Pete says that he remembered Ringo from the days he had played in the Casbah with Rory Storm, but the others didn’t know him. It was a long time before they got to know him really well, but that was their first meeting with Ringo Starr.
Apart from this friendship with Ringo and the rest of Rory’s group, they made no other friends. They hardly left the club and made no attempt to make any friends amongst the Germans. ‘They were all half-witted,’ says John.
They made even less of an attempt to get to know any British people who came into the club. ‘When we could smell Senior Service in the audience,’ says John, ‘we knew there would be trouble before the night was out. After a few drinks, they’d start shouting, “Up Liverpool” or “Up Pompey”. Gangs of fucking British servicemen, trying to stir things up. Before the night was over they’d all be lying there half dead, after they’d tried to pick a fight with the waiters over the bill, or just over nothing. The waiters would get their flick knives out or their truncheons. And that would be it. I’ve never seen such killers.’
12 astrid and klaus
It’s not really surprising that they made so few German friends in Hamburg. The majority of respectable Hamburgers rarely go anywhere near the St Pauli district, least of all the Reeperbahn.
But Klaus Voormann and Astrid Kirchherr did. Quite by chance they came across the Beatles. They became fans, the first intellectual fans they’d ever had. They saw qualities in the Beatles that no one had ever seen before.
Klaus was born in Berlin, the son of an eminent doctor. He arrived in Hamburg in 1956 to study at the Art School. He was training to be a commercial artist, but he also took up photography as a special subject, which is how he met Astrid, who became his girlfriend.
Astrid comes from a good solid middle-class Hamburg family. She was specializing in photography. By 1960 they’d both left Art School. Klaus was working for local magazines — Hamburg is a big press centre — doing advertising posters. Astrid was working as an assistant to a photographer.
They’d been going out for about two years and Klaus had moved into a flat on the top of Astrid’s house. One evening they had a slight row. Klaus decided to go off to the cinema on his own.
‘I came out and was walking around. I was in the Grosse Freiheit when I heard a lot of noise coming from a basement. I went down to see what was going on. I’d never been in a club like it before.
‘It was a very rough scene down there. There were some real tough rockers, all in leather. But I was knocked out by the group on stage and the noise they were making. So very carefully I sat down to listen.’
The club was the Kaiserkeller, but it wasn’t the Beatles on stage. It was Rory Storm’s group, with Ringo on drums. Without realizing it Klaus had sat down beside the other resident group. ‘I was staring at them because they looked so funny. They wore check jackets, black and white check. The most ridiculous-looking of all — Stu as I discovered later — had his hair piled really high and was wearing long pointed shoes and sunglasses. Not really sunglasses, just those sun things you clip over ordinary glasses.
‘They went on stage and I realized that they were the other group. They did “Sweet Little Sixteen” with John singing it. They knocked me out even more than Rory did. I couldn’t take my eyes off them.
‘I wanted to speak to them, to get near them, but I didn’t know how to. I was scared with all the rockers. I was embarrassed and felt out of it. But I stayed there all night. I couldn’t get over how they played together so well, so powerful and so funny. And all the time they were jumping around. I gathered they kept it up for eight hours as well.’
He got home in the early hours of the morning and told Astrid where he’d been. She was rather disgusted with him, spending an evening at a club in St Pauli. He told her how marvellous this group was. She wasn’t interested. She refused to come back with him the next night. So he went alone.
This time he thought of a way of introducing himself to them, of getting to know them, or at least saying hello. He took with him a pop record cover he had designed for a single called ‘Walk Don’t Run’. He’d done one or two covers, as a commercial artist, although most of his work had been for magazines. He thought the Beatles would be interested to see it.
He sat around for a long time, trying to get nearer and nearer. When the Beatles at last sat down for their rest turn, he approached John, who seemed to be the leader. In very halting, schoolboy English, Klaus showed him the record.
It made little effect on John. ‘I just remember this bloke shoving a cover in my hand, I didn’t know why,’ says John. John muttered something about Stu being the artist, and he’d better show the cover to him. Klaus started to move towards Stu but something happened and he couldn’t get to him. So he had to sit down again, feeling more scared and embarrassed. Instead he just listened to the music all night through again.
The next night, his third visit, Klaus did at last persuade Astrid, against her better wishes, to come with him, along with another friend, Jurgen Vollmer.
‘I was frightened when I arrived,’ says Astrid. ‘But I soon forgot all that, when I saw these five people. I can’t explain how I felt. Something got me. I just couldn’t believe it.
‘I had always been fascinated in a way by Teddy Boys. I’d liked the look of them, in photographs and films. Suddenly there were five of them in front of me, with their hair all high and long sidies. I just sat there openmouthed and couldn’t move.
‘The atmosphere around was pretty frightening. They were just the typical Reeperbahn crowd. Broken noses, Teddy Boys, that sort of thing. Schlagers, we would call them in German. Punchers, real toughs.’
More and more of their student friends started to come, when Klaus and Astrid began to rave about the Beatles. They took over their own tables and part of the cellar. The students, with their smoother styles, their more mod clothes, soon began to affect and then dictate the atmosphere of the Kaiserkeller.
The rockers were still there, although not so predominant. ‘It became our scene,’ says Klaus. ‘There was no rivalry between us and the rockers. In fact I became friends with a few, though I’d never known any of them before, and never would have done.
‘There were funny little rocker girls I’d never come across before. When they danced they were like little mushrooms. They had short flared skirts with stiffened petticoats to make them stick out.’
The Beatles began to spend most of their spare time sitting talking and drinking with Klaus, Astrid and their friends. They couldn’t speak German, but some of the Germans could understand a little English.
‘We were suddenly getting a lot of arty types,’ says George. ‘Existentialists, the lot.’ ‘They were great,’ says Paul. ‘A change from the usual Germans. They were knocked out by Stu, doing his James Dean bit.’ ‘“Exis”, that’s what I called them,’ says John. ‘They were the first Germans I ever wanted to talk to.’
‘I couldn’t understand John’s accent,’ says Klaus. ‘But George used to speak very slowly to us and we could understand him. He looked so funny. His big ears stuck out, with his hair being short at the back and piled so high on top.’
After about a week of going there every night, Astrid at last got the courage to ask if she could take their pictures. ‘We were getting on so well with them that I felt more protected. I realized that the Reeperbahn rockers all loved them, adored them. They would have killed for them.’ She managed to blurt out a couple of words, indicating that she wanted to take their photographs. ‘They were made up. I could tell, though John made a few funny remarks. He was always saying terrible things about Krauts in front of people. Not to me. But I felt he wasn’t really like that anyway.’