A six-part TV drama exploring The Beatles’ two-year stint in the German city of Hamburg will reintroduce a forgotten key player in the band’s early years, its writer said.
Hamburg Days is expected to air via the BBC in 2027 or 2028. Filming began in May, with a script by Succession writer Jamie Carragher and production by Christian Schwochow (The Crown) and Mat Whitecross.
It follows the period 1960-62 in which John Lennon (played by Rhys Mannion), Paul McCartney (Ellis Murphy), George Harrison (Harvey Brett), Stuart Sutcliffe (Louis Landau) and Pete Best (Patrick Gilmore) endured a grueling schedule of over 750 concerts, learning the discipline that led to success.
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In a new interview with the Guardian, Carragher explained why he’d made a point of bringing calypso musician Lord Woodbine back into the Beatles story.
“McCartney and Lennon respected him in a musical sense,” the writer said. “There weren’t many people in their lives at this point who wrote their own songs, and Lord Woodbine did that via the calypso tradition.” One of Lennon’s earliest songs was titled “Calypso Rock.”
Trinidad-born Woodbine – real name Harold Adolphus Phillips – came to Liverpool during the Second World War with the Royal Air Force. He later ran the city’s famed Jacaranda club, and became the Beatles co-manager, along with friend and business partner Allan Williams.
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Academic and author Malik Al Nasir told the Guardian: that Lennon and McCartney “used to come and offer to clean and collect glasses for Woodbine. In return Woodbine would feed them and help them out by teaching them chords.
“I don’t even know if Woodbine even had a contract with the Beatles. But he certainly picked them up when no one else cared; he took them to Hamburg, a place that nobody else really thought about.”
Woodbine died in a house fire in 2000, aged 72. By then he’d spoken about having been effectively written out of the Fab Four’s history, outshone by Epstein’s contribution to their success.
In 1992 he saw a photo from the Hamburg era at a promotional event – but he’d been removed from the image. “When I saw that it hurt me,” Woodbine said soon before his death. “That was the end of the Beatles memory and me.”
In the photo below, Woodbine can be seen third from left, along with Alan Williams, Bery Williams, Stuart Sutcliffe, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Pete Best. (Not pictured: John Lennon.)
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Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso
