In a 1966 double-A side single the Beatles sung “we all live in a yellow submarine” but in real life the Fab Four did want to live together on a secluded Greek island they intended to buy. It happened the following year, 1967, the boys were holidaying in the Greek islands and were island-hopping when they came upon an ideal island location. Or at least that was what George, John and Paul thought while on acid the whole time of the “inspection”{𝔸}. The island that their eyes lit on was roomy enough, some 80-acres with a fishing village, a large olive grove and four beaches. In addition to the main island there were four smaller islands surrounding it (one for each Beatle!)
The prime mover for the island home scheme was Beatle John. At that point in his life Lennon was edging his way into his glorious hippie phase. The Aegean “Arcadia” represented a chance to live communally, an idyllic place where he and the other three celebs could escape the overwhelming pressures and attentions of superstardom. The plan was for the four musicians and the group’s entourage (manager Epstein, the roadies and the inner circle of assistants plus relatives) to all live together on a huge estate on the island hideaway. Paul and George seemed to have been on-song with John at that hazily propitious moment in time…McCartney: (the island was the means of achieving) “a sort of hippie community…where nobody’d interfere with your lifestyle”…Harrison concurred: “we’ll buy the island, we’ll just go there and drop out” (‘The Beatles in Greece’, Daily Beatle,, 03-Jul-2014, www.wogew.blogspot.com).
Team Beatles hit Greece (Source: Greek City News)What prompted such an extravagantly fanciful and surreal notion? The short answer would appear simply to be drugs! Narcotic substances may have inspired the germ of the highly romantic and improbable idea. As Beatle Paul explained later, the boys saw in the island jewel a place where they could smoke pot unhindered, without fearing the consequences of the law. Paul attributed the island acquisition project to “drug-induced ambition”. Certainly drug consumption was part of the agenda in coming to Greece – if you accept the word of NEMS staffer Peter Brown. According to Brown, a Beatle associate Yannis Mardas (AKA “Magic Alex”) had brokered a deal with the Greek authorities giving the Fab Four the green light to bring personal supplies of drugs secreted in their carry-on bags into the country in return for photo ops in aid of Hellenic tourism (Daily Beatle).
The rich celebrity artists’ commune Roadie (and later Apple Corps head) Neil Aspinall’s recollection of what John, Paul and George (but especially John) had in mind was a configuration of individual villas for the four Beatles which would all be linked to a central dome of some description. There would also be a recording studio on the main island, plus an entertainment complex and some “knock-up” housing for Beatle staff and visiting friends. Trinity Is (Source: Culture Trip) The decision to buy the island paradise was pretty much made on the spot and another NEMS assistant Alistair Taylor was sent back to London to seal the deal. This necessitated the boys buying £90,000 worth of special export dollars to complete the international transaction. But by the time the deal was set up, the Beatles’s initial enthusiasm had waned and they had changed their minds…or maybe they just forgot about the whole grand scheme. Taylor then had to sell the export dollars back to the Greek government, which resulted in an unexpected windfall for the group, courtesy of a favourable exchange rate for the UK£{𝔹}.
Trinity Is is commonly referred to as “guitar-shaped” but with such a profound bend in its “neck” it looks more like one of Pete Townshend’s well-thwacked Fender guitarsIn the application to purchase document (held in the British National Archives) the name of the would-be Beatle island—described as “300,000 square metres of arable land, olive trees, beaches and rocks”—is given as “Aegos, Konstadinos”(?), however no such island can be identified among the multitude of Aegean offshore islands. Another name ascribed to the heavily-wooded island fancied by the Liverpudlian musos is “Leslo” which also unfortunately does not exist. The more likely candidate which most people favour is Trinity Island{ℂ}, located to the east of Athens and just off the larger Euboea Island in the Western Aegean ‘The Beatles visit a Greek island they intended to purchase’, The Beatles Bible, Updated 13-Sep-2021, www.beatlesbible.com .
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{𝔸} Ringo wasn’t on the real estate expedition, he bailed after the Greek mainland part of the trip to return to his Weybridge (Surrey) mansion
{𝔹} a profit of £11,400 was forthcoming for the band
{ℂ} sometimes erroneously called Agia Triada (“Holy Trinity” island)
1966 was indeed a watershed year for the world’s most popular band the Beatles. It was the year that at its end the fabled foursome called it quits on overseas touring and live performances. This followed a demanding 12 months of touring, including Germany, Japan, the Philippines and America (the third visit but this time as reluctant tourers). The constant grind, the heavy work load, the culmination of five years of more or less nonstop touring, had left the group exhausted.
