
My Star Club Zoo! Part 3
My whole life revolved around
the Star Club morning noon and animals! And I don't mean those
R&R guys that I adored so much. Those strange English boys
or should I say the ones that came from Liverpool just loved
animals. I would take all the boys
from the Star Club from groups like the Undertakers, Kingsize Taylor and
the Dominoes,
Ricky Gleason and the Top
Spots and Tom Dick and Harry to the Famous Sunday Fish Market
in Hamburg and
they absolutely loved it! What a strange thing for young
rockers but yes they really loved going there and most of
all they loved buying animals the only problem was when it
was time for them to go back home to England they didn't
know what to do with them and left them with me to look
after until they returned. It was a good job my parents
were so understanding, as we lived in a small flat on the
3rd floor with just enough room for us never mind
the animals and as some of the lads never returned I ended
up keeping them. Good job my mum and dad love these
animals because there was no place but the top of my mums
kitchen cupboard and "Pissy the mouse" (Bobby Thompson
landed me with that one) must have loved it best after
being kept in the boys flat on top of a radiator across
the road from the beershop, the poor thing was hanging by
its little feet from the roof of its cage, it would have
done a top dance on the hot floor of its cage.
When Ray Charles came to the Star Club, the
stage was not big enough to hold him and his band plus his backing singers so they had to build
an extension to the stage along the side wall which meant
the boy's could not rehearse while the building
work was going on. So off they went to the Fish Market and
returned with a Guinea pig, just one of many little
creatures I cared for, I can't even remember who came back
with this one, and you can guess what happened...two weeks
later it was sitting on the couch next to my mother
helping her with her knitting! I will explain, my mother
was always knitting or doing some sort of needlework and
the Guinea pig would sneak up and start eating the wool
but it would not chew it. A big ball of wool would form in
its mouth and my mother would have to pull it out and dry
the wool before she could use it again! That was one
clever little sweetie, its name is unprintable.
One animal that I was very lucky not to have
back at our flat was a pig, yes a PIG, those crazy Liverpool
lads came back one morning from the market with a baby pig on a
lead. Can you imagine what it was like inside their flat? I
felt very sorry for there cleaning lady. They all loved
that pig and would take it for walks just like you would a dog.
I was told but it may or may not be true, you know the lads
used to pull my leg somehow ruthless that one night
Brian Saxophone Jones from the Undertakers took it for a walk whilst
playing his Sax into a block of flats on the Reeperbahn
and boy did he get into trouble. I don't know what
happened to that pig and it appears no one else does even
when I talk to the lads today none of them can remember
were it went (could it be on the grounds that the boys
were all ever so slightly intoxicated every
night... must be the water in Hamburg), I think it
ran away to get as far as possible from the crazy, but
loveable Liverpool lads.
PS ...over the years so
many people laid claim to the incident with the pig, and the
years changed along the way, but one thing is can't be changed
and that is the year of 1962.
PSS... As I left for Liverpool myself, my poor
mum & dad were left looking after the animals as I
told them the boys might be back for them, my dad
eventually gave the Guinea pig to a farmer who kept it
with his rabbits and the mouse went to the local pet
shop.
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'I got paid in -------
Records!!!
The Star Club - Part
2
The best
thing about the Star Club was you came
into contact with the Stars of the day. Artists that you had
heard on the radio or on record were there before your eyes and
some of them would even take time to talk to you but the very
best of all were the Liverpool groups. All the boys from theses
groups were so friendly and full of fun and the friends I made
over 50 years ago are still friends today.
My friend
Bärbel and I took pleasure in showing the boys round my home
town of Hamburg showing them places of interest but they liked
the fish market the best - strange people the
English!
A lot of the
time most of the boys had spent there money on Beer and had
none left for food so one Sunday in July 1962 I persuaded my
mum to have the Searchers round for
dinner yes the whole band! Chris Curtis, John McNally,
Mike Pendergast (as he was known then),
Tony Jackson, my mum agreed and my dad must have bought the whole range of
booze you could think of. As they all arrived at our flat
my mum was so proud to serve the boys with a nice chicken
meal - chicken in white sauce and asparagus - which was
our favoured meal, the boys picked at it and decided they
didn’t like it at, but were very polite about it, saying
they just had a big breakfast. My dad busied himself
serving everyone with drinks of their choice, but I forgot
to tell him Chris was only drinking ‘Coke’, with that
Bärbel and had to rush across the road to buy a crate of
‘Coke’, true to form he drank the whole crate. The day
went very well otherwise - I think? Years later when I
went with my friend to see the
Searchers at the Wooky
Hollow, John saw me in the audience and ask me
and my friend back stage for a chat, we talk about that
Sunday back in my parents flat and that dreaded meal, John
actually admitted they all hated that meal because of the
asparagus - we all had a big laugh about
it.
