The Beatles (44 page)

One by one, those snags began to unravel.
For months, Peter Eckhorn
, the Top Ten’s receptive owner, had appealed to the West German Immigration Office for a concession on the Beatles’ status.
Pete Best worked the same
angle from Liverpool, papering the German consul’s office with requests for visas. In the meantime, Bruno Koschmider withdrew his ridiculous arson charge against Pete and Paul and promised not to oppose their return, somehow hoping, one might presume, to engage the Beatles again.

Stuart got there first. In the bleakness of a Liverpool winter, he brightened at every thought of Astrid and in early March headed back to her without a thought to anything else.
Impervious to his parents’ dismay
, he intended to marry Astrid. Unapologetic, he resigned from the Liverpool College of Art—a drastic, definitive move—applying to the State College of Art, nicknamed the Hochschule, Hamburg’s leading conservatory. The decision practically broke his mother’s heart. Forsaking his scholarship seemed like such a tragic mistake to Millie, who was also terrified for her son’s safety.
In January he had been beaten
up again, this time more severely, fracturing his skull, following a gig at Lathom Hall.
^*
But no matter how Millie begged him to reconsider, Stuart stood his ground.

The Beatles were somewhat less despairing. As far as performing went, they were better off without Stuart, and his absence gave them time to regroup for Hamburg without having to compensate for his unhandiness. In fact, as soon as he left, they plunged into a heated round of rehearsals, with afternoons devoted almost entirely to rejuvenating their tired repertoire. With two months at the Top Ten scheduled to begin on April 1, they were in desperate need of new material. A contract negotiated with Peter Eckhorn engaged them for seven hours a night, seven nights a week. Even at the peak of their skill, this would prove daunting. On top of that, they’d be
costarring with Tony Sheridan, whose song bag seemed bottomless. It was important that the Beatles hold their own.

Why didn’t they simply perform the songs Paul and John had written? Even a wildcat such as Sheridan couldn’t compete with the punch of original tunes. Certainly there were already several dozen Lennon-McCartney numbers polished to perfection. With a backward glance, it seems doubtful that “Love Me Do,” “Please Please Me,” and “P.S. I Love You” would have survived the near-convulsive pace of a Hamburg jam. Any one of them might have brought a set that included “Long Tall Sally,” “Do You Want to Dance,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” and “Money” to a screeching halt. Later, at the Cavern, when the Beatles established their quirky song sequence, they could mix and match numbers as they saw fit, but until that time they exercised good judgment in bagging their originals for the future.

No one knew better than the Beatles how to fatten their repertoire. At NEMS, they routinely scanned the new releases that were piled in a box near the cash register. Selecting a batch, they relied on the salesgirls—many of whom were budding Beatles fans—to play them while they squeezed into one of the listening booths. “
We’d listen to both sides
of a record, not just the ‘A’ side,” Pete Best recalled of a process that recurred “three or four times a week.” If anything caught someone’s ear, he simply claimed it for a solo spot in the show. Then the clerks were enlisted to play the song two or three additional times until the band had the words and proper chord sequence down, or
they “clubbed together
” and bought it.

The Top Ten was a definite “step up” from the Kaiserkeller (which itself would soon close), beginning with its street-level location on the bustling Reeperbahn. It was also a step back into Germany’s violent past. The
kellners
(waiters), under the brutal command of Horst Fascher (who had served in the same capacity at the Kaiserkeller), carried gas guns and “knuckledusters” in addition to the ubiquitous truncheons—and they relished using them. “
If someone got out of line
,” a musician recalls, “the waiters simply dragged them outside in the alley… and pounded these people to shit.” On the other hand, the Reeperbahn drew a better class of nightcrawler, if that was a reasonable consideration. Even the exis found it a sociable hangout, turning out in such numbers that rockers often formed a minority
constituency. At the Top Ten, feeling more relaxed and confident, they mimicked the rockers’ burly leather gear with their own take on the look: a sleek, sophisticated version in glove-soft jackets and matching pants. Stuart, of all people, strove to personify the trend. He and Astrid, lately inseparable, showed up at the Top Ten looking stunning in identical expensive licorice-stick suits that were the envy of their Liverpool friends. Certainly the Beatles approved of the style; in time, they would all buy similar getups.

