When Beatlemania swept the nation, despite a few quips here and there, The Beatles’ reputation as straight-edge, well-behaved men tended to precede them. They wore suits, did their hair neat and always had smiles on their faces. The controversy came later in their career as comments surrounding Jesus and the endorsed use of certain drugs were met with raised eyebrows and cynicism, but in those early days, even for the most conservative of mind, they were good as gold.
Well, no. Turns of the Fab Four, before they were the Fab Four, had a string of troubles that would see three-quarters of them not only arrested but deported from Germany, which was where they were living at the time. George Harrison was sent back to England after authorities learnt that he was under 18, while Paul McCartney and Pete Best were both deported for arson. Yes, arson.
Before the Beatles took over the world, they cut their teeth in Germany. Between 1960 and 1962, they all lived and worked in Hamburg, where they taught themselves how to make music and perform live. The band was inexperienced before heading out to Germany, so doing the gigs they did and learning the number of songs they had to meant they needed to learn fast.
“Before Hamburg, we didn’t have a clue,” said George Harrison in an interview in 1992, “we’d never really done any gigs. We’d play a few parties but never had a drummer longer than one night at a time. So we were very ropy, just young kids. I was the youngest – I was only 17, and you had to be 18 to play in the clubs – and we had no visas. They wound up deporting me after our second year there.”
Harrison wasn’t the only one who was kicked out of the country. The Beatles’ run in Germany ended abruptly when McCartney and the band’s original drummer, Pete Best, came close to starting a fire in one of the clubs they were playing in.
They were moving their belongings around and couldn’t see very clearly, so they decided to nail a condom to a wall and set fire to it for light. The venue owner wasn’t happy with that and decided to call the police; shortly afterwards, the two were arrested and asked to leave the country.
When the band arrived back in the UK, despite it being sooner than they had anticipated, they had a lot of experience performing live under their belts and, as such, were ready to take on more gigs in the UK and eventually the world. Had three members not been deported, they may have grown complacent with their gigs in Hamburg and decided to stick around. We’ll never know, but just in case, you should be thankful for that burning condom.
