That’s the band I saw in Hamburg!

In the early 1960s, my cousin was in the army, stationed at a military base in Germany. When he finished his duty and got back to the States, he used to tell us stories of this great band they used to see perform at a bar in Hamburg when they were on leave. I was pretty little and just remember snippets.

He soon got married and started a family. One weekend, my parents let me stay over at his place. When they came to pick me up on a Sunday evening to take me back home, we all hung around as the Ed Sullivan show was coming on.

All of a sudden, we see the Beatles appear on the screen and my cousin jumps out of his chair, pointing at the television, screaming, “That’s them! That’s the band! Those are the guys we used to see playing in Hamburg! Holy shit!”

He sat back down, riveted to the TV screen.

And that was my introduction to The Beatles. Overnight, my entire world shifted. It was like when Dorothy opened the front door of her house after it landed in the Wizard of OZ.

~ From someone who posted a comment under a Youtube video of the Beatles in 1962