New Film About The Beatles In Hamburg | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

“Our role in Hamburg was to make people buy more beer.” – John Lennon

Hamburg was a very dangerous place back them, people had fights anywhere and everywhere. Guns were easy to purchase and weapons were sold everywhere. When the Beatles were members of the Star Club, they were given badges for the boys to wear so that anyone who bothered them did so “at their own risk”. 

Sounds pretty rough, anyone here ever spend any time in Hamburg in the early 60s? 

Yeah you’re right, that would be a real good boost, and it would be great to talk to Spencer anyway as he clearly has a lot of Beatles knowledge/experience. We’re going to get on that asap.

Does anyone here have any other good contacts we could talk to?

Heres an update on our project which gives a better insight into our goal:

The Hamburg Beatles, week 2

We’ve been talking to a variety of people on social media and forums, gathering info and spreading the word for this film. Many of the responses we get indicate that there are already documentaries out there about The Hamburg Beatles, a few of them including ‘The Beatles with Tony Sheridan’, ‘Backbeat’, ‘Destination Hamburg’, and a small (too small) section of ‘Anthology’.

We’ve looked into these documentaries, and can safely say our film will be a different, new approach to this early Beatles era. Previous films have told the story through pictures, interviews/vintage footage and music recordings like any regular documentary, or recreated a modern take on the Hamburg days (Backbeat). However there aren’t many recordings from around this time, and there is no film footage, it seems the best source of info on the Hamburg Beatles is stories from fans/people who worked with the Beatles.

We’ll be tackling this subject from a different angle, through extensive research we will be accurately recreating the Hamburg music scene, the Beatles as we’ve never known them, their music, the vibe of these unknown years. This will lead the audience through the retro Rock n Roll world, only The Beatles could know.

Our next step, which will very much help us progress through this project, is to contact Apple. We’re looking for their support, hopefully allowing us rights/access to pictures, music, archived material, and to generally reinforce our intentions. We also need you fans on board our team (thats right, YOU) to help us with research, contacts, and word-spreading. Any way you could help us out would be greatly appreciated!

We’ll keep you updated with our progress, just follow us at

Tweets by BeatlesHamburg
http://www.tumblr.com/blog/the…..leshamburg
https://www.facebook.com/Beatl…..rg?fref=ts

He doesn’t have to act, I’m sure just his presence on set would be enough maybe we should just try and initiate the forming of the ‘Sons of Beatles’ band, that would surely get people interested!

Alternatively we may be interested in getting the Bootleg Beatles on board, has anyone seen these guys live? I understand they do a section of their set specifically on the Hamburg days. 

Heres our next weekly update, including some great links to websites we’ve been recommended at the bottom

Week 3 update

Hey guys! We hope all is well in the land of Beatle fandom.

First of all I’d like to introduce you guys to the team who, for the next few years, will be working on this Hamburg Beatles Project:

Mark Ashmore from Future Artists will be the project manager/producer, pointing us in the right direction, overseeing our progress and giving us pep talks.

George Roberts is a Music Tech student from Huddersfield University who has worked with Future Artists the past year, and will be assisting in managing the project. Also providing his musical wisdom.

Joanna Pomfret, a film graduate from Futureworks, will also be acting as an assistant project manager, providing her film-based wisdom.

Sophie Broadgate is a young experienced film maker/film graduate from MMU and has previously worked with the likes of the BBC, providing her documentary-based wisdom.

Megan Lewis is the apprentice of Future Artists and has much experience in media/social research.

Carla Freeman is also a graduate from MMU in Interactive Arts, and will be helping with distribution and post production.

Over the next few weeks we’re looking to collaborate with Beatles fans, sourcing any info/photos/contacts/websites which would help us along with our research. Our main reason for undertaking this project is because we beleive there are many people out there who, just like us, would love to see this film made. We’re hoping these people will help us through the different stages of the project (sourcing, funding, filming, distributing) to essentially label this a fan-made Beatles Documentary. We’ve received great support so far, which we are extremely grateful for, here’s some nice websites we’ve been recommended:

http://anothergirl83.tripod.com/

A great fan-made website archiving Hamburg Beatles media and information.

http://adventurevisual.com/bea…..lustration

A website by the artists Mark Rehkopf, who produces stunning Beatles artwork, as well as none Beatles artwork too.

http://www.schomakers.com/Index.htm

An archive of all releases from The Beatles ‘Apple’ label.

http://www.beatlesource.com/sa…..index.html

A website sourcing all the Beatles records on different labels, containing lots of info and an excellent gallery of pictures.