You will see
from the autographs that they all had a good sense of humour,
which I have since found out is a Liverpool trait!
Unfortunately when I moved to Liverpool my parents cleared my
room out and binned all my memories including signed pictures
(some original ones of the Beatles with all 5 of them signing
them), Mersey Beat papers (I had number 1) so all I’m left with
is these few autographs!
One of the
nicest American Rock n Roll stars I met was Gene
Vincent he was such a lovely man and a
fantastic performer. He always had time to talk
to everyone and was very polite all the men were 'sir' and
the ladies 'mam' a real gentleman he is sorely missed but
I treasure his memory and have the message he gave me with
his autograph.
Late 1963 a
group called Ricky Gleason and the Top Spots
came to the Star Club. They were very nervous the first spot
but soon became one of the favoured that year playing all the
usual Rock ‘n’ Roll numbers, Ricky being the singer, we all
thought he was a great singer; he had a habit of jumping about
on the stage. All the boys were very polite and you could see
that they were great friends. One night Keith the lead
guitarist asked to take me home and that was that -
head over heels! I asked my parents if I could bring him to
lunch on the Sunday and my parents agreed and from that day my
parents thought the world of Keith. 12 months later
on the 2nd November 1964 Keith & I got married and that's
nearly 45 years ago - Where does the time
go?
Maja's Autograph
Album
The Day the Star Club Opened by Maja
It all began at the end of
1959 with the opening of the Kaiserkeller, on
the corner of the Grosse Freiheit /
Schuckstrasse in St Pauli.
This was the first
Rock 'N' Roll club and all of a sudden amongst all the
strip joints was this fantastic club with one group, 5
lads (The Beatles) in leather jackets
playing songs like Lucille, Miss Molly etc, songs we only
heard on the Radio
Luxembourg (Editors Note: It's back on
Air) before and the kids went wild, we
couldn't get enough. I was still in school, getting dressed up
to the nines to pass as old enough to get in to the club -
the red light district was always a taboo, but with the club
being at the end of the Grosse Freiheit, I
didn't have to walk past all the strip
joints. The queues
were endless to get into to the
club. John
Lennon learnt a few words in German and his
favoured one to address the audience was 'Kraut' , which of
course didn't go down to well but he didn't seem to care
about that at all and once the Beatles were playing little
words like that didn't matter no more, only the
music!

Beside the
Kaiserkeller there was also the Top Ten
club on the Reeperbahn, St
Pauli, but I didn't like it there to much it
never had the same buzz as the
Kaiserkeller, plus they were a lot stricter with
checking our ID's.
Then, like over
night all the record shops were selling records of
Elvis, Bill Haley Cliff Richard and Chuck
Berry etc like hot cakes and all the German
music was being ignored by the German youth of Hamburg -
put on back shelves!
Then one day there
orange/red coloured posters appeared all over the place
with the slogan "Die Not hat ein Ende! Die Zeit der Dorfmusik ist
vorbei!" - "The need has an
end! The
time of the village music is finished!” it announced the
opening of a new club "Star Club" just
across the road at 39 Grosse Freiheit on Friday
the 13th April 1962, and it promised big names -
The Beatles, The Bachelors, The Tony Sheridan
Quartet, Gerry & The Pacemakers and Roy
Young.
I couldn't wait for
it to open...
On the opening
night at 6.00pm the queues were blocking the whole of the
street and the police had to make way for people to pass,
but when the doors finally opened - the sounds and the
atmosphere was electric. Most nights there were up to 8 groups
playing in 1 hour rotations. As soon as we got into the club the
music started and we all got up to dance - Horst
Fascher (Hoddel) gave at lot of us free
membership with the understanding that we got up to dance
to encourage others to do the same.
Everyone was
dressed smartly - boys in suits & tie, girls in their
fineries - fit for a night listening to music and of
course dancing - Twist was the latest
one!
One problem was that you had to be 18 to stay
in the club after 10.00pm, be course official you had to
be 18 to even get in due it being classed as a night club,
but must of us were so dressed with our beehives and
lipstick that we looked much older than our
age. But come
9.50pm just as the 'Top Group' would have finished their
stint, the announcement would come over the loudspeaker -
"Ladies & Gentlemen" in a few minutes it will be
10.00pm, anyone under the age of 18 or anyone who hasn't
got proof of age must leave the club, the waiter will now
carry out a ID check and we'll continue in 10 minutes
with Well it didn't do our street cred
any good at all.
