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(c) Ian Hammond 1999
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The Star Club (3) 

This is the third and final part of a series on the recordings of the
Beatles final performances at the Star Club in Hamburg in December
1962. The first two installments walked briefly through the thirty or
so songs. Now it's time for a few reflections.


The live performance difference: LOUD!
Some later sixties albums included instructions to the purchaser
reminding them to play the record LOUD. Rock should shake your ass,
not just tickle your eardrum. The overwhelming difference between
these recordings and the subsequent sessions BBC and EMI sessions is
the volume.

I had often wondered why the vocals on some of the BBC recordings
sounded so weak and almost inattentive. I think now it was the sudden
loss of the dynamic environment when they were instructed to turn down
the volume for recording. The drumming patterns needed to be altered
substantially for the studio.

To a degree, this explains the vacuousness of the guitar solos on one
or two tracks: compare Harrison's majestic solo on Matchbox here
with the plunka ta plunka on the EMI take. Harrison complained of the
surgical sterility of the EMI studios on more than one occasion.

Martin's feat was to find a half-way mark on Please Please Me and With
The Beatles. You will remember his original goal of recording the
first album at the Cavern to capture the exciting live feel. Instead
he set up the EMI studio as if they were playing live.

The reason I really dig the Star Club stuff is the loudness of it all.

The recordings have extraordinarily good quality at times. It seems
certain that contra the standard cliche story, the recordings were
made over a number of performances. This might indicate a more
sophisticated approach to the miking than has been accepted thus far.


The Arrangments
The performances are rarely just chording. Most songs have a well
worked arrangement, often with quite precise parts. The observant
Gerry Marsden remarked that the Beatles were the first live band to
sound like the record.

The standard arraignment here is quite different to their recorded
work. Generally they sing two verses and perhaps a chorus before
heading straight into a solo. This is where the early solo, as on
Nowhere Man, comes from.

The ubiquitous close was a bar or so of rising bass and falling guitar
melody ending on a syncopated flourish, perhaps with a fancy chord as
a chaser.

Within this basic structure, designed for the dance floor and to get
them through long sets, the Beatles display amazing variety of style
and nuance.


The Drumming
Personally, I am in awe of good drummers. I think the use they make of
all their limbs is staggering, particularly at the energy levels like
those Starr elicits on these recordings. His habit of following a song
from the "inside" is already apparent here. 

He has to drum quite differently for the dance floor, often using a
forced short roll and a thump to emphasize the on-beat to the dancers.

More than anyone else, it is the drummer who suffers most in the
migration from the dance hall to the recording studio. It was Starr
who most often said that they lost skills in this process. I think the
reason is the absence of the dancers.

His drumming here is magnificient and worth listening to in its own
right. 


The Guitars
It's 100% Electric Guitar territory, but you rarely hear them just
bashing chords (as they do, for example, on When I Get Home). Lennon
tends to use rock riffing many different variations on the standard
patterns. Beyond that, there are many instances where he shows his
well developed aesthetic for choosing exactly the right part.

Harrison augments Lennon's rhythm part with well-thought
interpolations in a contrasting register position. His legendary
ability to provide colorful fills is already developed here. He
sometimes comes out of a solo supercharged as on "That's Alright
Mama".

The two guitars often work together beautifully with the backing riff
and solo intermingling in metallic delight. The subtlety they give
songs such as Falling In Love shows real partnership.

The bass is always solid and inventive. That beautiful plastic motion
is already there on I Saw Her Standing There. McCartney already
knows how to provide the correct style of bass for each piece.


The Solos
The Beatles had two guitarists on-stage. In live sets such as these
it's more a case of everybody doing their fair share of the work. Now,
we know that Lennon could do a more than respectable solo for Long
Tall Sally. We know that in the mid-seventies he could still pull off
a respectable Chuck Berry solo. He said in interviews that the first
job was to learn the solos for Carol and Johnny Be Good. And we
know that when Harrison was expelled from Hamburg for being underage
Lennon took over the job of lead guitarist.

