Talk:The Beatles in Hamburg/Archive 1

And in the end/beginning...
This has just been started, so it's as rough as old boots, but I am working on it.--andreasegde (talk) 10:18, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

There is so... much more to go in this article.--andreasegde (talk) 19:23, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Jacaranda
One of my recent edits de-wikified Jacaranda which is a very nice-looking plant, not the club. If that was intended as a redlink for a future article it will need adding back in in some other form. PL290 (talk) 11:38, 15 May 2009 (UTC)


 * That was my 'bad' as they like to say here. Anyway, I think I'm nearly done putting stuff in, so now it needs a good clean for mistakes and style, an intro, and then off to a GA review.--andreasegde (talk) 13:25, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Cleaned spelling, and written intro. Now a lazy gaze for style...--andreasegde (talk) 14:38, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Nominated. Not bad for just over 48 hours, huh?--andreasegde (talk) 15:07, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

GA nomination
An impressive amount of material has been gathered in a short space of time. This article is much needed, and is very promising. It does need some attention given to the structure though with possible new sections, and the Lead needs a complete rewrite. Putting the review on hold until the end of May to allow these issues to be discussed and addressed.  SilkTork  *YES! 11:04, 17 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Any ideas about what to do in detail?--andreasegde (talk) 19:48, 18 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Talk:The Beatles in Hamburg/GA1.  SilkTork  *YES! 07:08, 19 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I've started looking at the Lead and article structure. I could make some changes to these today along the lines suggested unless this clashes with something someone's already started. PL290 (talk) 09:03, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Nice one, PL290. In fact, nicer than nice, and very, very nice, and if I may say so, nice. :)--andreasegde (talk) 08:24, 21 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Glad you like it! Your addition of the then-current band member names is a stroke of genius and the icing on the cake.


 * While I was studying the article to create the summary, I made a list of various tweaks which I've today started applying. I see you're still working on the article too, so I'll try not to cause you too many edit conflicts (mine can wait). I'll continue, on and off, but let me know if it drives you crazy at any point and I'll stop and come back to it later. PL290 (talk) 12:42, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Go to it. I'm off for today and the whole of tomorrow.--andreasegde (talk) 14:17, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, I know, I know. Now I'm really OFF... :))--andreasegde (talk) 15:17, 21 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm very impressed at the improvements. I'll drop in later to look at them more closely, but that's very, very encouraging!  SilkTork  *YES! 07:34, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Epstein
"when The Beatles asked the disc jockey to play "My Bonnie" for him to hear, Epstein had only moderate enthusiasm for the record. With difficulty, he remained in the club while The Beatles played their second set, and to his surprise found his interest growing stronger and stronger as they played."

Funnily enough, I have never read this (above) anywhere at all.--andreasegde (talk) 18:21, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

This, from the Epstein article, seems to think otherwise: "assistant [Alistair] Taylor to watch The Beatles perform... Epstein later talked about the performance: “I was immediately struck by their music, their beat, and their sense of humour on stage". Can someone enlighten me?--andreasegde (talk) 18:25, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, enlightenment is straightforward. It's from the Pawlowski work cited, and they're not incompatible accounts: "Immediately" in your account refers to the performance. My account begins earlier on, before Epstein had witnessed any performance. According to Pawlowski, Epstein arrived in the club earlier and they talked and played him the record before the second set. (He wasn't there for the first set.) Distractions here are sets and "while" and "played". How about "With difficulty, he remained in the club until it was time for The Beatles to begin their performance, and when they started to play he was immediately struck...." etc along with your citation. (And of course, even having been immediately struck, there's nothing to stop his interest growing stronger and stronger as they play...) PL290 (talk) 19:14, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

But why would they play him the record when he was already selling it in his own shop? It was the record that got him interested in them in the first place. This is my Sherlock's cap talking, but it seems strange, don't you think? --andreasegde (talk) 07:15, 23 May 2009 (UTC)


 * They would play him the record because he was not (yet) selling it in his shop! Pawlowski's account is that "after checking his files, Epstein confessed he had no such record nor any such listing by title or group". Perhaps my paraphrase has lost the impact and needs a word tweak:

