Growing up in Liverpool, The Beatles were used to life in a tough port city, but they were now off to an even tougher one β Hamburg. As the group members were all still only teenagers, Allan thought it best to transport the group over to Hamburg himself, and so on the morning of 16 th August he crammed himself, his wife Betty, her brother Barry, fellow promoter Lord Woodbine, and the five Beatles, into his old Austin van and drove, via the Harwich β Hook of Holland ferry, all the way to Hamburg.
The main thoroughfare is the Reeperbahn, a den of iniquity if ever there was one. The road, which is a mile long, was not the sort of place you would take your granny for an evening stroll. Dominated by sleazy sex joints, brothels and bars, the whole area was controlled by gangsters and gun-runners.
These days, the area has become somewhat more gentrified with tighter controls, and visited by more tourists than sailors. Prostitution is legal and judging by the number of times I was approached by ladies of the night, sex is still big business around here.
Before you ask, No! This is the world that Allan Williams had brought The Beatles into, and it was a world that would either make or break them. For their part, they were required to perform 7 days a week for a minimum of four and a half hours between the hours of 5pm and 3am, depending on which evening it was. Their performance was in front of just a handful of spectators, mainly prostitutes and their clients, and not only that, they had to turn the volume down after a complaint from the woman who lived above the club.
The room had been an old storeroom, and there were just concrete walls and nothing else. No heat, no wallpaper, not a lick of paint; and two sets of bunk beds, like little camp beds, with not very many covers. The cinema closed down in but its location in Paul Roosen Str can still be found, as illustrated by the pic below.
