Robert Rodriguez - The Beatles: Fifty Fabulous Years

F ifty years ago, a group of English youths gathered at a primitive West German recording facility in Hamburg. Both the bassist and drummer from Liverpools Rory Storm and the Hurricanes joined forces with three members of a rival hometown group, the Beatles, to lay down takes of the standards Summertime and Fever. Though the recording has become lost to history, the strange alchemy produced for the first time that day has not. For on Saturday, October 15, 1960, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr recorded together for the first time.

Whatever clicked that day stayed with them, for nearly two years laterjust as a record deal beckonedfate pulled Ringo back into the Beatles orbit for good. This time the unit jelled, and the music world would never be the same again.

The Beatles rise to stardom was something more than just another classic rags to riches
entertainment story. It possessed particular emotional resonance for millions around the world, a pull that transcended mere recordings. Fans felt connected to the four individuals as people. Though most would never actually meet them, the personalities of the Fab Four were as distinct as any close relative. John was acerbic, irreverent, and rebellious as well as the undisputed leader of the Beatles, at least in the early days. Paul was a natural-born showmaninnately gifted at crafting memorable songs that sounded as though they had been around always.

George, the self-styled dark horse of the group, provided largely unheralded contributions alongside the dominant two, but his intuitive musicality elevated their catchy ditties to classics. Ringo possessed an It factor that made him a star in Liverpool before even joining the band. He had a down-to-earth everyman appeal that earned the praise of his peers and made him the most imitated drummer in rock history.

Though each member was uniquely gifted in his own right, it was as a foursome that they reduced rational people to babbling due to their magnificent music, charisma, and sheer star power. Five decades after the foursome first got together to produce sound, people around the world still cannot get enough of them, sharing their devotion with their families at home and within large gatherings in public.

The Beatles were, and continue to be, as was once said, a force of nature. This is their story.

You see, we wanted to be bigger than Elvis.
John Lennon

O n an autumn evening in 1960, a twenty-two-year-old graphic designer named Klaus Voormann quarreled with his girlfriend. The place was Hamburg, West Germany. Though heavily bombed as a vital port city during the war, it now boasted a thriving red-light district known locally as the Reeperbahn. Nothing in Klaus comfortably middle-class background as a doctors son and an art student would have familiarized him with the sin strip. But now, in a foul mood, he decided to have a beer in one of the lowlife locales numerous watering holes.

Lacking any particular destination, he was drawn to a club called the Kaiserkeller. From where he stood on the sidewalk, the racket passing as music emitting from the premises was like catnip to a feline. As an exione of an artsy crowd of young existentialists Klaus had no familiarity with rock and roll, being more of a jazz fan. But the sound enthralled him and, against any instincts of caution, he ventured in.

Skiffle singer Lonnie Donegan inspired a generation of British children to pick up an instrument to play songs like the ones on this collection. But it was a twenty-one-year-old Memphis truck driver named Elvis Presley who taught the world how to rock with such offerings as this 1956 EP.

The art crowd avoided the Reeperbahn generally and the dockside clubs specifically, given their reputation for casual violence between transient sailors and the underworld types who populated the area. But once inside, Klaus was transfixed by the act onstage. The group may have struck him as an alien life form: They werent merely English boys, but Liverpudlians besides. Cranking out American rock and roll by the likes of Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran, and Buddy Holly, the group onstageRory Storm and the Hurricanesfeatured a lanky, athletic singer as a front man and a sad-faced, bearded drummer. As Klaus later learned, Ringo Starr, as the latter was known, was actually a happy-go-lucky charmer as well as a percussive powerhouse.

Seen onstage in the Rainbow Room of the Casbah Club on August 29, 1959, the Quarry Men, with Paul at the mic, entertain a crowd that includes the future Mrs. John Lennon, Cynthia Powell.

Klaus took a seat at a table near the stage, sharing it with five youths clad in black-and-white-checked jackets. Their look fascinated him, but no more so than the sound they produced upon taking the stage following the Hurricanes set. They called themselves the Beatlesa funny name, Klaus thought, with its sonic similarity to German schoolboy slang for the male member. Sporting greased hair piled high atop their heads, they cranked out tunes such as Sweet Little Sixteen and Everybodys Trying to Be My Baby with abandon, projecting a nothing-left-to-lose vibe, which, in fact, was entirely fitting.

Had the nascent Quarry Men lived in America, they might have seen many of their rock and roll heroes in one evening, as Alan Freeds The Biggest Show of Stars for 57 played seventy-eight cities across the country during the fall.

The Beatlesconsisting of guitarists John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison, as well as drummer Pete Best and novice bass player Stuart Sutcliffehad landed from across the sea two months earlier. Their manager, a Liverpool club owner and booking agent named Alan Williams, had made an arrangement with German promoter Bruno Koschmider to supply him with authentic English groups for his clubs, which included the Kaiserkeller and the less prestigious Indra Club.Derry and the Seniors arrived earlier that summer, representing some of Liverpools topflight club circuit talent. The Beatles, on the other hand, were ranked rather poorly by their peers and only got the booking after Rory Storm turned down the offer.

John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison had been playing together since 1958, beginning as a ragtag skiffle outfit dubbed the Quarry Men by John. Like thousands of English teens, he had been inspired to pick up an instrument after the phenomenal success of Lonnie Donegan, purveyor of a hybrid of American blues, country, and folk filtered through an English sensibility. This genre of music was dubbed skiffle.