On 28 October 1961, the 27-year-old Epstein, manager of the record department in his father's NEMS music store in Whitechapel Street, Liverpool, was asked for the record by an 18-year-old boy, Raymond Jones. Epstein could find nothing on his files about The Beatles or the record, but the following day it was requested again by two girls, this time mentioning that the Beatles had been seen playing at the Cavern, a club in nearby Mathew Street. The interest in the record eventually led Epstein to make his own way to the Cavern [...] PL290 (talk) 07:50, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, in Sherlock mode, Bill Harry, who wrote the Mersey Beat magazine, convinced Epstein to sell it in the NEMS shop (The Beatles were featured on the front page of its second issue) and Epstein must have seen the numerous posters around Liverpool featuring The Beatles. Alistair Taylor claimed that he used the name of Jones (a regular customer) to order the single and paid the deposit himself, knowing that Epstein would notice it, and order further copies.

My question (and it's bugging the life out of me) is if Epstein had already heard the single, why would he want to hear it again on the Cavern club's sound system? "The Beatles asked the disc jockey [Bob Wooler] to play "My Bonnie" for him to hear, Epstein had only moderate enthusiasm for the record." It doesn't sound right. Why was he there if it wasn't good? He even said to his parents, "Listen to this, but don't listen to the singer, listen to the backing group".

The first thing that everbody agrees with is that Harrison (sarcastically) said, "What brings Mr. Epstein here?" It has also been written that he only had a short talk with them in their "broom cupboard" of a dressing room, so what really happened?--andreasegde (talk) 18:01, 23 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Since your question is bugging you, I will endeavour to answer it! If Epstein had already heard the single, why would he want to hear it again? The answer: he had not already heard it. That's what Pawlowski's account says. Sorry if I've failed to spell out this central point. So we have a choice: either Pawlowski is right, in which case we have to bring this to bear when interpreting the facts presented by other sources. (For example, the scenes you describe happened later, after he had indeed got his own copy.) Or, Pawlowski is wrong. At the end of the day the Hamburg article won't suffer greatly if we make the Epstein less detailed, but I think it makes quite a nice little cameo there so let's keep it if we can resolve the apparent source conflicts. PL290 (talk) 18:42, 23 May 2009 (UTC)


 * It appears Pawlowski's right about Epstein not having heard the record, going by Dendodge's new The Beatles timeline which confirms the same sequence of events using a different source. Let it be? PL290 (talk) 16:25, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Are you kidding? This is interesting stuff! :)--andreasegde (talk) 18:21, 24 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes it is interesting, and dig on by all means, but I think ruthlessness will required in dealing only with stated facts! Assumptions/interpretations/folklore too easily cloud the issue when considering the various accounts and whether they really do conflict. For example:
 * 'he only had a short talk with them in their "broom cupboard" of a dressing room' - I don't see a conflict! That could have been when he turned up per Pawlowski, and they yelled to the DJ from said broom cupboard to get him to play the record, then finished their short talk to go and play.


 * Harrison (sarcastically) said, "What brings Mr. Epstein here?" - again, I don't see a conflict! In isolation, this means nothing (not even that Epstein knew Harrison; it indicates Harrison knew him, and one could speculate that this was from buying records, and perhaps that Harrison didn't like him much for some reason, etc., etc.).


 * No doubt many people would like to claim they brought about Epstein's contact, by engineering requests for the record; again, that doesn't necessarily conflict with the account of subsequent events!


 * Anyway, dig on by all means; I don't have any particular allegiance to Pawlowski, so if there truly is a weight of factual evidence against Pawlowski from what can be considered more reliable sources, then we should use the latter. Did you check out Dendodge's source, which seemed to agree with Pawlowski? PL290 (talk) 19:59, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Bob Spitz's book (p266): During a routine inventory at NEMS, Brian asked Alistair Taylor, "Do you remember that record by a band called The Beatles?'" Taylor did, as "My Bonnie" had sold very well. Epstein then said, "They're playing at this place called The Cavern. We ought to go see them."