Nihonjin cultural lesson for Ringo & John (Source: nippon.com)
This was only one factor in the ultimate decision to pull the plug…increasing dissatisfaction with sound quality at the various venues they played contributed as well as fears about their personal security and safety on tour1⃞ which escalated after John Lennon’s controversial comments about the Beatles being “more popular than Jesus Christ” and his stated prediction that Christianity will wither away.
Fateful words of the leader
John’s spontaneous act of hubris had profound ramifications as the year unfolded. On the “reunion” visit back to Hamburg, Germany, the Beatles received a death threat. In Japan though fans at concerts were rapturous, Japanese traditionalists voiced opposition to them, and were incensed that the Beatles’ gigs were held at the Nippon Budekan, a Japanese shrine for the war dead. But this was all mere turbulence compared to the tsunami greeting them in Manila, the Philippines’ capital. Moments after the boys stepped foot on the tarmac they were separated from manager Epstein and abruptly whisked away by military types to visit some local plutocrat VIP they didn’t know. The two concerts scheduled for the Rizal Memorial Football Stadium for that day (before a Beatle record combined audience of 80,000) though went exceedingly well.
The Marcoses in 1966 (with an American “friend”) (Photo: Yoichi Yokamoto/National Archives)
“Enemies of the state” snubbing the First Family
What brought the tour undone and turned it into a nightmare for the Beatles was Epstein’s declining an invitation for the boys to attend a brunch reception at the presidential palace organised by “First Lady” Imelda Marcos 2⃞. After the no-show by the Fab Four things turned ugly. The Philippine media castigated the Beatles for their grievous insult to the Marcos family, whipping up an instant public frenzy of Beatlephobia in the country.
Manhandling the teen icons
Beatles Alis Dayan!3⃞
All the chickens came home to roost the next day when the Beatles and their entourage tried to leave the country. First, the local promoter refused to pay the group for their performances, then they weren’t allowed to leave the hotel until Epstein coughed up nearly 75,000 pesos in taxes on the performance fees they were never paid! Meanwhile bomb and death threats against the Beatles were phoned in. But it was when they got to the airport that Filipino vengeance displayed its real venom. The Beatles found their protection had disappeared and the airport refused to handle their baggage and gear, forcing them to carry their own luggage (and their roadies to lug all the equipment themselves) to the plane. As they struggling to make their way to the plane, guns were brandished and the entourage was jostled and attacked by thugs (Mal Evans copped a beating, Epstein was hit, even Ringo got clocked with an flailing uppercut!). They were seen off into the aircraft with an equally hostile reception from hundreds of irate Filipinos wishing them good riddance!
But that wasn’t the end of the ordeal for the Beatles and their minders. The authorities suddenly discovered that some of the group’s flight paperwork was awry and roadie Mal and press officer Tony Barrow were forced to leave the safety of the Beatles’ KLM plane and return to the terminal to make amends. So the Beatles’ jet sat idly on the tarmac for another 40 minutes before it was finally allowed to depart. When they arrived back in London (via a stopover in India) the Beatles vowed never to return to the Philippines – an oath that all four musicians kept.
Talking it down…or up? (Photo credit: AP)
Footnote: The Religious Right’s war on the Beatles
The last tour, which Epstein had long pre-committed John, Paul, George and Ringo to was back to the USA. Lennon’s perceived slight on Jesus and Christianity–although he tried to walk the comments back once he arrived in the US—plagued the entire tour4⃞. Southern fundamentalists and the Ku Klux Klan demonstrated against the “degenerate and blasphemous” Liverpool band. More death threats, some radio stations in the South banned Beatle records from the air, some even organised bonfires, inviting listeners to burn the group’s discs and merchandise. Security became a more pressing issue the longer the tour proceeded, crowds of fans broke down barriers on several occasions. The four band members harboured a genuine fear that they may be the victim of an assassin’s bullet while performing on stage. By the tour’s end all four had hardened their resolve to draw a curtain on touring (‘The Beatles’ 1966 US tour’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org).
