Well, now, Why haven't I had any Dinner?

Wings takes over Scotland

December 15, 1979 -- Edinburgh Scotland

Paul on stage in 1976

A scene from Help

Rehearsals

Spanish bass

The Wings workout

On one last wing

Photo credit:  Grahm-Juber

Sweet Banana

The Fat Man Tour

Guitar farming

Hard Rockin' Tonight

Wings last concerts

Just a boy and his bass

A Beatles sing a long

photo by Robert Whitaker 

A fan that meets the Beatles for Real in Hamburg in '66

I am out of town for the day and so I am having a guest blogger fill in for me.    I hope you all give Thorsten Knublauch a warm MTBFR welcome!    Thorsten is a long time friend of this site and has written several books about the Beatles, including one that I really enjoy about the Beatles German tour in 1966.     Thanks, Thorsten for sharing with us while I am out of town!   Peace and Love -- Sara S. 

The Beatles arrival for their Hamburg concerts during their German “Bravo-Beatles-Blitztournee” at a small suburb station in Ahrensburg on June 26^th 1966, a few miles outside Hamburg, is probably my favourite Beatles “event” ever.

The Beatles traveled by special train from their concerts in Munich to Essen (actually to the station in Mülheim near Essen) and overnight to Hamburg.  Having played two shows in Munich on June 24th, they were starting on June 25th at around 8.15 a.m. to arrive in Mülheim around 4.30 pm to play to shows in Essen.  After leaving at midnight they arrived in Ahrensburg around 5.30 a.m.

 The train stations were “secret” to avoid any trouble, but even the arrival in Mülheim brought at least 1.000 fans to the gates. Someone leaked the police plan to the press. The arrival in Ahrensburg was more secret and probably only a rumor among the fans but a few hundred fans were also there around the station and very few fans and several press were on the platform. Also on the platform were some former friends from their Hamburg days club days as Bettina Derlien and Hans-Walter “Icke” Braun. The security was nearly nonexistent. Only a few police officers and the Beatles entourage of Neil Aspinall, Tony Barrow, Alf Bicknall, and Robert Whitaker where on hand to protect the safe departure. 

As seen on the footage and photos, the Beatles had to run from the train to the entrance hall, talked for some minutes to the fans and friends and then had to run out of the hall down the small stairs through the waiting fans inside their car and off they went to their castle hotel in a little village nearby called Tremsbüttel.

I always liked the scene and the photos and still wonder how on earth this happened like this. What could have happened....? When I heard that my favorite photos came on the market I bought the negatives with copyright and an unpublished one to my collection of negatives from the tour.

I`d like to present my most favorite photo of that morning and probably my most favorite picture of the tour. It shows George and Ringo carrying their small suitcases and wearing their cool 1966 sunglasses being “photobombed” by a fan they knew a bit from their Hamburg days in the early Sixties. He is called Jochen von Bredow, was at the time a journalist, and could be seen in between George and Ringo wearing a sweater with a picture of the support group of the tour a German band called “The Rattles” from Hamburg. How cool is that…? I love the impression on the Beatles faces.

In between the two shows in Hamburg, Jochen von Bredow and many other friends from the old days managed to visit the Beatles backstage and can be seen on several photos where I show a few here.

If you are interested in the full story please check my video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfbkCP9HCvM.

I am planning to sell a set of my 4 new photos as shown here. Drop me a line to be informed soon. You`ll find my email address on my website www.bravo-beatles-blitztournee.de

Enjoy.

Maybe Paul can teach me

Happiness is McCartney

Happiness is McCartney
(unknown author)


Paul and Linda McCartney have always  been a devoted couple, but when Paul ended up in court in an attempt to settle the troubles the Beatles had faced, they were brought even closer together. "We were alone a lot at that time,"  Linda explains.  "And Paul was so miserable because he had nobody to play music with.  so he taught me chords and then tunes.  I'd learned to play piano when I was a kid, but I hated it.  But after Paul and I were married we used to sing together around the house.  He was so brilliant it all seemed so easy.   Then he asked me to be in Wings."

and that brought Paul and Linda more knocks.   It's no use pretending that it didn't bother them, but their own great relationship kept them going through the troubles.  "I don't really mind the knocking now,"  Paul says.  "In fact, I'm rather used to it.  Yes, it did upset me, but not now."

"When I do is just play in a band with some friends, sit at a piano and play some songs, and that's it.  If people want to criticise me for that, let them go ahead --  it won't get to me."

Everyone said when the Beatles broke up that none of the four would ever be as good on their own, as they were together.  But they've been proved wrong!  Especially so by Paul, because he's the only ex-Beatle to be back on the group with a group.

"I think the audiences are going for us now, not because I'm Paul McCartney, but because we are Wings,"  he says.  "I used to worry that they'd be wanting the Beatles, but not now.  I thought, if that's what they want, they can play the old records.  We're Wings and that's it!.  Okay, so we're not as famous as the Beatles were when they were strong, but so what?  It took the Beatles three hard years to start getting anywhere at all -- we've been going two years and we've done this much already.  I'm happy."

Paul certainly looks happy, and more confident than perhaps even he could have imagined two years ago.   No doubt one of the things that makes him glad is that he is working again, and for that we have to thank Linda.  She talked him out of the sadness and depression which followed the bitter fight with the other three.  Paul dismisses any talk of a Beatles' reunion -- the only way they would work together in the future, he says, is perhaps on each other's records.  and they actually all worked on Ringo's latest LP.

"But it's just daft, really silly, to talk about us all getting back together for anything more than that.  The Beatles happened years ago, and we've grown up in four different ways.   We're all into different things now.  We've grown away from each other musically, though we obviously have some links still.  I couldn't say that I miss them all madly and can't wait to get back together again and go touring, but it'd be daft.  And lies."

"I''m in a brand new band now, a good band, and we're recording and touring, and it's what I want.  I don't know what's going to happen with Wings, how big we might become, but at least give us a chance ... let's just see what happens."

And Paul knows that lots of his fans now don't remember the Beatles -- and really he's glad about that.

"Our daughter, Heather only barely knows who the Beatles were, but so what?"  he says.  "She loves the Osmonds.  And I think the Osmonds and David Cassidy are nice too.  I like them for what they are.  They're slick, very professional, and they just get on with their job.

"If music's good, it's good, and there's no reason o take it all apart and put all kind of deep, intellectual meanings into it.  I think it's wrong to analylse music like that, it just doesn't need it.  There are more important things in life to take seriously."

And what happens to Wings now?  Paul wants to do a tour of America and another of Europe, and about September they should have an LP out.

"Beyond that I don't know.  We just don't make plans that far ahead."  Paul admits.  "If  I said 'I want to be doing this and this in two years' time,'  I'd  be playing around with four other people's lives.  And I don't want to do that.  Usually I just plan the next week and if everything works out then I'm happy."

And Paul makes us all so happy too, that we can't really argue with that.

Guarding the Hofner

Wings over Chicago