More From Hamburg

Pete and Prostitutes

They'd all been friends in Liverpool. George and Paul had gone hitch hiking together, holidaying, kicking about together, going to each other's houses, seeing local groups together. Being schoolboy mates. George and John had definitely not been friends, not at first. John had made it clear that it was only George's superior guitar technique that had enabled him, or more accurately forced him, to tolerate being seen in the company of someone he regarded as a toddler. Yet over the year since then George had begun to grow up. He had for one thing literally grown; he was taller and his face had thinned out which gave him a more mature appearance. And, perhaps more importantly, George had effectively sized up his situation within the group and determined to meet the great John Lennon head on. It was like lion-taming, he reckoned – he knew that if he showed any weakness he'd be finished. So, he countered every insult, he threw it all back and added some of his own, he grinned, he showed no fear and, bit by bit, week by week, his tactic began to yield results. Insults which had previously come his way were now more often directed elsewhere, to Colin or to Griff, and George found himself gradually and subtly accepted into John's hallowed company; not with smiles or friendly quips, but indicated simply by the blessed absence of continual searing abuse.

The introduction of Stu Sutcliffe into the unit had affected Paul far more than it had George. Paul had found himself nudged out of his status of best friend, whilst George had never been there anyway. It was perhaps the musicianship which smoothed George's passage through that potentially rocky personnel crisis; whoever or whatever came or went in or around the Beatles, the group needed his guitar and, for that matter, his voice, invaluable in harmonies and in solos, and George's place was secure. Even if that place was still the baby of the group.

And that, George grimly reflected more than once, was never going to change.

So, the three became four and then, only one day before they left to come to Hamburg, four became five. They'd known Pete for ages, known his mum who started up the Casbah, but he'd never been a special friend to any of them and was there purely and simply because of his drum kit. It was not perhaps the most auspicious start for a friendship, or even a partnership. Yet George's start had been equally tenuous and he was still there; so they all set off on that lengthy journey into the unknown in the van ready to be the Beatles, only now in Hamburg and not Liverpool.

At first, it was fine. They played on stage together, they sat around in bars afterwards together, they explored the neighbourhood together, they ate together, they laughed together, they drank together, they fell asleep together. When, in the depth of their exhaustion, they discovered prellies they knocked them back together – except Pete. He didn't want to try them, he was okay without them. Except that he wasn't. Then when they were all going to go to the Kiaserkeller to check out the groups there, Pete had something else to do or somewhere else to be, and he didn't go with them. Nor the next time. And it went on like that until they realised, during a breakfast time conversation at the British Sailors Society, a place they'd found by the docks that sold proper English fry-ups and therefore felt like the promised land, that the only time there were really with Pete at all was on stage.

"Where does he go?"

"I think he's got some bird."

"What, always the same one?"

"I think so." But Paul was unable to divulge the source of his information. And the others had little curiosity about the matter. Pete could do what he wanted, as long as he played drums; which he did, after a fashion.

Then came the day when Paul was able to expand on the gossip, and gleefully delivered it to George one morning over bacon and sausages and friend bread.