When They Were Boys (30 page)

“Epstein says to me, told me, ‘Mr. Fascher, I spoke to the boys, and the boys were saying, “If Horst say so, there will be no club, then it will happen,” and the boys decide to go with you.' That was his words. Then we signed a contract. The Beatles got more money. At the Top Ten they earned fifty max.”

The money was an afterthought. It was the place and the atmosphere that moved them into a new league. It was in the Star Club that the Beatles emerged as world-class rockers on two visits in 1962 that changed their world, and ours. It was during these visits that they recorded music, tested the waters, cleaned up their act, and began to soar. These two trips, in the spring and fall of 1962, also featured a changing of the drummers: Pete in the spring, Ringo in the fall. The differences in the 1962 visits were noticeable: The boys were more serious on stage, less sloppy. Their shirts were no longer hanging out. They wore jackets, sometimes with ties. The makeover was not complete, but it was beginning.

Fascher briefly performed with the Beatles during their New Year's Eve show, which was recorded by another Liverpool musician, Ted “Kingsize” Taylor. Years later, in 1977, the tape was released commercially as
Live! at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962
. One song from the album, “Hallelujah, I Love Her So,” includes Fascher on backing vocals. And on another song, “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” his brother Fred's vocals can be heard.

Fascher remained friends with the band long after they became famous. Some of his stories about the Beatles' Hamburg days have been published in other works, and he published his own memoir in 2006.

In 1966, triumphant and rising toward superstardom, the Beatles returned to Hamburg. But Fascher could not attend their shows; he had been sentenced to another year in jail for violating his parole.

“From '62 to '65, I had eight fights. . . . The hardest fight was somebody broke his chin.”

The boxing cost him plenty. He had sworn not to fight, in the ring or out, and his parole violation was another painful moment in his life.

Though Fascher could not make it to the Star Club, he was honored in absentia.

“When the Beatles came here [in 1966] and played the same hall where Bill Haley played . . . my brothers went there and they also went backstage. They had a few words and [my brother] Freddie was saying, ‘Horst can't be here because he's still in jail. But give him a song tonight,' and John said, ‘Yes we [will].' So during the show, John Lennon was saying to the audience through the mic, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, our friend Horst Fascher can't be here tonight because he's still, uh, in jail.'”

The Beatles returned to Britain. Fascher finished his prison stint and then, as usual, went where the trouble was. Where was Fascher headed? Vietnam, where he accompanied Tony Sheridan on a visit to entertain the troops. The rest of his life has included stints at resurrecting the Star Club, and remaining an icon in St. Pauli, where people still remember him as a man who helped bring quality shows to a neighborhood known for other forms of entertainment.

And the Beatles remembered. Ringo and George were there when he opened a new version of the Star Club a couple years later in December
1968. Once again, Tony Sheridan was the top bill. At a difficult time in his life, Fascher had lost a child. His baby girl, with a rare heart problem, could not be saved. But when the girl was still fighting for her life, Paul McCartney flew a team of heart specialists to London to seek options for the little girl, including special surgery. Fascher and his girlfriend were flown to London. Paul arranged the trip.

Fascher tells me about the story, fifty years later, tears welling in his eyes.

“I will never forget. Never forget them. The music. What they did for me.”

Nor will they.

In 1965, without having any knowledge of Horst Fascher, I asked George, “Who were the people who helped you the most?”

“Well, our parents, of course. Our families, you know. Honestly, all of them,” George replied. “Then there were people like Tony [Barrow], [Tony] Bramwell, Mal [Evans], Neil [Aspinall], Derek [Taylor], Brian [Epstein], and many people. George Martin. Oh, there is so much to remember. A woman, Astrid Kirchherr. And . . . a really fascinating guy . . . a bouncer . . . promoter and manager. His name was Horst. It was in Hamburg.”

The Beatles encountered many interesting characters in Hamburg. There were the prostitutes, the doctors who fixed their problems from the prostitutes, the sinister nightclub owner, the German alien police, and the beautiful and devoted Astrid Kirchherr, who lit up their look and design and, in the case of Stuart Sutcliffe, a heart. But it is true; none was as multifaceted as the hard-punching Fascher, who protected them, adored them, and watched them grow into emerging stars at the Star Club. He was an unlikely friend in the unusual city that showed off the most exclusive neighborhoods of northern Germany, and in contrast, the worst.