All in all, listening to the album, I tend to think that Lennon plays
at least some of the solos on his Chuck Berry material. Sweet Little
Sixteen is perhaps the most obvious. I'm not the best person to work
out this kind of issue and I would appreciate some of our better
guitar people giving the tracks a listen.

We sometimes hear debate about Harrison's guitar solo skills. Listen
to this album in awe. Some of the solo work is superb. That doesn't
mean he has the technique of Django Rheinhardt or Tony Sheridan, but
he has all the feel in the world.


The Voices
The Beatles very clearly had three lead singers at this time: George
has only slightly less material than John or Paul. Each of the three
sell their songs and work the crowd. All of them are putting an effort
into learning how to control their voices.

The harmony is usually perfect. It's quite amazing how well they pitch
in a live environment. But then again, a thousand performances helps.
The Beatles took no part in the recording process. They were singing
for the crowd, bouncing their voices of the walls of the room. We can
assume they sounded even better to the audience.


The Material
I recall working out that the Beatles must have picked up about two
new songs a week in this period and furnished each with an
arrangement. Now, there's an interesting question to answer here: it
seems that they spent about as much time rehearsing as Lennon did
doing homework at school. So, when did they pick up the songs?

Harrison says that they worked on the softer songs and the harmony for
the afternoon shows, which would have taken place shortly after they
woke up (if they had in fact been to sleep).

They would have swapped songs with other bands. There were four other
bands performing at the Star Club alone when they were there. They
backed artists like Tony Sheridan, learning his material along the
way.

In many cases it would have been a case of learning how to play a song
they had heard for years, such as Your Feets Too Big.

John gets most of the Chuck Berry songs and takes the "rock" ballads,
often with complex guitar parts and full backing harmony.

Paul had the manic Little Richard songs, Jazz material and some
ballads.

George specializes on Carl Perkins along with some Buddy Holly and
King/Goffin material. He also has his share of joke songs.


The Ensemble
The Beatles demonstrate that the whole is greater than the sum of the
parts. While not individually virtuosos they are indeed a virtuoso
ensemble and band. When they play a country track they are a country
band. When they play dixie, they are a trad jazz band. Their feel for
beat is impeccable and that's what's usually driving their choice of
parts. 

In this sense they already were a recording band before they went to
EMI. I Saw Her Standing There and Ask Me Why were yet to be
recorded, and yet both originals are ready for the studio. Most of the
tracks on Please Please Me are exactly the same arrangements they
had developed as a live band.

Their diligence and their utter commitments to the band's sound as a
whole explains much of their behaviors as a recording band.  


The Origins Of Beatlemania
You'll search in vain to find the songwriting skills that powered
Beatlemania here. I Saw Her Standing There has some fine moments.
Ask Me Why has some nice harmony. They're the only two originals at
the performance. They don't even bother singing their single Love Me
Do or it's flip.

Let me put this another way: it's far to easy to project back in time
the things we came to know about the Beatles in late 1964 and beyond
when the roles in the band were stabilized. In late 1962 the direction
of the band was wide open. Likewise the roles within the band. 

So, where do we hear Beatlemania in these recordings? I think it can
be heard in joyousness of Twist and Shout"=, in the sheer energy of
their rock. A more difficult point to define is their refined sense of
control of their art. They are already post rock in a been there,
done that sense. They don't need to scream and girate to produce an
orgasmic response as the cool opening of Twist And Shout shows.


The Residuals Of The Live Shows
What remained of the world of the Star Club and the Cavern in their
later work?

Roll Over Beethoven/Everybody's Got To Be My Baby, Twist And Shout and
Long Tall Sally are the cornerstones of their rock satori. They play a
selection at these at almost every live concert until 1966. Lennon
eventually replaces Twist And Shout with Rock 'n' Roll Music" and
McCartney replaces Long Tall Sally with I'm Down.

These just about the only songs they retain from this repertoire
after they start the debilitating bump and grind as travelling freaks
in the Beatles' touring carnival.

We may tend to forget about these songs in the late sixties, but they
don't. They were forever children of the fifties, as their rock and
their sideburns show. What they produced after Hamburg and Liverpool
was at once a pale imitation and a brave new world.