HAMBURG - THERE were five of them, not four, and they weren't yet fab when in 1960 an obscure English band called The Beatles arrived in Hamburg.

Now, 49 years after their fateful arrival that August, this German port city is claiming its place in the history of what became the world's most successful pop group with a new museum - called Beatlemania.

All things must pass The band, which in five separate periods between 1960 and 1962 played in the Indra and three other clubs: the Kaiserkeller, the Top Ten Club and the Star Club, all in the same Reeperbahn area, still a red-light district. Today, only the Indra and the Kaiserkeller are still concert values. The Star Club, which was also played by Jimi Hendrix, is no more and the Top Ten, although a club, is unrecognisable. ... more

When a battered minibus carrying John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe, Pete Best and four others chugged into Hamburg, the not-so-fab-five entered an alien world.

Their hometown of Liverpool was also a port with its rougher sides, but Hamburg's infamous red light district set new standards in seediness that were enough to make all but the toughest docker blush.

The band, hired by a club owner with a limp called Bruno Koschmider, were on contract to entertain guests in a moth-eaten strip joint known as the Indra.

First taking to the stage on August 17, 1960, the band were told by Koschmider to 'mach schau' or 'make a show'.

Horst Fascher, the former boxer who would later get the Beatles to play the nearby Star Club, said he saw them on their second night with a large group of friends, and to his disgust found them playing skiffle.

The girls said 'they look good'.' And the Beatles soon got a lot better.

'We really had to hammer. We had to try anything that came into our heads,' Lennon recalled later. 'We played what we liked best, and the Germans liked it as long as it was loud.' Working so hard - the record was 98 nights in a row - is widely credited with laying the foundations for their later fame. -- AFP