Letters and photos from Beatles’ early days to go on show in Hamburg | The Beatles

Rare letters and photographs from the Beatles’ early days, which describe how they first felt like stars, will be exhibited in Hamburg.

Dating from an influential period when the band lived in Germany, the collection includes the only letter in existence to the bassist’s brother, Mike McCartney, containing lyrics from both Paul McCartney and John Lennon.

The free exhibition, which runs from 8 to 25 May and is part of Hamburg’s annual harbor festival Hafengeburtstag, revolves around the original five members of the band between 1960 and ’62, a period that greatly shaped their sound and appearance.

Mike McCartney, who donated some of the letters to the collection put together by the Liverpool city district combined authority and Hamburg senate, said: “It’s fascinating because they [give] “You keep a lot of secrets about them while they’re developing.”

“It was quite extraordinary because our child was in a foreign country, over the water, explaining what was going on. And it was a very important stage in their development,” Mike told the Guardian.

Letters, also collected from The Cavern Club and the Liverpool Beatles Museum, reveal the thoughts of Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, as well as original bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, who died of a brain haemorrhage aged 21, shortly after the Hamburg period, and original drummer Pete Best, who was recruited specifically for their first visit to Hamburg.

In a letter to Best’s mother, he recalls that he, Lennon and McCartney felt like stars boarding their plane when they were interviewed by a member of the press about being named Liverpool’s number one band.

Photographs taken by Sutcliffe, who contributed greatly to the band’s style and was the first person to have the moptop hairstyle of the group, which was given to him as a gift by his fiancée Astrid Kirchherr, are also included in the exhibition. He decided to stay in Hamburg with Kirchherr while the other bandmates returned to Liverpool.

Mike McCartney said the Beatles played shows “non-stop” during their time in Hamburg, famously performing for eight hours on some evenings. “They were using all these pills to get their spirits up and down,” he said. Mike said Paul was visibly weakened when he returned from Hamburg, but it was clear that the band had moved on to the next stage.

“When they played in Liverpool the music – for God’s sake, could you hear the professionalism. The difference was that they had come from Hamburg, they had done the hard work, well more than just the hard work. When they came back to Liverpool it was like chalk and cheese. And they were just outside the best band in Liverpool, because they were so together, so united, so different.”

A letter Paul wrote to Mike in May 1962 gives an insight into Hamburg’s thriving live music scene; Paul explains how they were told that American rock’n’roll legends Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis might visit the city soon, and how Paul hoped the Beatles could perform with Berry.

Also included is a long passage dictated from Lennon to his bandmate; This passage begins with a strange poem about keeping your chin up and Mike lamenting that he can’t find a job as a hairdresser, not knowing if he actually gets the job, and continues for several pages where characters such as Jesus and F1 driver Stirling Moss appear.

Liverpool Combined Authority said there was potential to bring the exhibition home in the future, following the filming of the BBC’s six-part series about the early days of the Beatles in Hamburg.

Mike said he didn’t initially keep the letters for any reason and “didn’t even realize their importance” until recently. His wife called him a hoarder because he kept these items for more than 60 years. “But to some extent I’m glad I did it. Because if I hadn’t hoarded it, you wouldn’t have these unique letters.”

Mike was also a musician in the band Scaffold, who had a box set of singles and albums, and was a photographer, taking photographs of the Beatles in their early days, which were later collected in the book Mike McCartney’s Early Liverpool.

He said he and his brother have given up using letters to communicate. “He now FaceTimes with a disheveled look,” Mike said. “He never shaves. I always say ‘you sloppy bastard’. We just talk about nothing… and everything.”