gehayi put up the master list for the femgenficathon, which is now completed, and I found several more great stories to enjoy, for example:

Harry Potter:


Deirdre and the Dementors: in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the revelation of just how Barty Crouch, Jr., escaped from Azkaban is handled in a few paragraphs. Here, his mother, and the consequences her sacrifice had for her are fleshed out and given intense life. Great story.


What Comes After: Molly Weasley, among many other things, is a veteran of not one but two wars, and in this story, set near the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it shows. Terrific Molly exploration.

History

Noli Me Tangere: Anne Boleyn, brought to short story life in a three dimensional way and in neither demon nor saint extremes, with wonderful knowledge of the era. I love it.


Speaking of history, on a lesser scale: today is a Germany/Beatles anniversary, as 50 years ago to the day, August 17th 1960, they first played in Hamburg, at the Indra Club. One of those things biographers (and the guys themselves) always agreed on was that Liverpool produced the Beatles, but Hamburg made them. They arrived as one of many Liverpool groups, hired as a replacement - Bruno Koschmider, the owner of the Kaiserkeller and the Indra clubs, actually had wanted another band altogether before being palmed off with them because they were cheap - with a bass player who was actually a painter, couldn't really play and was solely in the band because he was John Lennon's friend (Stuart Sutcliff) and a drummer hired at the very last minute (Pete Best) because they didn't have a regular one and the various temporary ones weren't insane enough to go to Hamburg in order to play in a strip club. They'd all needed signed permission by their parents though by German law only one of them, George Harrison, at 17 was still under age (Paul was 18, John was 20, ditto Stuart and Pete), and their one and only previous experience out of England, a Scotland tour as a backup band for Johnny Gentle (still sans drummer) had been anything but a success. And then came Hamburg, with gigs lasting sometimes seven to eight hours a night, only five minute breaks permitted every 45 minutes. Koschmider, who also owned a cinema named the Bambi, stashed the boys there in storage rooms behind the screen. The cinema toilets were all the bathrooms available for the next few months. As Bob Spitz put it, it was as if real life knew every great myth demands a trip through the underworld as a rite of passage. (I'm always a bit amused when English or American authors get lyrical when describing the Reeperbahn and St. Pauli in Hamburg.) There's even a transformative goddess around, via Astrid Kirchher, whom Stuart Sutcliff fell in love with, who took the early Beatles photographs that were later imited countless times for countless bands, and who co-created the Beatles hairstyle. Their first stint in Hamburg ended ignominously; after they had attracted enough attention to transfer to a better club, the Top Ten, the vengeful Koschmider who didn't take well to losing his newly popular band tipped off the police that George Harrison was underage (meaning he wasn't even allowed to remain in a club after 10 pm, let alone to work there), and accused Paul McCartney and Pete Best of trying to burn down the Bambi Kino when they packed their belongings there). Exit the Beatles, broke, all having lost weight and severely depressed at first. The first few weeks after their return to Liverpool, they felt like anything but conquering heroes and didn't even call each other. George and Paul were each persuaded by their respective parents (who saw those months abroad as a proof this band thing was going nowhere) to take a job; John stayed in bed at Aunt Mimi's for two weeks; and Stuart remained in Hamburg with Astrid. For all they knew at this point, it might well be the end. And then, as every great myth demands, came the turning point, via Bob Wooler, failed song writere, future Cavern Club dj, and looking for someone to play at the upcoming Christmas dance at Litherland Town Hall when he met a still depressed John Lennon at a café. Everything kicked into motion again, and when Wooler announced them (as "direct from Hamburg", which made the audience, most of which didn't remember them from before, assume they were German) at that Christmas dance, the change that Hamburg wrought took everyone's breath away. Quoth Billy Kramer from the Coasters who was there: "It was just so different. To act that way onstage and make that kind of sound - I was absolutely staggered." It was the kind of sound you had to make to draw in an audience mixed of seamen, sex tourists, and students and keep them there instead of the thousand other clubs on the Reeperbahn. Several friends they'd made then are still alive and around, and some of them inevitably got interviewed for the anniversary.


Host Fascher: started out as a boxer, at the time the Beatles met him he was the bouncer at the Indra and the Kaiserkeller; later he decamped to the Top Ten when they did and still later he became the manager of the Star Club. If you speak German, he got interviewed on radio this morning; there's also a great written interview from last year, the most interesting I've seen from him. If you don't speak German, here's an older English article. He's still in touch with Paul, who was his favourite among the group, and saw him most recently last year when the later was in Hamburg.

Klaus Voorman: of all their German friends unarguably the most successful one. He was the student who originally discovered them (later bringing in Astrid and their friend Jürgen Vollmer), designed the cover for "Revolver", became a musician in his own right and played with Manfred Man and the Plastic Ono Band, played on John's Imagine album, with George in concert, and produced an album of his own in recent years where both Ringo and Paul join them. Klaus was closest to John and George, but is still friends with the other two as well, and lives at the Starnberger See, which is close to Munich.


A video interview in English, and several good written ones in German: here, there and everywhere . (Sorry, couldn't resist.) Those of you who can read German might notice he's referring to a a "silly argument" and refusing to comment; this would be between Jürgen Vollmer and Astrid Kirchherr and concerns the invention of the Beatles haircut.