I think that settles it.--andreasegde (talk) 07:40, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, now this really is getting interesting! Because, far from settling it, that immediately calls Spitz's account into question:
 * They don't talk like that in Liverpool!
 * (far more seriously) Epstein's visit to the Cavern was on 9 November 1961. How could the record have "sold well" prior to that? It wasn't released in the UK until 1962! (The_Beatles_in_Hamburg) PL290 (talk) 07:58, 25 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, probably Alistair Taylor's account. Don't forget that Epstein didn't have a Liverpudlian accent at all, and Liverpool was well-known as being the place where you could get imports (Epstein promised that he could get any single for a customer). Taylor said they sold loads of the My Bonnie singles. If they sold them, Epstein must have heard it once in his own shop. I think Lewisohn is the source to sort this out, as he's the fanatic. Anybody got a book?--andreasegde (talk) 16:45, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Alistair Taylor, long-time assistant to Brian Epstein, from an interview with Martin Lewis at the re-created Cavern Club in 1995:

"We found this record in Germany by a guy called Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers, the boys were just a backing group, and one day Brian came into the shop and he said, 'By the way, do you remember that record that we sold so many of, that band The Beatles?' So I said, yeah. So he said, 'Well, they're playing at the Cavern. Let's go down and see them, and we'll see what they're like'."

This is from BrianEpstein.com.--andreasegde (talk) 16:54, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

To any interested readers; this an entirely refreshing way of discussing things here at Wikipedia, as we are interested in the truth. Anyone thinking we are edit-warring could not be further from the truth. :)--andreasegde (talk) 16:56, 25 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Hear, hear! Absolutely so, and I'm very glad it occurred to Andreasegde to point that out to any innocent bystanders (who need not, of course, remain bystanders but are urged to shed what light they can on this and any other issues discussed here). Which leads me to make a second point: the two of us have been working on this page recently but we certainly don't feel we WP:OWN it either.


 * Andreasegde, I saw an article that used a certain approach that could well be worth considering here: I didn't note which article but it said something along the lines of, "By some accounts, x happened[1], whereas others claim that y happened[2]. I was quite struck by this idea and tucked it away in my mind for future use. Such a presentation removes the issue and potentially even adds interest to the prose. PL290 (talk) 08:42, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Headers
Maybe a few too many? Wet fish on hand to be slapped with, if one cares to... :)--andreasegde (talk) 18:27, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, the number of headers has grown, but I think rightly, to reflect the overall structure of the article. The Indra and Kaiserkeller had become vast and needed breaking down, and I think those 4 subsections work quite well. I also added a small historical introduction to set the scene, Hamburg in the 1960s, therefore breaking Background into 2 subsections. Again I think it works quite well. And having considered all the sections again now, and their place in the overall structure, I think it's appropriate. But let's be guided by what the GA reviewer says about it. PL290 (talk) 19:31, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I take it back. The explanation about Hamburg being bombed and The Beatles being there is great.--andreasegde (talk) 07:17, 23 May 2009 (UTC)


 * OK. I should also say I think keeping the new sections devoted to each of My Bonnie and Epstein is important too because, as the Lead has stressed, the first record was historic, and the Epstein contact is a key (albeit indirect) consequence of Hamburg so highly significant in the article.


 * As you can see, I've gone on thinking about whether there are too many sections, or too deep a structure, but if you look at the table of contents, it does seem best to have all the club stuff together under a Clubs section, and everything else like we have it, or there will be loss of structure and coherence as a result. There are probably other ways but I still think it's probably best like it is. Again, though, let's leave it as it is and see what the GA reviewer's thoughts are (who did, incidentally, of course suggest that more sections might be needed). PL290 (talk) 07:39, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

No, go for it. An explanation of the overall club scene in Hamburg under the header would be brilliant, as would the others. I did what I could, but this needs fresh eyes, as you obviously have. I stopped working on Wikipedia for a long time because there wasn't a team spirit anymore, but this article has changed my mind. In a word... marvellous.

