The Indra: Große Freiheit 64
Before the world-famous bands, there had to be places willing to put them on.
And sometimes those places are more interesting than the bands themselves.
At the darker end of Hamburg's Große Freiheit sits number 64. Today you'll find a music club there called The Indra. Same name. Same address. Still putting musicians on a stage.
It's one of the oldest music clubs in Hamburg and one of those places where, if the walls could talk, you'd probably lose an entire weekend listening.
This isn't really a Beatles story.
They feature, obviously. You can't tell the story of the Indra without them. But the reason I've become slightly obsessed with this place is what was happening around them.
Because the Indra was there when something in music was changing.
Before the rock 'n' roll
Go back to St. Pauli in the 1950s and Große Freiheit was already becoming notorious.
This was Hamburg's entertainment district. Sailors, bars, sex workers, dancers, drinking, cabaret and clubs that stayed open until whoever was left finally went home.
The Indra was part of that world.
It wasn't originally some cool little indie venue waiting for the next big band. Its entertainment included dancing, cabaret, striptease and variety acts. It was a proper St. Pauli nightspot.
Then rock 'n' roll started creeping in.
Hamburg was a port. Records and influences arrived with people coming in from Britain, America and Scandinavia. The younger generation were discovering American rock 'n' roll while plenty of the older generation absolutely hated it.
Which usually means something interesting is happening.
Clubs including the Indra, Kaiserkeller and Top Ten began becoming part of this new scene. British musicians started travelling across to Hamburg because there was something incredibly valuable waiting for them there.
A stage.
Not fame. Not money.
Just somewhere to fucking play.
The British are coming
Liverpool bands began making the journey over.
Derry and the Seniors were among the first to prove that British rock 'n' roll groups could work in Hamburg. Around the wider Hamburg circuit came Tony Sheridan, Rory Storm & The Hurricanes, Gerry & The Pacemakers, Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes and plenty of others.
It's important to get this bit right. They didn't all necessarily play the Indra itself. Hamburg's club histories overlap constantly and you'll often see the Indra, Kaiserkeller, Top Ten and Star-Club stories bundled together online as if they were one venue.
They weren't.
What they formed together was something much more interesting: a little network of clubs where British musicians could arrive relatively unknown and play for hours every night.
The Indra was right there at the beginning of it.
Its own history also records Hamburg musicians including The Giants and a young Knut Kiesewetter, who would go on to build a long career in German music.
And then, in August 1960, another Liverpool group arrived.
Five lads walk into a strip club...
17 August 1960.
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best walk onto the stage at the Indra.
The Beatles.
But forget everything that name means now.
George was 17. Ringo wasn't there. Brian Epstein wasn't there. There were no matching suits, no screaming crowds, no number-one records and absolutely no guarantee that any of this was going anywhere.
They were effectively another young British band looking for work.
And the Indra gave it to them.
The venue at that point was still a mixture of cabaret, striptease and live music. Some of the audience weren't waiting for the next band. They were waiting for the next stripper.
The Beatles weren't particularly impressive either.
They were inexperienced, fairly static and didn't have enough material to fill the hours they were contracted to play.
Club operator Bruno Koschmider wanted more.
His instruction became legendary.
“Mach Schau!”
Make a show.
And that's exactly what they had to learn to do.
48 nights that changed a band
Between August and October, The Beatles played the Indra 48 times.
Their working schedule was extraordinary. Around four and a half hours on weekdays and six hours at weekends.
Their repertoire couldn't cover it.
So they expanded it.
Chuck Berry. Little Richard. Gene Vincent. Carl Perkins. Buddy Holly. Rock 'n' roll, rhythm and blues and whatever else they could learn, stretch, repeat or reinvent to get through the night.
They became louder. Faster. More confident.
They learnt how to hold a room that hadn't necessarily come to see them.
That's the bit that matters.
The Indra didn't book The Beatles because they were the biggest band in the world.
It booked them when they were nobody.
Their final Indra performance was 3 October 1960. The following night the Hamburg story moved further down Große Freiheit to the Kaiserkeller, where they shared the scene with Rory Storm & The Hurricanes and their drummer, Richard Starkey.
Ringo Starr.
Then came the Top Ten. Tony Sheridan. The Star-Club. More Hamburg. More hours. More experience.
Eventually the rest of the world caught up.
But number 64 carried on
This is where I think the Indra story becomes much more interesting than another piece of Beatles nostalgia.
The Beatles left.
The club didn't.
Over the following decades the Indra changed with Hamburg. Rock and beat gave way to different periods and different audiences. At various points it operated as a jazz club and a country bar.
Eventually it even lost its name.
The Indra became the Blockhütte.
It would have been incredibly easy for number 64 to become another forgotten address where somebody eventually stuck up a plaque saying something important happened here once.
Instead, in 1998, the name returned.
INDRA.
And it's still there.
More than six decades after those early nights, you can still walk down Große Freiheit, reach number 64 and go inside a working music venue.
Bands still play there.
People still stand in front of that stage.
New music is still given somewhere to exist.
Hamburg itself now recognises the Indra as an important part of the development of the city's rock and beat scene, and substantial public money has been committed to preserving and renovating the venue.
That's important.
Because we spend a lot of time celebrating musicians after they've become successful and nowhere near enough time celebrating the places that allowed them to be shit first.
The rehearsal rooms.
The pubs.
The clubs.
The 100-capacity rooms.
The promoters willing to take a chance.
The venues where twenty people turned up.
That's where music actually starts.
Why we're calling it The Indra
This is where Underground & Sound comes into it.
We've been working on our first leather jacket for a while now. When it came to naming it, I wanted something with an actual story behind it. Not a random name dreamt up because it sounded vaguely rock 'n' roll.
Then I found myself disappearing down the Indra rabbit hole.
And it just made sense.
Yes, there's the leather. The early rock 'n' roll. Hamburg. Liverpool. St. Pauli. The bands and everything that came afterwards.
But it's what the place represents that got me.
The bit before anyone is watching.
Before the record deal. Before the headlines. Before somebody decides you're important enough to write about.
Every band you've ever loved was unknown once.
Every band you've ever loved was probably a bit shit once too.
And somewhere, somebody still gave them a stage.
That's why the Indra deserves to be remembered.
Not simply because The Beatles played there.
Because places like the Indra are where bands get the chance to become bands.
And 66 years later, at Große Freiheit 64, that's still what it is.
THE INDRA
Große Freiheit 64.
St. Pauli. Hamburg.
Where they played before the world was listening.