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

A rare set of letters and photos from the early days of the Beatles, in which they write about feeling like stars for the first time, is to go on display in Hamburg.

The collection, from an influential period when the band lived in the German city, includes the only letter in existence with words from both Paul McCartney and John Lennon, which was written to the bassist’s brother, Mike McCartney.

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

Mike McCartney, who donated some of the letters to the collection put together by the Liverpool city region combined authority and the Hamburg senate, said: “It’s fascinating, because they [give] you so many secrets about them as they are developing.”

“It was quite extraordinary, because our kid is just saying what’s happening there in a foreign land, over the water. And it was a very important stage in their development,” Mike told the Guardian.

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

In a letter from Best to his mother, he recalls how he, Lennon and McCartney felt like stars boarding their plane, having been interviewed by a member of the press about them being voted Liverpool’s number one band.

Photographs taken by Best, who was instrumental in the band’s style – and was the first to have the band’s moptop hairstyle, given to him by his fiancee, Astrid Kirchherr – also feature in the exhibition. He decided to stay in Hamburg with Kirchherr while the other bandmates returned to Liverpool, and he was replaced by Ringo Starr.

Mike McCartney said the Beatles did shows “non-stop” during their time in Hamburg, famously performing for eight hours some evenings. “They were on all these pills to keep them going, uppers and downers,” he said. When Paul returned from Hamburg, he was noticeably thinner, Mike said, but it was clear the band had gone to the next level.

“The music when they then played around Liverpool – by god, could you hear the professionalism. The difference was that they had come out of Hamburg, done the hard work – I mean, more than hard work. It was like they were like chalk and cheese when they came back to Liverpool. And they were just out and out the top group in Liverpool, because they were so together, so united, so different.”