Jürgen Vollmer: like Astrid, a photographer, unlike Astrid still giving "I invented the haircut!" interviews like this one. From an outside pov, the whole argument looks silly, because I haven't seen anyone disagree on what happened: Astrid persuaded Stu to get the infamous haircut during the Beatles' second Hamburg engagement, the others first mocked but George, who other than Stuart was Astrid's favourite Beatle, caved and wanted one as well after a few weeks; John and Paul still weren't sure. Then the second Hamburg engagement ended, John turned 21, he and Paul went on holidays to Paris to celebrate, where they met Jürgen and asked him to cut their hair moptop-style as well. Which he did. And to this day insists that his coiffure for Lennon 'n McCartney was different from what Astrid did and thus was the real invention.

Astrid Kirchherr: rarely gives interviews, but gave one only this month. (Quite touching, and also amusing because Astrid must be one of the last people to have issues about the Rolling Stones.) Forget about the hairstyle; what Astrid did for the Beatles was far more. She introduced them to a Hamburg outside the Reeperbahn, taught them how to pose for the camera, took the first character portraits and basically co-created their image. That her photos became icons turned out to be a curse as well as a blessing because nobody was interested in her later non-Beatles-work, which is why she eventually stopped.

Moviewise, the Hamburg days provided the basis for two films, Birth of the Beatles and Backbeat, which have directly opposite faults and virtues. Birth of the Beatles was the only Beatle biopic made while John Lennon was still alive, in 1978. (Since Brian Epstein is depicted as homosexual in it, this btw belies the assertion he wasn't "outed" publically until either Philip Norman's Shout or Peter Brown's The Love You Make.) Also, whoever held the rights to the Beatles song catelogue (which wasn't the former Beatles) at that point must have given their permission because the film uses both Lennon/McCartney and one Harrison song, and the group "Rain" does a decent job covering them. Unfortunately, this is also where the accuracy problem starts - Don't Bother Me, a song George wrote in 1965, in Hamburg of f1960? And so forth. The scriptwriter seems to be going for an unfortunate imitation of their Hard Day's Night patter. Stu Sutcliff dies about a year before he actually did, George Martin (from EMI) hangs out in the same recording studio as Dick Rowe (from Decca, i.e. the competition) does, and that's just the most noticable of inaccuracies. Curiously enough, despite this being before his death, and him being by far the Beatle with the most screen exposure, this version of John Lennon is a mellow nice guy with hardly a temper in him. Also, Birth of the Beatles lists Pete Best among their "technical advisors". This means we get treated to a scene where Pete performs an amazing drum solo while an awed Ringo sits in the audience and admires him, and later, when the other Beatles declare their intention of dumping Pete for Ringo, to a scene where Brian Epstein protests that EMI loved Pete's drumming and that Pete is the superior drummer, "even Ringo knows that". Now, the way Pete Best was dumped was undoubtedly stone cold (they made Brian tell him the news and none of them ever talked to him again), but George Martin and everyone present at those first Beatle auditions agree that Pete Best's drumming wasn't good enough. (Martin wanted to use a studio musician instead for recordings, which wasn't an uncommon practice, while letting Pete Best continue to appear in public. In fact, he insisted on using the studio drummer anyway for the first single, just in case, which is why two versions of Love Me Do exist, one with Andy White and one with Ringo.) Klaus Voorman, who heard him play often enough and also heard Ringo play at the same time - Ringo was the drummer for Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, who were in 1960 the far more successful group and also in Hamburg - says that Pete was never as good as Ringo. So, while other circumstances undoubtedly factored in (Pete was most popular with the girls, and he and the rest of the gang had never gotten to the chummy stage to begin with while everyone had it hit it off with Ringo while the later was still playing for the competition), to claim there hadn't been a musical one is a gross falsification. Lastly, Birth of the Beatles never manages to give anyone but John, Stuart and later Brian Epstein personality, and Stu dies halfway through the film; the others are just sort of there. A lot. The acting never gets beyond the mere pale impersonation stage, either, oddly enough except for Brian Epstein; his actor doesn't look anything like him but in his few scenes in the last third definitely leaves an impresssion.

Meanwhile, the more recent Backbeat is honest about being the Stuart Sutcliff story and never pretends to be about the Beatles as such. This makes for a far tighter script, focused on an Astrid-Stuart-John triangle, and good central performances by Sheryl "Laura Palmer" Lee as Astrid, Stephen Dorff as Stuart and Ian Hart (for the second time) as John Lennon. The rest of the gang is still only sort of there, but since this is a film with a clear storyline about those central three characters, one doesn't mind. On the other hand, the way the music is handled is enough to drive you crazy if you have the slightest knowledge of the Beatles and even if you don't. For starters, the voices of the actors are so noticably different from the voices for the songs that it's jarring every time someone starts to sing. Secondly, despite ample documentation about the Beatles' singing arrangements - who sang what, how they presented the songs - both during the Hamburg days and later - the film goes for a strict "a single leading singer (John), backup band" presentation which is exactly what the Beatles were not (this is what George Martin found so unusual about them when he first heard them, because one leading singer, the rest backup was the norm). And thirdly, John doesn't even get to sing the songs John actually sang. No, with an unerring instinct, the film gives him first Paul and then George songs.

In conclusion: there hasn't been a definite film about the Hamburg days yet. But who knows what the future may bring?