I've always loved these photos from 1961, which were taken in Hamburg after the Beatles completed their leather gear look.
The young Beatles were huge fans of American rocker Gene Vincent. So, it should come as no surprise that his songs also featured prominently in the band's set lists between 1960-62. In fact, there's a version of the iconic Be Bop A Lula on the Star Club recordings sung by Fred or Horst Fascher. But let's look at two other lesser-known Gene Vincent tunes this time.
The first is Dance in the Street, which the band played early on at The Indra in 1960 to pull people in from the Grosse Freiheit outside. Paul McCartney explains in some detail in the Anthology coffee table book how the band really worked to build an audience and get people into the club during those first couple of months in Hamburg. Sadly, the artificially high beer prices kept many away, something the band pointed out repeatedly to owner Bruno Koschmider. Parenthetically, this song was featured in the 1958 teen movie Hot Rod Gang.
The next Gene Vincent song that was part of the Beatles repertoire at this time was the somewhat unusual Over the Rainbow. Yes. It was actually the song mad famous by Judy Garland in the film The Wizard of Oz!
As many of you know already, the Beatles included many such oddball tunes in their Hamburg-era sets since they had to perform sometimes as many as six or seven hours a night as part of their contract. It seems that original drummer Pete Best was the Beatle who came forward to sing this one while multi-instrumentalist Paul McCartney took over on drums. There is even a picture somewhere out there on the web of the Beatles in suits in the Cavern Club with Pete Best singing in front and young Sir Paul on the drums at the rear.
As many of you know already, the Beatles included many such oddball tunes in their Hamburg-era sets since they had to perform sometimes as many as six or seven hours a night as part of their contract. It seems that original drummer Pete Best was the Beatle who came forward to sing this one while multi-instrumentalist Paul McCartney took over on drums. There is even a picture somewhere out there on the web of the Beatles in suits in the Cavern Club with Pete Best singing in front and young Sir Paul on the drums at the rear.
Finally, take a look at some of the various interviews with the members of Bambi Kino from last year (2010). You might recall that Bambi Kino was formed by various New York-area musicians (members of Maplewood, Cat Power, Nada Surf, and Guided by Voices) to mark the 5oth anniversary of the Beatles' first Hamburg residency at the Indra and Kaiserkeller clubs.
Anyway, an album of Bambi Kino's Hamburg-era Beatles cover tunes has just been released by Tapete Records. To my mind, this is a super-cool project, and if you dig the very early Beatles -- before they were cleaned up and groomed for stardom, before they became cute mop-tops, before they had a real contract to record their own tunes -- then you've gotta check out Bambi Kino!
And after all that, I see that my previous blog post also featured Dance in the Street. Damn! Some days it just doesn't pay to climb out of bed.
Anyway, an album of Bambi Kino's Hamburg-era Beatles cover tunes has just been released by Tapete Records. To my mind, this is a super-cool project, and if you dig the very early Beatles -- before they were cleaned up and groomed for stardom, before they became cute mop-tops, before they had a real contract to record their own tunes -- then you've gotta check out Bambi Kino!
And after all that, I see that my previous blog post also featured Dance in the Street. Damn! Some days it just doesn't pay to climb out of bed.
Probably the song that Pete Best would have been singing while Paul covered for him on drums at the Cavern would have been "The Peppermint Twist" (orig. by Joey Dee & The Starlighters). That's the song that Pete talked about in interviews as being one in which he would go up front to sing.
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