2023-06-25 12:45:54
Everyone knows when and where they first heard a song by the Beatles. Arne was just five years old when his father – captain on a long voyage – brought him the red and the blue album as cassettes. The boy played both tapes up and down on his Philips cassette recorder. To do this, he stood in front of the mirror with a tennis racket and delivered the right performance. Until one day his godmother, who came from Liverpool, explained to him that the four mushroom heads are not singing a fantasy language, but that it is English. “Hm, I guess I’ll have to learn that then,” Arne said to himself and got started. From then on, his mother in particular encouraged him not only to speak English, but also to play the guitar.
Decades later, veteran musician, tour manager and producer Arne Buss is curating the „Come Together Experience“, the first big Beatles festival at St. Pauli in Hamburg. In the future, it will commemorate the Fab Four every year – and prove how the work of John, Paul, George and Ringo as the Big Bang not only continues to have an impact on pop culture and the Beatles universe, but also influences other genres to this day. The festival is organized by Come Together Experience GmbH, which was founded for this purpose. Shareholders include the Hamburg organizers and Beatles fans Uriz von Oertzen as managing director and Karsten Jahnke.
“Come Together Experience” festival director Arne Buss on Beatles-Platz in St. Pauli
What: Bertold Fabricius
At the time of the revolutionary beginnings in Hamburg, five Beatles were at the starting line: Stuart Sutcliffe played the bass, Pete Best was on the drums. Sutcliffe left the Beatles in the summer of 1961 and tragically died in 1962 at the age of 22 from a brain hemorrhage. Pete Best was replaced by Ringo Starr in August 1962 following a decision by George, Paul and George. Since then, the Beatles have also played in Hamburg and until the band broke up in the legendary quartet.
The first edition of the new come-together festival is scheduled to take place on June 30 and July 1, 2023 on the original stages where the Beatles performed from the first concert on August 17, 1960 until the end of the third series of performances on December 31, 1962 St. Pauli played: Indra, Kaiserkeller, Top Ten Club (today Moondoo) and Star Club. Instead of the Ernst Merck Hall, demolished in 1986, where the Beatles gave their last concert in Europe in 1966, the Große Freiheit 36, the Gruenspan, the Molotow and the St. Pauli Theater are included. Dozens of concerts ranging from nostalgic to experimental are planned.
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„Get Back“ & „Let it Be“
“A big, annual Hamburg festival is overdue,” says Arne Buss: “although not as retro as in Liverpool with the gigantic International Beatleweek, where tribute bands perform in droves. We also want to show how the Beatles continue to inspire young artists today. If Liverpool is the Mecca of the fans, then Hamburg is the Medina.” A festival was originally planned for 2020 to mark the 60th anniversary of the Beatles’ start in Hamburg, but it had to be canceled due to the pandemic. Now the plan for the 50th anniversary of the Blue Album, released in 1973, is becoming a reality. This year, fans could combine two festivals for the first time and, after visiting Hamburg, travel to Liverpool, where Beatleweek will be celebrated from August 23rd to 29th.
Buss knows his way around festivals, having been responsible for the Synaesthesia Festival in Berlin every year since 2017 as Head of Production. There, bands perform live together in new constellations – inspired by the Krautrock of the 1960s and 1970s across generations. In both Berlin and Hamburg, Buss focuses on the live character and the musical avant-garde based on the Beatles. Regarding the name “Come Together Experience”, Buss says: “The name is made up of the Beatles song title ‘Come Together’ and the common experience, the experience that we can have because we bring people of different colors and generations together on stage and before that.” The Beatles-Hit „Come Together“ is one of the most successful songs in music history. It has been covered more than 450 times, most successfully by Aerosmith.
Milestones on St. Pauli
One focus of the festival is the “Beatles Milestones”, for which Buss commissions an artist or a band to interpret the work. The artists have “full artistic freedom and design a new program based on their fondness for the Beatles.” Among the contractors this time is this Duo Blac Rabbit aus Brooklyn, the twin brothers Amiri and Rahiem Taylor, who became known for their Beatles covers on the New York subway, but who also write their own songs as contemporary artists with their own band. They will perform the album “Rubber Soul” on July 1st at Gruenspan.
