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In August 1960, Drummer Pete Best joins the group, now known as simply the Beatles. He accompanies the band to Hamburg where, over five visits between now and December 1962, the group hones its sound at the Indra, Kaiserkeller, Top Ten and Star clubs.
Astrid Kirchherr:
In 1960, Astrid Kirchherr met the Beatles for the first time on their visit to Hamburg. After becoming close friends with this unknown band, she began to do photographic studies of the members she eventually grew to love them.
Included were impressive group photographs and individual pictures of The Beatles in their early days The band still included Pete Best and Stuart Sutcliffe.
After falling in love with Astrid, Stuart left the group to follow his dream of becoming an artist.
She and her friends are also said to have inspired the famous Beatle mop-top.
The time in Hamburg was important for the Beatles' personal development. All became adults except George who was shipped back to Liverpool for being underage.
While the boys where in Germany, Cynthia waited everyday for letters from John. She would sit home in Liverpool, still faithful to John, while John was in Hamburg a different girl almost every week. It was often that one of the boys would get in trouble with a prostitue. They got Horst Fasher, a former German boxer, to take care of these problems and he later became their bodyguard. In Germany they met a performer named Tony Sheridan and together they made a rock and roll version of My Bonnie Lies Over The Sea, which was their first real recording single.
The Mersey Beat:
Mersey is a river in Liverpool and Beat is Rock-Music of the 60's. Liverpools fast growing music scene needet to have a platform to present the ideas and musical products that had been developed by a lot of bands from Liverpool.
The journal "Mersey Beat" was founded by a british journalist who was a close friend of John Lennon. "Mersey Beat" later was a generic term for a lot of bands from Liverpool. One being "The Swinging Blue Jeans" and they became almost as well-known as The Beatles).
More than 350 bands had existed in the Mersey-Area in 1961. John's short-stories, texts and paintings, which where very original and quite funny, had often been printed. His work was surreal and not just an ordinary copy of the texts of american "Beat-Poets".
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