What songs did The Beatles play in Hamburg?

The Beatles onstage at the Top Ten Club in Hamburg, during the spring of 1961. From left to right: Stu Sutcliffe, George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney (at the piano), and Tony Sheridan. You can just make out Pete Best's drums at the far right of the photo.

Well, the short answer is many. One source I've read described the very early Beatles as a living jukebox (remember those?). Apparently, the band played everything from early rock&roll and rockabilly, to show tunes and torch songs in an attempt to fill the long hours they were contracted to play during their stints in Hamburg. Lots of bands playing clubs now are lucky to know maybe 40-50 songs. Maybe. And if there is more than one group on the bill, a band might be expected to play far fewer than that seamlessly. But by all accounts, The Beatles had about two hundred songs in their communal bag of tricks at this stage. Pretty impressive when you think about it.

So, the catalog of songs played by The Beatles in their early years is far too large to list easily here. At least right now. I'm working on it. In the meantime, here's one example of a tune that the band surely played onstage in Spring 1961 during their second visit to Hamburg after George Harrison turned 18 in February of that year, and the band was able to return legally to Germany. Cry for a Shadow (aka, Beatle Bop), is a parody of various instrumental tunes by The Shadows (yep, Cliff Richards' backing band), who had a number British hits in the early 1960s. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9FacSNRBHk. Blogger is being temperamental today, otherwise, I would have embedded a direct link to YouTube within this post. But anyway.

What's neat about Cry for a Shadow is that it is the only Lennon-Harrison composition out there, so far as I know. This song was recorded as part of the Bert Kaempfert-produced sessions, in which The Beatles backed singer Tony Sheridan, in May or June of 1961. The Beatles were allowed to commit two of their own tunes to tape at that time, Cry for a Shadow and a cover of Ain't She Sweet, which will appear here later. Another neat thing about both of these songs is that they give a pretty good idea of what The Beatles must have sounded like onstage at this point in their career. Listen for Paul McCartney and John Lennon howling in the background at various points in Cry for a Shadow. You also get a good sense of McCartney's sense of melody and rhythm, to say nothing of his emerging talent, on the bass here. Enjoy!

Why blog about The Beatles before they became famous?

John Lennon, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney onstage at Hamburg's Star Club sometime in 1962. I wonder what tune they were kicking out when this photograph was snapped?

Good question! And the answer is very simple. The period between 1960-62 was when The Beatles were most exciting and at their peak onstage. Sure, fame, fortune, and the huge catalog of Lennon and McCartney originals were still ahead of them. But this was a time when the guys learned their chops, playing to tough crowds of Liverpool teddy boys and their judies in the various dance halls around the city. Adrenaline and fear -- plus a steady diet of free amphetamines, cheap beer, and easy sex -- kept them going through all-night jams in Hamburg, playing to audiences of hookers, pimps, cross dressers, gangsters, street toughs, and drunken sailors on leave in the Reeperbahn clubs.

Next, it was a time when the band dressed in leather jackets, tight jeans, and cowboy boots, greasing their hair into wild, tumbling pompadours, a look appreciated by their German audiences. The Beatles also met and became friends with the artsy "Exi" crowd of Astrid Kirchherr, Klaus Voorman, and Juergen Vollmer at this time. The trio influenced the group's visual style to no small degree. A little later, with Astrid and Stu Sutcliffe leading the way, The Beatles began wearing leather pants, unwittingly providing the template for so many rockers who followed in subsequent decades. Remember, this was years before Jim Morrison, Rob Halford, David Lee Roth, Axel Rose, or Trent Reznor (all guys who wore leather) hit the scene.

Where stagecraft is concerned, this was the era when the Beatles also learned how to work an audience and keep 'em coming back for more by backing fellow countryman Tony Sheridan at the Top Ten Club in Hamburg. And most important, the period 1960-1961 was before before the moderating hand of Brian Epstein entered the picture, cleaning up the band for broader public consumption and eventual fame, paying lawyers to hush up paternity suits and the like as The Beatles became more widely known to Britain and later the world. In short, The Beatles were at their most wild, unruly, dangerous, and, yes, exciting during their early days in Hamburg and Liverpool before they ever had a real manager or record contract. So, to paraphrase a line uttered by George Harrison in A Hard Day's Night, "Why not a blog about The Beatles before they became famous?"

Welcome!

The Beatles in late Summer 1960. From left to right: George Harrison, John Lennon, Pete Best,
Paul McCartney, and Stu Sutcliffe.

It seems fitting to start this blog with a post showing a photograph of the five Beatles onstage at The Indra Club, on Der Grosse Freiheit a block or two off the notorious Reeperbahn, in August or September of 1960. More photographs of the band, various Hamburg personalities and places, plus a conjectured song catalog of tunes the Beatles probably included in their Hamburg-era setlists at one time or another, will follow in later posts. Feel free to leave your comments and suggestions. As long as everything stays polite and civil, I'm open to all points of view here.