“I will never forget them,” Fascher says as he stares at this author, who finds it hard to believe that this kind, older man has lived so much, and lost so much. But, as he says, “My soul is still beating, my mind clear, of the days when music from the inside drew me into the nightclubs, and my meeting them. Remember, I loved them, the Beatles . . . before they were stars, and when they were boys. And I love them now.”

The Beatles were rousing the Hamburg crowds to a near frenzy almost nightly. And the males, in the beginning, were as fascinated as the females. During their first trip to Hamburg, a young artist, shaking off depression after an argument with his girlfriend, wandered into the Kaiserkeller. Eventually he lost the girl, but he gained something else: a lifetime of high drama, creativity, and lasting friendship within the Beatles universe.

Klaus Voorman was a young student and artist who, at the time, was dating Astrid Kirchherr. That night he walked into the Kaiserkeller, his inner curiosity was sparked. The first band he watched was Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. The Beatles followed, and Voorman caught the fire—the sound, the gyrations, the entire mood. He convinced his girlfriend, Astrid, to return with him to the seedy neighborhood, along with a friend, Jürgen Vollmer, a student at the Fashion Institute. Kirchherr had never seen a “live” rock concert. Vollmer would later tell friends he was “incredibly loving the music.” By the end of that first night, the trio was ecstatic, even though Kirchherr's presence would soon cost Voorman his romance with the young beauty. In time, the Fab Four's life and times would graduate from raw and raucous to refined and respected, thanks in part to the talented trio, and their love and input. And it started way before young and sensitive Brian Epstein arrived on the scene.

Soon after they met at the Kaiserkeller, Astrid Kirchherr and Stu Sutcliffe fell in love. Voorman maintained his friendship with Kirchherr, and together with Vollmer all three developed a close relationship with the band.

Their impact would be monumental.

Kirchherr remains emblematic of a different time, the recovery of her nation from the devastation of World War II, as her generation, born during the 1930s—in her case, 1938—struggled to empower the people of what was once a militaristic dictatorship to the postwar search for modernity and the road to civil and social justice. To that end, Kirchherr, a young student of photography, became quite a liberal activist, a role she has played all of her life.

Colin Fallows, professor of sound and visual arts at Liverpool's John Moores University, was coeditor of an extraordinary book of photographs that accompanied the show
Astrid Kirchherr, A Retrospective
at the Victoria Gallery and
Museum in Liverpool in 2010–2011. The book offers a startling photographic collection of the moods of the young boys. The photographs in this book and collection are haunting and revelatory. You look into the eyes of the boys, and you can sense the times, feel their innocence, view their moods.

Recently, in a coffee shop across from the school, the devoted researcher and veteran art historian talked about Kirchherr's work with tenderness and joy.

“This is so definitive,” Fallows said. “She studied under Reinart Wolf, a master in his time, a man who understood lighting and mood and the power of simple black and white. The photographer uses a machine, but it's what the great photographer sees that makes it special.”

From Fallows's perspective, Kirchherr was intuitive, especially when John and George came to the studio where Stuart had lived and worked. It was after his death, and the two boys were in mourning. They had calmly asked Astrid to take a picture in Stuart's space, in Stuart's light.

Fallows's interpretation of that one picture speaks to the extraordinary intuition of the twenty-four-year-old photographer. In his book, Fallows offers his view:

A
PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER
, K
IRCHHERR POSSESSES A RARE FUSION OF ACUITY AND COMPASSION
. I
N THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE INDIVIDUAL
B
EATLES, SHOT IN THE ENTIRELY
B
OHEMIAN VENUE OF THE
K
IRCHHERR LOFT
[
WHERE
S
TU WOULD LIVE AND PAINT
],
THE YOUNG MUSICIANS APPEAR BOTH WARY AND YOUTHFULLY VULNERABLE
. . . . T
HEIR PERSONALITIES ARE CAPTURED PHOTOGRAPHICALLY AT A REMARKABLE STAGE IN THEIR DEVELOPMENT AS YOUNG MEN AND ARTISTS
. K
IRCHHERR, AS THOUGH WITH FEMININE PSYCHIC INSIGHTS, SHOOTS THEIR PORTRAITS IN A MATTER THAT IS ONCE UNDERSTANDING OF THE BROODING TOUGH IMAGE EXPECTED OF YOUNG MALE ROCK
'
N
'
ROLLERS, YET ACKNOWLEDGING A PROFOUND AND ISOLATING INDIVIDUALISM THAT SEEMS TO EMANATE FROM THE GROUP THEMSELVES
. T
HESE EARLY PORTRAITS APPEAR TO BE DOMINATED BY MONOCHROMATIC DARKNESS: BLACK PREVAILS—IN THE CLOTHING, THE JACKETS AND THE SHADOWS IN WHICH THE GROUP MEMBERS ARE SO OFTEN POSED
. T
HEY APPEAR PREMATURELY AGED, AND
THERE ARE FEW SMILES—EVEN THOUGH THE TRANSPOSITION TO WORLD CHARMING
“M
OP
T
OP
”
WAS IMMINENT
.