Among his potential costars, there was always some trepidation about opening for Sheridan—or following him. But the Beatles looked forward to it: his shows were as riotously loose as theirs, with more energy and interaction than other bands in the district. He was restless and unpredictable, sure, but stylistically he was always moving forward, pushing, pushing, pushing to break up the monotony of the standards everyone played. Recalled Pete: “
He liked us backing him
… because of the great harmonies we used to do for him…. [H]e’d have three people harmonizing with him, which produced a great overall sound.” Reciprocally, adding Sheridan’s guitar to their lineup thrust the Beatles into instrumental overdrive. It also gave them something to shoot for. As guitarists they were good, they were very good—but musically, Sheridan was light-years ahead of them.

The only drawback was durability. With both acts onstage all night, it became impossible to maintain the sky-high energy. There were fewer opportunities for breaks, or “
powsas
” (pauses), as they were called; stage jams seemed to go on forever, sapping their strength. No one complained, but the cumulative effect took its toll. Spirits flagged, tempers flared. Fortunately, Sheridan came to the rescue with his bottomless stash of amphetamines. “
Here’s something to keep
you awake,” he’d offer the Beatles, doling out handfuls of Preludin with which to fortify them.

Stuart’s former plans to quit the Beatles, once clear-cut and firm, seemed to have evaporated. According to his sister Pauline, “
in letters from Germany
, he states quite emphatically that he’s improving [as a musician]… that his repertoire was expanding.” Elsewhere, Stuart wrote about the satisfaction he derived from performing solo each night, when he came center stage to sing “Love Me Tender”:

Everybody says I sing it better than Elvis…. Just before I sing, I receive the best applause of the night. Minutes after I finish singing the people all look at me with sad eyes and sad looks on
their faces. Recently, I’ve become very popular both with girls and homosexuals who tell me I’m the sweetest, most beautiful boy…. Also it appears that people refer to me as the James Dean of Hamburg.

Clearly he loved the spotlight, just as he was conflicted about leaving the band. Appearing on that stage provided a release, emotionally and artistically. It made no demands on him, unlike a canvas—or Astrid, for that matter. Meanwhile, the others rode him mercilessly—about his appearance, his size, his dependence on Astrid, anything that crossed their minds. Stuart had always been the butt of some rude “mickey-taking,” as the Scousers called it, but as the gulf between the boys widened, the ragging turned nasty, with an edge of abusiveness. Hardly a night went by that John didn’t turn on Stuart, needling him, severely berating some aspect of his fragile character. As Stuart ventured further from the band, it was harder to regard him as one of the gang. As he withdrew from the pack, moving into Astrid’s house seemed like the final straw.

Over the years, the Beatles faced many tough judgment calls that fared as high drama in their overall saga, each one handled definitively but carelessly (in fact, badly), ending with their inevitable split. The first—dismissing Allan Williams—was only a prelude.

Williams had never formally served as the Beatles’ manager—or anybody else’s. Says his first wife, Beryl, “
It was loose
and always rather benevolent. There was a day-to-day routine he went through: ‘Oh, here’s a letter. Let us send a group to Hamburg—or the south of France. Which group is available? Oh,
you
can go.’ He never really referred to himself as anyone’s manager.” But for almost a year, he’d exclusively booked the Beatles’ Liverpool gigs and not only introduced them to the exotica of Hamburg but actually took them there by hand. A business card that read T
HE
B
EATLES
/ S
OLE
D
IRECTION
: A. W
ILLIAMS
was passed to promoters when they inquired whom to contact for bookings, leaving no uncertainty about his intent. And if there were doubts, it was settled by the 10 percent commission he collected—and they paid without any coercion—from their wages.