We want to hear from you via social media! 

Keep up to date with us in the following places:

Tweets by BeatlesHamburg

http://thebeatleshamburg.tumblr.com/

https://www.facebook.com/Beatl…..rg?fref=ts

Don’t you worry, one of our main priorities in the film-making stage of this project is for the recreation of these years to be accurate. Thats mainly why we’re extensively researching the subject at this current stage, talking to fans with experience or anyone who got to see them live back then. Wouldn’t it be great if we could capture one of The Beatles live performances in the Star club, more accurate and raw than any Hamburg Beatles film has managed before.

Hey guys, hope all is well!

Just a quick update from the documentary producer Mark Ashmore and a nice poster:

It is with great excitement that we at Future Artists are letting the world know we intend to make a feature length documentary film about ‘The Beatles’, following their exploits during the Hamburg years from 1960 through to 1962.

The Beatles ‘ Young and Reckless in Hamburg’ (working title)

A project that has been 6 months in development thus far at Future Artists HQ, we feel it is the right time to let the world know what we are up to and why, and we need your help!

Mark Ashmore the films producer has this to say:

 ‘I grew up as a second generation Beatles fan, with the stories of my parents, listening to Beatles record, and hearing about the Beatles legacy.

But any music fan will always seek out more knowledge and stories about the people behind the music and how they developed as artists. It’s this ‘creative development’ that is at the centre of the Beatles story we want to tell.

With no manager, PR team or record label bosses standing over them, how did the Hamburg Beatles evolve into the band the world still celebrates today, – this film will hopefully act as an entry point for the 3^rd and 4^th generation Beatles fans around the world, to get to know the legends behind the music in their formative years.

The documentary film, produced by Future Artists, will also be like no other before it, for the past 6 months the Future Artists collective have been talking with Beatles fans around the world, gathering insights, stories, images, memorabilia, art and collaborators, which will enable the team to create a unique film that is thought provoking, insightful and a re-imagining of Hamburg in the early 1960s.

We are approaching this project with complete independence from the traditional film industry, instead we are working with Beatles fans around the world to crowd fund and crowd source the production.

Its our intention at Future Artists to allow the true fans of an artist to enable that artist to grow via collaboration. We now live in an interconnected world of social media, for us this gives unlimited scope for new ways of working with members of our audience who are also artists and media savvy.

Future Artists have done several productions in this manner, but nothing as big as the Beatles Hamburg story, this is a really exciting project to be working on, and to have the chance to collaborate with millions of Beatles fans world-wide’ 

So far we’ve had a huge response from Beatles fans across the world, people who are keen to work with us and keep us heading in the right direction, we are much appreciative of the help we’ve received so far!

Here are some great examples of fan collaborations:

• Luc Porte, a Beatles record/rarities collector from Belgium, has given us a sneaky peek of his original Stuart Sutcliffe painting.

• Andrea from Hamburg has directed us to her massively informative website loaded with Hamburg Beatles archive information – http://anothergirl83.tripod.com/

• Mark Rehkopf from Adventure Visuals, Ontario, Canada, has allowed us to use some of his stunning Beatles artwork, as well as creating our first fan-made poster!

• We’ve been talking to Eric Krasker, author of ‘The Beatles – Fact and Fiction’ and Hans Olof Gottfridsson, author of ‘The Beatles – From Cavern to Star Club’, both offering their help and wisdom towards the project, which is welcomed and appreciated.

So if you want to get involved in this production, please register your interest by heading to our Facebook group and introducing yourself.

Join the discussion – https://www.facebook.com/group…..amburgFilm

We look forward to hearing from you,

The Beatles Hamburg Team – Future Artists, Manchester, UK

You can also Tweet us – @BeatlesHamburg

Or get in touch via email – TheBeatlesHamburg@gmail.com