2 - Episode 2 - Wonderland By Night

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2 - Episode 2 - Wonderland By Night

Episode 2 - Wonderland By Night This programme featured a walk around St Pauli with Ulf Kruger, interspersed with appropriate music. He was an excellent, witty guide, full of information and it worked well. We passed shops selling guns, knives and handcuffs. Some of the guns were replicas but how are going to know what somebody is pointing at you? We saw a country and western shop where the Beatles bought their cowboy boots, although there was nothing to say so, and we saw Polizei, the police station where Paul McCartney and Pete Best were taken when they were arrested. I hid my microphone as we went down Herbertstrasse, a street with 30 prostitutes in the windows, just as it was in 1960. You tapped on a window and negotiated a price. There were walls at each end of the street and only men were allowed through the opening. Ulf said that AIDS had affected the sex trade, which made me wonder what it was like before. The Erotica museum had had its day but there were plans to turn the premises into a Beatles museum. We saw the sites where the Beatles played – Indra, Kaiserkeller, Top-Ten and Star-Club. The Star-Club premises had been destroyed by fire. We visited the Bambi-Kino, the cinema where the Beatles had originally slept. Despite all this mayhem, there was collusion between club owners and police to maintain order and the 10pm curfew for those under 21 was observed. Into all this came the Beatles in August 1960 with George Harrison only 17 years old. While Ulf and I were talking, the beautiful chimes of the clock on the Catholic church in Grosse Freiheit rang 9pm. In the midst of mayhem, there was this oasis of calm. Chris Curtis and the Liverbirds attended the church while John Lennon was accused of peeing on the nuns. Little Richard called him ‘The Devil’s own child’.

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2 - Episode 2 - Wonderland By Night

AP_780-LEI-1-3-2_s1_f01_v1