Editor’s Note: At the Indra, the Beatles contract called for them to perform four-and-a-half hours each evening during the week and six hours each Saturday and Sunday evening. For this they were each paid DM30 (ten pounds) per person per working day, which Bruno paid them each Thursday. Their contract also stipulated that they couldn’t play any other venue within a radius of 40 kilometres without Koschmider’s permission.

Initially, disgruntled, they slowly began to change their act, urged on by Koschmider’s pleas to ‘make a show’. They began to take Preludin pills supplied by the toilet-frau Rosa Hoffman (although Pete Best didn’t indulge), which made them dehydrated, causing them to swill back copious quantities of beer, usually sent up on stage for them by members of the audience.

Their on-stage antics included mock fights amongst themselves, horse-play, John imitating a spastic and doing the goose-step, much to the frustration of Koschmider. It was John who provided most of the on-stage action and he increased his verbal attacks on the audience, calling them ‘krauts’, Nazis’ and ‘German spassies’ (Spastics).

Strangely enough, members of the audience found this funny and more beer was ordered for the group on stage.

Pete also recalled, “John had a pair of Long John underpants as it was getting very cold with winter drawing in. George bet him ten marks that he wouldn’t go out wearing them and nothing else. He went out the street, just in his Long Johns, with sun specs on and reading the newspaper for five minutes.”

John was also to comment, “We felt cocky, being from Liverpool, at least believing the myth about Liverpool producing cocky people, so we tried to be it. The first mach shau I did was to jump around one number like Gene Vincent. Every number lasted twenty minutes, just to spin it out.”

There were complaints to the police about the noise – and although the area provided every variation of sex, a cornucopia of drugs and drinks around the clock, noise wasn’t tolerated. The police kept warning Koschmider about the noise and they finally took action.

The Beatles arrived at the Indra one night to find that the police had closed it down, 48 nights after it had been turned into a showplace for the group. During that time the Beatles had transformed their act, had increased the takings of the Indra and had begun to build a local following.

Koschmider moved them to the Kaiserkeller for the duration of their contract.

At one time, when the Seniors and the Beatles were appearing at the Kaiserkeller together, Koschmider had another of his ideas. He stopped playing the jukebox in the intervals, and presented more music. So he split the Seniors into two, and had Stuart Sutcliffe of the Beatles play with Howie on sax and Stan Foster on piano, accompanied by a German drummer.

“When Howie recalled those times in a Mersey Beat interview, he said: ‘The girls used to rave over Pete Best – he was the star boy. He was a great fellow and the one I liked most.”

Incidentally, Georg Sterner had acted as interpreter to Bruno Koschmider when the German promoter came to the 2 I’s in London looking for groups to book and he returned to Hamburg to work in Koschmider’s club as a waiter.

Sterner had been working at the Heaven and Hell coffee bar in London and he joined the minibus containing Allan Williams and his wife Beryl, her brother Barry Chang, Lord Woodbine and John, Paul, George, Pete and Stuart on their journey to Hamburg.

The Beatles had considered him a friend, but discovered that he was Koschmider’s ‘spy’ who reported on them.

One day when they were rehearsing at the club and had two girl friends with them, Sterner was offensive to the girls and hit one of them. Pete Best knocked him to the floor. As a result Koschmider fined Pete five pounds for hitting Sterner and also charged the others five pounds each for allowing it to happen. It was also Sterner who told Koschmider that the group were going to play at the rival Top Ten Club.

Georg Sterner (sans an e at the end of Georg) is the correct spelling of his name. Over the years, various people in the Beatles story have had their names recorded wrongly. Frieda Kelly, the Beatles fan club secretary, is usually depicted as Freda while the correct surname for Astrid is Kirchherr and for Klaus it’s Voormann.

John Lennon came to the Mersey Beat office and gave me a bundle of photos taken in Germany including the shot of him in the underpants. They were pics of them fooling around, but when Brian Epstein took over the management of the group and heard that John had given me the photos, he panicked and sent John round to ask me if I’d return the photos to him, which I did.

Photographs from the book ‘The Best Years of the Beatles’ by Pete Best and Bill Harry.

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