In Kirchherr's world, the Beatles have remained a powerful life force. Perhaps to Professor Fallow, she opened up more about that first moment she saw them, before the pictures, before Stuart, before she ever knew what fate and timing had sealed for her.

I
SAW THESE WONDERFUL FIGURES ON A LITTLE STAGE MADE OUT OF JUST LITTLE PIECES OF WOOD AND THEY WERE JUST SCREAMING THEIR HEADS OFF
. . . . W
HEN THEY USED TO SING THEIR HARMONIES IT WAS SO PERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL THAT
I
COULDN
'
T DESCRIBE HOW
I
FELT . . . AND THEN SINGING IT AND PERFORMING IT WITH SUCH BEAUTY AND SUCH INNOCENCE WAS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING FOR ME
. . . . B
UT THE FIRST ONE
I
REALLY ADORED FROM THE FIRST MINUTE
I
SAW HIM WAS
S
TUART, BECAUSE HE HAD THIS WONDERFUL DELICATE LOOK AND THESE BEAUTIFUL EYES, AND THE WAY HE WAS STANDING ON STAGE—THAT REALLY KNOCKED ME OUT
.

Their romance is the stuff of legends. But beyond everyone else's description of the young lovers' personal relationship is their impact on the boys' lives and career.

“John was stunned that Stuart stayed in Hamburg to study art, and love this woman,” Bill Harry remembers. “Along with the early photographs, her continuing work made them look inwards. In some ways, they saw her pictures as the real thing, a portrait of how they really were, scared to death but ready to take on the world.”

Beatles historian Denny Somach says, “The photographs of Astrid Kirchherr will always be viewed as the way people ‘see' the Beatles in the beginning.”

In fact, the perception of the Beatles when they played the famous show at Litherland Town Hall, billed as “The Beatles—Direct from Hamburg,” was a reflection of the early Kirchherr work that captured the boys as slim, adorned in leather, and raw with eyes mysteriously haunting and sexy.

Kirchherr also helped supply, along with Horst Fascher, the Preludin pills
to help the Beatles stay awake during those long Hamburg nights. She was close to all of them, but had what she described as a “sweet bond” with George, who wrote more letters to her than the others. Once again, as he has throughout this work, George stands out as the compassionate one. It was George who accompanied, along with Brian Epstein, Stuart's mother on the airplane to Hamburg to console Kirchherr, and bring Stuart home.

Kirchherr's perspective on the Beatles seems oriented toward them more as people, rather than as rock stars. George's sister Louise has met her several times. She recalls,

S
HE HAD A SPECIAL FONDNESS FOR
G
EORGE, ESPECIALLY HIS SENSITIVITY AFTER
S
TUART
'
S DEATH
. W
E WERE GUESTS AT A NUMBER OF
B
EATLE CONVENTIONS TOGETHER, AND IT WAS FUNNY BECAUSE INEVITABLY WHEN THE PANEL WOULD ASK QUESTIONS, SHE AND
I
WOULD INEVITABLY ANSWER WITH EXACTLY THE SAME ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE
B
EATLES
. W
E BOTH HAD A SLIGHTLY MOTHERLY, SISTERLY ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE
B
EATLES, WHILE OTHER PEOPLE SAW THEM AS A PRODUCT
. W
E TALKED ABOUT THAT TOGETHER
. I
T
'
S AMAZING HOW ALL OF THESE OTHER PEOPLE ARE NOT LOOKING AT THEM AS REAL HUMAN BEINGS
. T
HEY SEE THEM AS A COMMODITY
. . . . A
STRID AND
I
FELT, WELL, OBVIOUSLY
I
HAD THE BIOLOGICAL CONNECTION, BUT SHE HAD ALMOST AS CLOSE AS A BIOLOGICAL CONNECTION
. . . . S
HE WAS STILL SEEING
G
EORGE AND THE OTHERS AS REAL, VULNERABLE, DECENT, CARING, HUMAN BEINGS
.