But the way they saw it, Williams had played no role whatsoever in their engagement at the Top Ten, despite the fact he had issued a
contract for it. Pete Best arranged the booking himself, and upon the Beatles’ arrival in Hamburg it was decided that paying a cut of their fee was unwarranted.

Shortly thereafter, most likely at John’s urging, Stuart informed Williams by letter that the Beatles had no intention of paying his commission. Their refusal was based on the pretext that an extraordinary income tax was being deducted from their Top Ten earnings, leaving them no cushion with expenses from their weekly draw, but that was clearly an excuse. Dismissing the seriousness of its contents (“
[It] struck me as being
completely unfair,” Williams recalled), he wrote back, explaining that all workers had tax withheld from their income, and if they hadn’t before, then they were extremely lucky.

It made no difference to the Beatles.
Stuart’s follow-up letter
instructed Williams that the band was taking a hard line. There would be no commission: that much was final.

Later, Williams would claim that “
he wasn’t disappointed
” by their decision. There were other bands, better bands, worth his attention and expertise. At the time, however, he angrily banned them from setting foot in the Blue Angel and warned of repercussions.

In Hamburg, far away from the storm’s epicenter, his threats hardly seemed worth taking seriously. Their shows with Tony Sheridan were models of the smoldering rock ’n roll rave-up power extravaganzas that stretched on for hours at a clip. As a performer, Sheridan was as electrifying as ever, but with the Beatles at his back, his act leaped into the stratosphere. “
It was loud
,” recalled a regular who marveled at the intensity level. The sound they put out was “amazing, unlike anything Hamburg ever heard before—or since.”

This was an entirely new experience for them, being the center of attention, the talk of the town. And it allowed them to experiment with new roles and identities that were far beyond Liverpool’s grasp. Of all the Beatles, Stuart was the one who proved most open to new experiences. The first to don a leather suit, he made use of flamboyant clothes and accessories to transform himself. Part of this enthusiasm stemmed from Astrid’s fascination with clothing and image. Her sense of drama was beguiling. None of the Beatles pushed the envelope further than Stuart, and when he showed up at the Top Ten one night sporting a flashy new haircut, it set off a bomb in the Hamburg music world that resonated for years to come. The style was a takeoff on the exis’ “French” cut, combed long and splayed across the forehead in a soft, sculpted fringe. “Astrid had styled it,” said
Jürgen Vollmer, who wore his hair in a similar fashion. To the Germans, the look was nothing extraordinary. “
In my art school
… all the boys used to have this haircut,” Astrid acknowledged sometime later. While dating Klaus Voormann, she had urged him to cut his hair that way, to please her aesthetically, as well as to show his dedication; with Stuart’s accession, it became his dutiful rite of passage.

There is no clear way of knowing how the other Beatles responded in truth to Stuart’s deviant hairstyle.
Out of ignorance
—or envy—they lashed out defensively, pelting Stuart with an arsenal of childish taunts. But two days later a hesitant George followed suit, brushing his pompadour into an informal shaggy mop, and, like that, the mold for the Beatle haircut was indelibly cast.

The Beatles’ first few weeks back in Hamburg had been another lusty fun-filled adventure, but things took a sedate turn when Cynthia and Dot showed up to visit. As expected, they appeared in Hamburg like misplaced, long-lost relatives, and John and Paul were almost immediately swallowed up in their girlfriends’ needy demands.

A noticeable gulf formed between them from the very start of their reunion. Cynthia got off the train in Hamburg and noticed a shift in the boys’ personalities. “
The pills and booze
they had been stuffing into themselves had heightened their senses beyond our reason, and they overwhelmed us with their nonstop chat and frenzied excitement.” The amphetamine rush had caught the girls off guard, but after “two weeks in Hamburg,” she noted, “we were all on them.”