Kaiserkeller

October 1960

The Beatles are getting comfortable at the much larger Kaiserkeller up the street from the matchbox-sized Indra.  The boards of the huge stage, however, had seen better days and are slowly rotting away.  The Beatles and their comrades Rory Storm and the Hurricanes get into a little contest amongst themselves to see who would be the first to actually break through the weakened boards.  It's easy to imagine that this contest is instigated by Rory Storm, himself.  He played no instrument on stage and more than made up for it by climbing, jumping and dancing wildly across the stage and beyond.  (Is this a very early punk influence?)  I doubt that it is very long before John Lennon, doing his wicked cripple imitation, takes up that challenge.  The poor old stage has no chance against such an onslaught.

Also helping (or is that not helping?) are the cases of beer sent up by appreciative audience members.  Word is spreading quickly about the wild new groups making waves on the Grosse Freiheit.

Meanwhile, a new club is opened actually on the busy Reeperbahn by a shady impressario named Peter Eckhorn.  It is called the Top Ten Club, and immediately bad blood is made between it and the Kaiserkeller when Eckhorn hires away Bruno Koshmider's head bouncer.  Between the tough club owners, internecine war has been declared.