As one of my best
friend Barbel knew the owner of a pub next door
'Gretel & Alfons' we were able
to hide in the back (kitchen) until the police had done
their ID check and then we were quite safe provided we
stayed in the pub, as you could only get back in to The
Star Club after 10.00pm by showing your ID card and you
had to be 18.
As the first groups came over (including the
Beatles) they had very little money to spend, so Barbel
and I took them to 'Gretel & Alfons'
but the boys found it hard to pronounce the name and
started to call it 'The Beershop' which it is still
called to this day by anyone who played there in the
60s. The
Beershop was always handy for the boys,
they could go in and just sit and talk and no pressure to
buy a beer and when the boys were skinned they were able
to get food (soup or sausage & bread) on tick until
payday.
I had to tell my
parents every night were I was going, which was a golden
rule in our house - I did tell them, and they didn't mind
as long as I was taking a taxi home which my dad gave me
5 Marks for, but you can guess what I did - Yes spend it
in the Beershop and walked
home. Most
nights managed get someone to walk me home, mind I never
told them how far I lived!!
The Beatles Live at the
Star Club 1962 - A Taste of
Honey
At the weekend I
used to tell my parents that I stayed with my
friend Barbel as
she only lived at the end of the
Reeperbahn, but of course we were all night in
the Beershop our sanctuary from the
police. Come
Monday morning I had to be at work for 6.00am at the
printers where I worked as an apprentice bookbinder and I
was so knackered that I used my half hour lunch break to
have a sleep.
I made lifelong
friends with lot boys of the groups.1962 was one of the most fantastic years
Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes, The Undertakers were
among the finest groups that year and of course there were
others such as Johnny Kidd & The Pirates, the
Big Three, Freddie Starr & The Midnighters, Swinging
Bluejeans, Steve Aldo, Gerry Marsden & The Pacemakers,
The
Searchers, Fats Domino, Everly Brothers, Walker
Brothers, Bill Haley & The Comets, Tony Sheridan,
Lee Curtis &
The All Stars, The Byrds, Remo
Four, they played exciting new music we could all
dance to - twist was all the rage. We had quite a few
twisting competitions which I entered with my German dance
partner - we won the round in the Star
Club and drove to Keil for the second round were
we came runner-up! We thought we were the bees-knees me with
my beehive and him in his winkle-picker
shoes.
With the arrival of
The Star Club a new era started, more groups came over
and they all played for a minimum of four weeks, quite
often we would welcome some very big stars mostly from
the USA, such as Ray Charles, Little Richard,
Gene Vincent, the list goes on. Hoddel even
tried to get Elvis to come, but
unfortunately he never managed it. It wasn't for the lack
of trying, but because Elvis's manager (Colonel
Parker) couldn't leave the
States!
On the second visit
of the Dominoes Bobby Thomson decided to
buy a white mouse at the 'Fish market' which he kept in
flat opposite the Star Club (which
belonged to Gretel & Alfons
Jankowiak, who also owned the
Beershop), believe or not on top of an radiator
and that poor mouse was hanging from the top of its case
so not to burn its little feet. When the Dominoes were
ready to return to Liverpool Bobby ask me to mind this
mouse named 'Pissy' - so called for reasons that's what
he was that morning - until he returned in a few weeks
time - he returned but never took Pissy
back. I must
have been an soft touch my parents flat was like a zoo -
the lads bought animals in their drunken stupor and then
didn't know what to do with them when they returned to
England.
In February 1964
the Star Club organised a charter flight
to Liverpool and about 45 of the
Star Club regulars came over on a visit
to see what the Cavern was like, since
all the lads raved about it, but what we found was so
unlike what we expected - it was in a cellar, damp and
smelly, so most of us visited the Iron Door
club instead. At the time our visit was big news,
Granada Television was waiting for our
flight to land to interview us, and my friend and I were
picked to go on Granada News. We flew back to Hamburg after 3
days. We all had a great time and were made
welcome everywhere we went - the music was just
great!
I've been back to
Hamburg on many occasions (visiting my family) going down
memory lane, but sadly the Star Club is
no more, only the great memories live on of a time and
music that changed the world.
What a great time
the 60s were, I'm so lucky to have been part of it and
after 45 years living and working in my adopted city
'Liverpool' I am still a 'Kraut' by
nationality (I promised my parents not to change it) and
the rest of my life and memories are mine and are not for
sharing.
 Dodd.... You should
have been there...................
Editors
Note: Maja's hubby is Keith Dodd who played at
the Star Club with Ricky Gleason and the
Topspots and later on with the Swingin'
Blugenes.
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