Another milestone is planned for July 1st with a concert at Gruenspan, designed by Earl Slick. The guitarist was playing for David Bowie when he met Yoko Ono and John Lennon. In the mid-1970s he accompanied Bowie and Lennon on the joint recording of the song “Fame”. Buss: “Earl couldn’t remember it later, but John Lennon did. So he invited him to record the albums ‘Double Fantasy’ and ‘Milk & Honey’ with him and Yoko, the result is well known.” At the festival, Slick will be performing a selection of John Lennon songs with friends and companions.
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The “Blue Album Revue” is also expected in the Laeiszhalle on the same evening, with more than five dozen musicians. The evening will be put together by Nikko Weidemann. The all-star band with Hans Rohe (Nina Hagen Band), Stefan Rager (Jeremy Days), Ekki Maas (Erdmöbel) and Andi Fins (Clueso) is complemented by the Kaiser Quartet, Annett Louisan, Bernd Begemann and Dirk Darmstädter, among others.
The band Bambi Kino, which was founded in New York in 2010 to celebrate the 50th Hamburg anniversary of the Beatles in St. Pauli, will organize a special evening close to the original. Based on the John Lennon quote “I was born in Liverpool but grew up in Hamburg”, which is particularly well-known in Hamburg, band founder Mark Rozzo says “Bambi Kino was born in New York but grew up in Hamburg, at the Indra 2010”. The band, which includes Rozzo, Erik Paparazzi (Cat Power), Doug Gillard and Ira Elliot (both Nada Surf), returns on July 1st and plays Beatles setlists from 1960-62. 21 Downbeat, the house band of the inclusive RambaZamba Theater from Berlin, is also organizing an evening as a tribute to the Beatles and recreating the album “With the Beatles” with their own sound on June 30th in the Molotow.
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“We also knew from the beginning that it couldn’t work without tribute bands,” says Arne Buss. The Bootleg Beatles, the first and still one of the best Beatles tribute bands, will be guests at the Come Togehter Experience on June 30th. The band, which emerged from the West End production “Beatlemania”, has given more than 4000 concerts in the 40 years of its existence and plays its way through the Beatles repertoire in the Große Freiheit. Other tribute bands are Them Beatles from Great Britain, the Blackbyrds from southern Germany and Just Beatles from Scotland, each playing on both days. Pepperland from Sweden enriches the program at Gruenspan on June 30th.
For the first time, the music show format “A hit is a hit” will be exported from the Berlin Ballhaus to Hamburg on the occasion of the festival. At the festival, the team follows in the footsteps of the Beatles in the Top Ten Club. There will be surprise guests, all of whom have a say when it comes to the Fab Four. For spectators with a bit of luck there is the opportunity to visit the former Beatles apartment on the fourth floor above the Top Ten. For the festival, it is being redesigned by designer and pop artist Jim Avignon.
Artists such as the Garlands duo, the Flaming Pie band and the Hülsmann-Wogramm-Dell trio give their own concerts at the festival, with the latter turning the Beatles songs into jazz. In any case, the Beatles universe with its endless expanses can never be fully explained, says Buss: “There are not only the 219 songs of the Beatles and their band history. Add to that at least the environment of Abbey Road Studios, the solo careers of John, Paul, George and Ringo after 1970 and the work of Yoko Ono.”
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Four other new formats invite you to make discoveries at the first “Come Together”: The evening “Sitting on a cornflake” in the Gruespan deals with the “Psychedelic Songbook” of the Beatles, which has run through the entire work since the album “Rubber Soul”. These include Blac Rabbit and Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys from South Africa. The Hamburg duo Dews will pay tribute to Yoko Ono at the Molotow on June 30th.
Christiane Rösinger and Paul Pötsch pose in the same club a day later according to their own arrangements Lennons „The Lost Tapes“ from the years 1975 to 1980. And a band battle “Beatles vs. Stones” completes the extensive program on Friday in the Molotow. “There are no losers and no winners on this evening,” says Arne Buss, answering the eternal question of who is the better band. However, it also answers itself in Hamburg.
“Come Together Experience”, June 30th and July 1st in St. Pauli, festival tickets in three categories and the full program here.
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