The Beatles in Hamburg

It was on the mean streets of St. Pauli, and specifically Grosse Freiheit, that four young lads from Liverpool cut their teeth playing to frequently hostile crowds of sailors, prostitutes, and thugs before going on to become the biggest band in the world. Signed by Bruno Koschmider, a nightclub owner and entrepreneur of dubious character, the Beatles first arrived in Hamburg in August 1960. Their first gig was at Koschmider’s Indra Club, a seedy joint that doubled as a strip club, and their first lodgings consisted of a couple of windowless rooms in the back of a movie theater, the Bambi Kino. Over the next two-and-a-half years, the young Beatles would visit Hamburg five times and play almost 300 concerts in the city. During one stint in 1961, they performed 98 nights in a row, often starting at 8:30 at night and playing their last song around the same time the next morning.

Perhaps surprisingly, some of the venues where the Beatles strutted their stuff remain. The Star Club, the site of their last Hamburg concert, on New Year’s Eve 1962, may be gone, but the Indra Club is still at Grosse Freiheit 64. Down the road, at No. 36, is the Kaiserkeller, where the boys moved after the Indra was closed down for being too rowdy. In addition to hitting the clubs, fans of the Fab Four can pose beside the life-size, metal sculptures of the five original Beatles on the Beatles-Platz, and also retrace the band’s steps on a number of walking tours, which take in the Bambi Kino and other venues they played at, along with the Gretel und Alfons pub, a favorite haunt.