Postscript: Hello/Goodbye! The Beatle’s final ever concert (leaving aside the impromptu rooftop jam in London in 1969) at Candlestick Park, San Francisco, didn’t play to a full house, resulting in a loss for the local company organising the event.
𒆜 𒆜 𒆜 𒆜 𒆜 𒆜 𒆜 𒆜 𒆜
1⃞ for which the four performers to some extent blamed Brian Epstein resulting in a loss of confidence by them in his managerial skills
2⃞ “Go Home Beatles!”
3⃞ a disastrous PR move as Epstein had been advised by the British ambassador to accept the invitation as the band’s security while in the country was in the hands of President Marcos (‘A Hard Day’s Night in Manila’, www.beatlesnumber9.com)
4⃞ John in fact proceeded to pour petrol on the fire by criticising the American military intervention in Vietnam which added to the backlash (at that time 90% of Americans still backed the US’ war in Indochina)
This is a story about how Israel missed a golden opportunity to get the Beatles, then on the cusp of greatness, to perform live before Israeli audiences. The “Fab Four” were supposed to tour the country in 1965, concert tickets were even printed for what became a non-event. At the time the official account of why the Israeli government didn’t let the concert tour proceed was the fear of the deleterious effects that the Liverpool band were likely to have on the local youngsters. Citing the teen frenzy created by Cliff Richard’s 1963 concert hullabaloo in Israel, the authorities deny entry to the ‘Rhythm’ Beatles (as they were called in Hebrew) less they ”corrupt the minds of Israeli youth”. A follow-up investigation by a Knesset finance committee finds that “the band has no artistic merit” and reinforces the assertion that they were liable to “cause hysteria and mass disorder among young people” (Resolution 701). The local conservative press echoes the ’outrage’, describing the band’s music in hyperbolic vein as “yeah-yeah–yeah howls which are capable of striking dead a real beetle”.
▪ ▪ ▪ Cliff Richard: not wholesome enough for Israel?
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Thus the Beatles’ fans in the Jewish state never got to see the biggest band on the globe play live⍟. No doubt the desire of Israeli politicians to keep out the ‘pernicious’ influences of “sex, alcohol and rock‘n’roll” in the early 1960s was part of the thinking, however evidence emerged during the Aughts demonstrating that the (official) narratives presented in 1964/1965 were in fact apocryphal. A 2007 Israeli musical documentary Waiting for Godik by Ari Davidovich and subsequent investigations by Israel historians Yoav Kutner and Alon Gan unearths more personal considerations guiding the decision.
▪ ▪ ▪ Giora Godik, Theatrical promoter (Source: Lama Films)
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The true story—apparently—starts in 1962 with the mother of the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein✥, she apparently makes an offer to Israeli music promoter Giora Godik for the not-quite-yet famous Liverpool band to perform in Israel. Godik rejects the offer and instead invites the better known-internationally Cliff Richard to do a concert the following year. Fast forward two years and Godik’s rival Israeli promoter Yaakov Uri trumps him by securing the rights to a Beatles’ concert in the country. To get back at Uri for being “one-upped”, Godik successfully lobbies the Israeli authorities to veto promoters from taking out foreign currency (thereby making the whole undertaking financially unsustainable)…Godik persuades the bureaucrats by apparently playing up the bad publicity engendered from the Cliff Richard concert. A dispute between rival Jewish music promoters – and neither of them got the Beatles!
▪ ▪ ▪The four “Mop Tops”, 1965 with medals
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End-note: In 2008 the state of Israel issued an official apology to the Beatles via a letter to the surviving sister of John Lennon for the 1965 snub, citing lack of budget and the contemporary concerns of some members of the Knesset⌖ as the reason for pulling the tour.
