Last Night In Hamburg - The Beatles

Compact Disc - Rockartoon - RCAR 102 5213.

1999 - Germany.

Back cover.

Digipak.

Inner digipak.

Disc.

Poster (front).

Poster (back).

Liner notes:

Wasn't the Beatles Anthology enough, with its ,warts and all* flash backs? No, not really. Because, with the popular publication of an ,Undercover™ book, the ever shifting attention of Beatles collectors all over the world moves to the mop-topped use of other people’s materials more than ever before. Also, their Star Club era — revisited here! - has been so legendary because documents were sparse, only fellow Hamburger King Size Taylor and his cheap reel-to-reel doing what many failed to remember — to suck it all up for eternity!

What did the Beatles include in their eight hours per night Reeperbahn shifts? A look at these 28 shots shows that, however haphazard their choices might have been on any hard day’s night, they surely had a long-term effect for and beyond the Fab Four: ,I Saw Her Standing There", ,Roll Over Beethoven", , Twist & Shout™ etc. — no less than ten of these Hamburg Hymns ended up on their early studio albums. Critics spoke of filler material, but the boys, recording five studio albums in 28 months, loved the songs and were surely entitled to a composing breather. We're talking a period of time which nowadays Oasis need to mix down eight B-sides!

Part of the Star Club live act, like ,Besame Mucho", was recorded for the infamously unsuccessful Decca sessions: Almost forty years after the event, that label still carries the burdon of having ignored the Beatles. The immortal John Lennon remembered Gene Vincent's ,.Be-Bop-A-Lula” for his Mid-Seventies Rock“nRoll-sessions; with the help of his idol Phil Spector he also completely re-arranged Chuck Berry’s ,Sweet Little Sixteen”. Starting from the raw versión you can listen to on this collection , Phil & John arrived at a brass-laden slow number! Watch out, too, for ,To Know Her Is To Love Her“. John, Paul, George & Ringo did it here, Lennon & Spector re-created that one too, very tenderly, and the new arrangement eventually surfaced on ,Menlove Avenue’. Did you ever read about what the Beatles and their Reeperbahn groupies did backstage in between these songs? The very thought is enough to make you want to listen again, isn´t it?

            Uli Twelker

Conception & Product Design by AMADEUS, Berlin

Poster / Sleeve Illustration & Hand-Lettering: J.Saurer

Ⓟ 1999 by SONOTEC, P.O. Box 52 05 62

Distributed by rockcartoon, PasteurstraBe 34, D-10407 Berlin