Kaiserkeller

• 1. Introduction

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  The Kaiserkeller opened its doors on the 14th of October 1959, tucked into the St. Pauli quarter of Hamburg, near the infamous Reeperbahn. Bruno Koschmider, the man behind the venue, had no idea that a booking arrangement with a Liverpool promoter would make his club a place remembered long after the music stopped. How did a Hamburg nightclub with a stage made of planks balanced on beer crates become one of the most storied rooms in rock history? And who were the people that passed through it, changed because of it, and occasionally broke it apart?

• 2. The Chain That Led to Liverpool

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  A Caribbean steel band set the whole thing in motion. After playing at Allan Williams' The Jacaranda club in Liverpool, the band took an offer to perform in Hamburg. Williams heard enthusiastic reports about the city's club scene and reached out to Koschmider, offering to work as a booking agent. Koschmider accepted. He had already booked a group called Derry and the Seniors after seeing them play in London, and when they proved successful in Hamburg, he wanted more acts. Williams' first pick was Rory Storm and The Hurricanes, but they were locked into a season at a Butlins holiday camp and could not go. Gerry and The Pacemakers also turned the offer down. That left one group still available: The Beatles.

• 3. Six Hours a Night

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  The Beatles arrived under terms that would exhaust most working musicians. Their contract required them to play six or seven hours a night, seven nights a week. They started at Koschmider's smaller Indra club, sleeping in cramped and dirty rooms at the Bambi Kino cinema next door. When the Indra closed, Koschmider moved them to the larger Kaiserkeller. The St. Pauli quarter was well known as a dangerous neighborhood, particularly for anyone who looked different from the regular clientele, and the area around the Reeperbahn was openly associated with prostitution. Horst Fascher, Koschmider's bouncer, was a former boxer whose career had ended after he unintentionally killed a sailor in a street fight. Despite that background, Fascher later became a genuine friend to the Beatles and took it upon himself to protect them.

• 4. The Stage That Broke

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  The Kaiserkeller's stage was not built to last. Planks of wood rested across the tops of beer crates, and the two groups sharing the bill noticed it almost immediately. The Beatles and Rory Storm and The Hurricanes made a bet to see which group would be the first to break through. They punished the floor night after night until a small crack appeared. The decisive moment came when Storm leapt from the top of an upright piano and landed hard. Guitarist Johnny 'Guitar' Byrne watched as the stage cracked loudly and collapsed into a V-shape around Storm. Storm disappeared into the gap, and the amplifiers along with drummer Ringo Starr's cymbals slid into the hole alongside him. Koschmider was furious. He replaced the live music with a jukebox, and his doormen followed both groups across the road to Harold's cafe, where they beat the musicians with coshes as punishment.

• 5. Friendships Made Between Sets

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  Klaus Voormann first came to the Kaiserkeller on his own, drawn in by the performances from The Hurricanes and the Beatles. He was impressed enough to return the next day, bringing photographer Astrid Kirchherr and their mutual friend Jurgen Vollmer with him. During a break between sets, the Beatles' bass player Stuart Sutcliffe met Kirchherr. The two began dating not long after. Voormann had been in a relationship with Kirchherr at the time, and though further visits to the club gradually shifted that relationship to a purely platonic friendship, he and Kirchherr remained close. Rory Storm and The Hurricanes had arrived in Hamburg on the 1st of October 1960, replacing Derry and The Seniors at the venue after negotiating better pay than either The Seniors or the Beatles had received. By the end of their run, Koschmider himself presented Storm's group with a special certificate recognizing their performances.

• 6. After the Kaiserkeller

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  In October 1960, the Beatles left Koschmider's operation entirely and moved to the Top Ten Club, which was run by a man named Peter Eckhorn. The Kaiserkeller did not close with their departure. Decades later it continued operating in the same St. Pauli neighborhood, eventually becoming an alternative rock club that belongs to the Grosse Freiheit 36 complex, a venue group whose address sits just streets away from where Koschmider's beer-crate stage once stood.