McCartney sparking a mini-Beatlemania revival in Tel Aviv (Source: abc.com.au)
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⍟ though they did finally get to see one-fourth of the band, Paul McCartney, perform there solo in 2008, triggering a new, short-lived wave of Beatlemania in Israel
✥ an Ashkenazi Jew
⌖ at the time of the incident some insiders within the country pointed the finger at Israel’s matronly prime minister Golda Meir
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Articles and sites consulted
‘The Beatles and Israel’, The Beatles Bible, Updated 16-Mar-2018, www.beatlesbible.com)
‘Truth after 42 years: Beatles banned for fear of influence on youth’, Toni O’Loughlin, The Guardian, 22-Sep-2008, www.amp.theguardian.com)
‘A Beatle (finally) coming to Israel’, Matti Friedman, The Inquirer, Aug 28-Aug-2008, www.theinquirer.com
When the Beatles at the top of their fame reflected back on their climb to the summit of pop/rock music, they didn’t understate the early contribution to their success of exceedingly long periods of time spent playing in seedy, red-light night spots in Hamburg, West Germany. John Lennon summed up the immeasurable value of the Hamburg gigs phase to the early Beatles’ development, quipping to a journalist that though he was “born in Liverpool, (he) grew up in Hamburg”. George Harrison echoed John’s sentiments, saying that the band “didn’t have a clue” before the German experience, “Hamburg was really like our apprenticeship, learning how to play in front of people”. Paul McCartney concurred that playing to inebriated and often hostile German sailors “galvanised the band into a musical form”. The boys’ repertoire expanded by necessity, forced to learn countless new songs so as to fill in the marathon eight-hours sets in the Reeperbahn precinct clubs (“George Harrison Said The Beatles ‘Didn’t Have a Clue’ Before They Went to Hamburg, Germany”, Hannah Wigandt, Showbiz CheatSheet, 08-Dec-2021, www.cheatsheet.com ).
⌂ ʰᵃᵐᵇᵘʳᵍ ¹⁹⁶¹ ⁽ᵖʰᵒᵗᵒ﹕ ᵍᵉᵗᵗʸ ⁱᵐᵃᵍᵉˢ⁾
Just before departing for their first stint in Hamburg in 1960, the Beatles (still calling themselves the Silver Beatles) needing a regular drummer to fulfil their contractural obligations took on ex-Blackjacks drummer Pete Best (hired by the band’s manager of sorts Allan Williams). Williams’ business associate Harold Adolphus Phillips (who promoted the band during its Silver Beetles days and occasionally performed himself as “Lord Woodbine”) drove the now five-piece group to Germany.
The band first played at the Indra Club in August 1960 (while sleeping rough in “pigsty” accommodation behind the screen of the nearby Bambi Kino). Later in the year they moved from the Indra down the street to the larger Kaiserkeller, performing late-night to sailors and sex workers, and the more appreciative art students. Both nightclubs were owned by Bruno Koschmider who was paying each of the five Beatles the princely sum of £2.50 a night to perform (although they did score an accommodation upgrade to actual hotels)🏴.
⌂ ᴷˡᵃᵘˢ, ᴬˢᵗʳᶦᵈ & ˢᵗᵘ, ¹⁹⁶¹ ⁽ᴾʰᵒᵗᵒ: ᴳᵉᵗᵗʸ ᴵᵐᵃᵍᵉˢ⁾
While they were doing their night sets at the Kaiserkeller, John, Paul and George met Ringo (Starr), also working the club with the (then) more highly regarded Hurricanes band. The Kaiserkeller was also where the boys met Astrid Kirchherr, a Hamburg local who was to have a profound influence on the band’s look …from Astrid they got their signature “mop-top” style haircut. In Hamburg the Beatles wore black leather jackets and cowboy boots, but Astrid’s influence has an effect here too with the rounded collarless jacket she made for Stu Sutcliffe🏴 which became a prototype of the famous 1963 collarless suits worn by the Beatles🇮🇹. Astrid’s Hamburg art college student friends Klaus Voorman and Jürgen Vollmer also formed lasting associations with the Beatles from the Kaiserkeller days (especially artist and session musician Voorman who designed art covers for Beatles’ albums and played bass on post-breakup Beatles’ individual records).
⌂ ᵀᵒᵖ ᵀᵉⁿ ᶜˡᵘᵇ . ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ: ᴷ & ᴷ ᴴᵃᵐᵇᵘʳᵍ
The following year, while still contracted to Koschmider, the boys were enticed by Peter Eckhorn (Koschmider’s Reeperbahn rival) into defecting to the Top Ten Club on the offer of better money and conditions. Koschmider found out and it’s likely that it was he who turned the underage Harrison in to the police, leading to George’s deportation. When Paul and Pete went back to the Kaiserkeller to get their equipment a fire lit by them caused minor damage to the club. The seriously “pissed-off” Koschmider had McCartney and Best arrested for arson and they too were deported back to England…Lennon eventually followed them back to Liverpool, bringing the Beatles’ engagement at the Top Ten Club in 1961 to an abrupt close.
