“THE QUIET ONE? HE WASN’T QUIET AT ALL…”

ROCK AND ROLL MUSIC

“WHERE THEY WERE LIVING WAS TERRIBLE”
KLAUS VOORMANN

The Beatles arrive in Hamburg on August 17, 1960. After six weeks at the Indra Club, on October 4, 1960 they play their first show at the Kaiserkeller, where they strike up a friendship with 22-year old graphic artist Klaus Voormann, art student Astrid Kirchherr and Jürgen Vollmer, a photographer at the Institute For Fashion

THE thing to remember about George Harrison is that he was a Gemini. The twin sign. Yin and yang. On Revolver you have “Love You To” and “Taxman”. Two sides. He could be really living this spiritual life – into meditation and getting up at 5am to see the sun come up – and doing it very extensively. Then suddenly he would go crazy! He could swap from the one extreme to the other, and he could find ways to make himself believe that it was the good thing to do. He would talk himself into it. This is why he was always searching for something – because he knew himself well enough to know that he needed something to hold onto.

The first time I saw George he was only 17 years of age. He was very different to how he was later. He was a cocky little boy! This band he was with was completely unknown. It was the autumn of 1960. In this club in Hamburg, the Kaiserkeller, they played for people to dance. George was singing all those funny songs, which he did later on a little bit, when he sat around and played ukulele. He was into songs like “I’m Henry The Eighth, I Am”, singing it all cockney. He would sing all those Eddie Cochran numbers too, like “Twenty Flight Rock”.

It took some time to get to know them. We had gone to concerts and jazz clubs, but this scene was completely new to us. We went many times. They had started looking over to us – “There they are again, those Existentialists!”