BTW, I even think this article (albeit only dealing with The Beatles in Hamburg) is much more interesting than the main article. It's great stuff.--andreasegde (talk) 17:41, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes it is a very interesting article to work on, and I've enjoyed all the work that's gone into it recently by all concerned. I appreciate the positive feedback you've given on the input I've provided myself, and of course the GA pass now is excellent news. PL290 (talk) 19:11, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

GA pass
This article has really taken off. It's such an important article to have, and I'm so pleased to see the way it has developed and is continuing to develop. There is still work to be done on the lead, and on fine-tuning the sections and their contents, but the article meets the GA criteria so I've passed it. Push on and this should be a candidate for Featured Article. Good luck!  SilkTork  *YES! 18:49, 23 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I (we) thank you very kindly.--andreasegde (talk) 17:58, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

On to FA then!
The hard work's been done. It's clear from the GA reviewer's comments that the article is approaching FA standard. If we're in agreement that it's now stable, i.e., we've finished adding material, I'm more than happy to carry on looking at the fine detail and push it to the point of FA nomination with further fine-tuning of prose, structure and Lead, keeping one eye on the FA criteria as I go. Are people happy for me to take that on, or should we do this a different way? PL290 (talk) 16:39, 24 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm over the moon that this has passed, but I personally would like to get other sub-articles finished to GA standard.--andreasegde (talk) 17:57, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Dates

 * On 28 October 1961, Epstein was asked for the record…
 * On 31 October 1961, Polydor released "My Bonnie" (in Germany).

This has to be cleared up or explained.--andreasegde (talk) 07:51, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Internet: "The German Polydor single, My Bonnie b/w When the Saints Go Marching In was released in August 1961", and The U.K. release of the single was issued January 5, 1962." The Beatles' Timeline

"August 1961: Polydor releases the "My Bonnie"/ "The Saints" single labeled "Tony Sheridan and The Beat Brothers" and it becomes a top ten hit (for Sheridan) in Germany." History

--andreasegde (talk) 08:02, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

September 1961 - Harrison has a copy of My Bonnie that he lends to Bob Wooler. The record was sent over by Sutcliffe who was in Germany.--andreasegde (talk) 10:24, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Leaving Liverpool
A couple of minor points need clarifying. Several members of the band are described as exaggerating the amount they would be earning, to £15 a week. The article then goes on to state that their actual wage as a group was £100 per week - this between 5 is £20 a week, even higher. Secondly it describes the Beatles, their manager, his wife and three friends adding up to 9 people. Surely the actual figure is 10 - remember they were a 5 piece at this point? Thanks82.27.200.120 (talk) 20:14, 30 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I have changed the number in the van as I found a good reference, and the names of people.
 * Money: This has also bothered me in the past. Thanks for bringing it up - I have cleaned that section.--andreasegde (talk) 10:22, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Kircherr wasn't a minor...
Quote from article: "Sutcliffe wrote to a friend that he could hardly take his eyes off her when she had first walked into the club, and tried to talk to her during the next break, but she had already left. (This was due to the strict German law at the time which prohibited young people from frequenting bars after 10 o'clock at night.)"

This doesn't really make sense. According to the Kircherr article she was born in 1938, which means she was over 21 and thus not a minor when the Beatles first arrived in Hamburg in 1960. I'm not aware of any law in Germany then or now which prohibited people over the legal age from staying at bars after 10 p.m. Can anybody please double-check this info? -- 77.7.142.53 (talk) 18:52, 20 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I have to agree, because they were over 21 at the time (Voormann and Kircherr being both born in early 1938). Spitz (2005) p221, stated the stuff, and I've read it numerous times from other sources about them "having to leave early", so what's that all about? Hmmm...--andreasegde (talk) 09:31, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Beatles RfC
You are invited to participate in an RfC at Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/The Beatles on the issue of capitalising the definite article when mentioning the band's name in running prose. This long-standing dispute is the subject of an open mediation case and we are requesting your help with determining the current community consensus. For the mediators. ~ GabeMc  (talk 00:54, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Roy Young
Having just created a short article on Roy Young, I'm surprised that he doesn't seem to be mentioned in this article. By his own accounts, he played regularly with Tony Sheridan and Ringo Starr, and was a good mate of the other Beatles in their Hamburg days, and (again, according to him) was invited by Epstein to join the group when they returned to the UK - he refused. Do mainstream Beatles sources (I'm not an expert on them) give him much of a role, if any? Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:19, 3 October 2013 (UTC)