Hamburg Celebrates 60 Years of The Beatles.
The city honors The Fab Four with a live stream from their first performance venue
Business travelers know that the city of Hamburg is a mecca for meetings, but they may not know that it was also the site of the very first appearance of John, George, Paul and Pete Best as The Beatles. It was 60 years ago in August of 1960 when the Fab Four played their first venue, The Indra Club.
It was also in Hamburg where Ringo Starr first performed with the group as their drummer.
While fans make regular Beatles pilgrimages to Liverpool, Hamburg has also been the site of numerous tours and tributes pre-COVID-19.
Although American Beatles fans or business travelers can’t currently travel to Hamburg to celebrate the 60thanniversary of the Beatles first appearance, Hamburg will be traveling to them via a live streaming event.
On August 17, the anniversary of their first public appearance as The Beatles, Hamburg is celebrating with “Stream and Shout,” a live-stream event at 9 PM CET. The event can also be streamed on Facebook and YouTube.
Hamburg’s Beatles expert, Stefanie Hempel, will host the event from the Indra in St Pauli. Together with her band, she will be presenting a recreated original Beatles set from August 1960, as well as some of the Beatles’ greatest hits and legendary songs. Performing fellow musicians at the Indra will include the Kaiser Quartett, Cäthe, Bernd Begemann, Jessy Martens, Billy King, Jimmy Cornett, and Michèl von Wussow.
The event will showcase Beatles classics and new interpretations alongside stories and anecdotes from the young Beatles’ years in Hamburg. “We really grew up in Hamburg,” John Lennon has said of the early days in Hamburg.
Presentations include a musical discovery tour through Hamburg’s legendary St Pauli district and a reunion of contemporary witnesses, former companions as well as fans and friends of The Beatles. Among them the Cavern Club in Liverpool, the US band Bambi Kino and Beatles expert Mark Lewisohn.
Hamburg’s landmark, the Elbphilharmonie concert hall, will live-stream from the Grand Hall prior to the “Stream & Shout” show. Starting at 8 PM (CET), a premiere performance honoring The Beatles arranged by jazz pianist Julia Hülsmann will be streamed especially for the occasion.
Hamburg’s Convention Bureau has just updated its website with virtual tours of some of the city’s best known and biggest meetings venues here. The site’s city guides include information on some of the dockside areas that would have been familiar to The Beatles when they first arrived there 60 years ago.
