[Dixielandjazz] The Man Who Built the Star Club In Hamburg

[Steve barbone]

Caveat NOT OKOM . . . But, like Tom Wiggins, a fascinating story. Especially
the anecdote about John Lennon in the Bathroom. Ah, Hamburg.

Cheers,
Steve

Memories of Hamburg, Enough to Build a Dream On

NY TIMES - By RICHARD BERNSTEIN - April 8, 2006

HAMBURG, Germany
IT is close to half a century since Horst Fascher was the flyweight boxing
champion of Germany, a gold medal prospect in the 1960 Rome Olympics and a
young man who knew his way around this wealthy, rough-and-ready port city.

Then one night, as Mr. Fascher tells the story, he got into a street fight
with a sailor. ("I was bloody strong," he recalled, "and quick.") The sailor
shoved him, and when Mr. Fascher hit back the sailor went down, hit his
head, and a few hours later was dead. Mr. Fascher spent six months in jail,
and was banned from boxing forever.

"I thought my life was over," he said. "From one moment to the other, all my
dreams were gone."

Leaving behind the abstemious, early-to-bed life of a boxer in training, Mr.
Fascher threw himself into the city's always raucous and racy nightlife,
especially the music clubs, the first in Germany to play the latest tunes
from overseas.

That is what led Mr. Fascher, who is now a graying but fit 70-year-old and a
kind of living artifact of this city's long history, to emerge at the center
of what became Hamburg's moment of glory in the world of pop music.

As manager of the brand new Star Club, he brought the Beatles to Hamburg in
1962, when the group was on the cusp of global fame, but the Beatles were
not the only ones.

"Except for Elvis," Mr. Fascher said, "we had everybody: Ray Charles, Little
Richard, the Everly Brothers, Bo Diddley, Brenda Lee, Chubby Checker, Fats
Domino." 

Mr. Fascher has now published a memoir in German, titled "Let the Good Times
Roll" in English, full of anecdotes about his adventures and misadventures
with some of the legends of the music business.

The book has come out just at a moment when Hamburg itself, having
disappeared from the pop music scene decades ago, is in a mood to
commemorate the moment when it was probably the most important Continental
outpost of British and American pop music, the place where, John Lennon
said, he grew up.

The city will build a new Beatles Platz to commemorate the time when they
made Hamburg their home away from home. Mr. Fascher is clearly a part of the
story, one reason his book went into three printings in just its first month
of publication.

But Mr. Fascher's picaresque tale, which involves a good deal of sex and
rock 'n' roll but also more than a fair dose of lacerating tragedy, seems of
far more than local interest. He is a figure at the very center of the 60's,
not only in Hamburg but even in Vietnam, where, after the Star Club, he
spent two years managing tours for performers entertaining American troops.


MR. FASCHER was born poor in 1936 in Hamburg. His mother was a cleaning
lady, his father a seaman who fought in World War II and was held as a
prisoner of war in the Soviet Union until 1951.

Luckily for Mr. Fascher, when his promising boxing career came to an end,
Hamburg was well on the way to restoring itself as a lively, sinful port, a
place where British and American troops provided an audience for the new
music clubs springing up on the seedy edge of town, amid the strip clubs and
brothels.

Mr. Fascher used to get the latest records from a seaman friend who traveled
back and forth from New York to Hamburg. "I started listening to Elvis in
1956 or '57," he said. "I was very up to date."

The music scene was on a street called Grosse Freiheit, or Great Freedom, a
place of dissenting churches in the 17th and 18th centuries. Today it is a
domain of garishly lighted pornography emporiums and lap-dance joints
standing shoulder to shoulder with music clubs, which have been making a
comeback. The former Star Club, at 39 Grosse Freiheit, is now a nightclub
called Rasputin.

After he got out of prison, Mr. Fascher started working in the district,
mostly tending bar but also managing bands at a club called the Top Ten,
where the Beatles had performed in 1960. But he had a fight with his boss
and was fired. Soon thereafter he persuaded a strip club owner to bankroll
his idea for a new music club featuring British bands.

That was the fabled Star Club. Mr. Fascher immediately set off to Liverpool
to lure the Beatles away from an earlier commitment they had made to play at
the Top Ten.

"I knew if I could get the Beatles for opening night, I'd have no trouble
selling out the club," he said. At first, the Beatles' manager, Brian
Epstein, said no, a deal is a deal. But Mr. Fascher went out with the
Beatles themselves and, apparently, they had a very good time, because the
next day Mr. Fascher walked away with a contract for them to perform at the
Star Club.

"I saw it as part of my assignment to provide the musicians with a good
time," he said, stating a sort of general principle that he assiduously
applied in Hamburg and that was one reason for his success.

The Beatles went to the Star Club a few times, providing Mr. Fascher with
some of the stories he recounts in his book, like the time he caught John
Lennon in the bathroom with a female fan.

Mr. Fascher ordered Lennon to go onstage right away, naked if necessary, and
that's about what he did, causing an uproar when he appeared wearing only
his briefs and a toilet seat around his neck.

Then came a series of misfortunes, beginning with a fight one night in which
Mr. Fascher, still apparently bloody strong and quick, broke a customer's
jaw. He served two years of a three-year sentence, and when he got out, he
was banned from the Star Club. It was then that Mr. Fascher, who clearly had
a knack for meeting people who could help in hours of dire need, was hired
by the USO to manage entertainment tours in Vietnam.

MORE recently came the worst imaginable tragedy. Mr. Fascher lost two of his
three children ‹ one in an accident, another to a congenital heart defect ‹
an experience that threw him into a depression that lasted four years, and
from which he has only recently emerged.

These days he spends a good deal of time promoting his book, but he is more
than just a man with a lot of memories of rock stars.

He is not only about to marry a woman he met a few years ago. He is also
working with two Danish entrepreneurs who have a plan to reopen the Star
Club as a music club, museum and retail store.

"At my age, to have the Star Club again in the place where it started ‹
that's a dream," Mr. Fascher said.

"It's a different time now, and it takes more money" to attract the bigger
acts, he said. "But I think some will come for fun, and some will come
because that's where the Beatles played."