD Soundsystem or Blood Red Shoes have played there, usually before the rest of the world had discovered them.