The Beatles’ residency at the Top Ten did result in a breakthrough of sorts in their career thus far, albeit a low-key one at the time…the boys managed to cut their very first record – backing singer Tony Sheridan (who was also on the Hamburg club circuit at the same time) on a German 45 for the Polydor label. The recording “My Bonnie” at Ernst-Merck-Halle listed the Beatles on the label as the “Beat Brothers”🇦🇺 (‘Tony Sheridan’, The Beatles Bible, Upd. 15-May-2017, www.beatlesbible.com).
⌂ ˢᵗᵃʳ⁻ᶜˡᵘᵇ
The following year they were back however, this time performing at the Star-Club, operated by Manfred Weissleder and Horst Fascher🇩🇪. By now the band members’ nightly fee had been upped to £67 each. They did three stints at the Star in 1962—the last two with Ringo in the drummer’s seat for the first time—undertaken reluctantly as the band had already released their first UK single on Parlophone and were champing at the bit to get on with consolidating their burgeoning recording career in the UK. The last live performance by the soon-to-be “Fab Four” in Germany was on New Years Eve 1962.
The tyro Liverpudlian band’s musical education in the north coast German city got a terrific leg-up from getting up close and personal with legendary US rock ‘n roll performers—such as Little Richard, Gene Vincent and Jerry Lee Lewis—also working the same St Pauli clubs at the time…Little Richard later recounted helping to hone Paul’s vocal style backstage while the Beatles were opening for the pioneering American rock performer at the Star.
The Beatles’ gig venues in Hamburg, 1960-62 Indra Club, Große Freiheit 64, St Pauli. 48 nights, August—October 1960 (37-hr week) Kaiserkeller, Große Freiheit 36, St Pauli. 56 nights, October—November 1960 Top Ten Club, Reeperbahn 136, St Pauli. 92 nights,April—July 1961 (51-hr week) Star-Club, Große Freiheit 39, St Pauli. April—May, November, December, 1962
The intense schedule imposed by the Hamburg club management, forcing the Beatles to play live for hours on end (with the aid of copious amounts of booze and a regular diet of ‘uppers’)🏁 formed the band into a tight musical outfit. This and the band’s increasingly fetzig (“wild”) and unpredictable stage antics and the decibel-shattering volume and raw energy of their playing earned them a loyal following in Hamburg (‘Breaking the Illusion: Hamburg and The Beatles’ Gritty Roots’, Riley Fitzgerald, Happy, 13-Oct-2021, www.happy mag.tv). And when they came back to Merseyside at the very beginning of 1963, the Beatles (–Pete/ +Ringo) didn’t come back as nobodies, Hamburg gave them an international reputation to trade on in the future.
Postscript: Return to their roots
The Beatles returned to Hamburg one more time, this time as the hottest musical act on the planet. In 1966 at ‘Beatlemania’s” high-water mark, the group played two nights in Hamburg, not at any of the old haunts they had played as young scruffs but at the more respectable Ernst-Merck-Halle. This was part of the German leg (tagged the “Bravo-Beatles-Blitztournee“) of the band’s ‘66 world tour, which also included concerts in Munich and Essen.
↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝
🏴 their booking agent Allan Williams was getting three times what the musicians were!
🏴 Sutcliffe left the group and became engaged to Kirchherr in 1961 before his premature death the following year
🇮🇹 based partly on Pierre Cardin’s design
🇦🇺 it was a customer request in the Liverpool NEMS music store for ‘My Bonnie’ that first alerted Brian Epstein to the existence of the Beatles
🇩🇪 Fascher, a West German amateur boxing champion, doubled as the Beatles’ bodyguard
🏁 “800 hours in the rehearsal room” McCartney called it
In a 1966 double-A side single the Beatles sung “we all live in a yellow submarine” but in real life the Fab Four did want to live together on a secluded Greek island they intended to buy. It happened the following year, 1967, the boys were holidaying in the Greek islands and were island-hopping when they came upon an ideal island location. Or at least that was what George, John and Paul thought while on acid the whole time of the “inspection”{𝔸}. The island that their eyes lit on was roomy enough, some 80-acres with a fishing village, a large olive grove and four beaches. In addition to the main island there were four smaller islands surrounding it (one for each Beatle!) 
