A Star Club Night at the Iron Door

Discuss the early days of the Club with the manager.
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hamilton_square
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A Star Club Night at the Iron Door

Post by hamilton_square »

The warehouse at 13 Temple Street, Liverpool changed its looks inside over the course of the nearly four years that it was in operation. Actually three separate Clubs had their residency there over this short period, the Iron Door Club surfacing twice!

Is the opening paragraph of “A Tour of the Iron Door” by Peter McCormack posted on this site at …

http://www.rickresource.com/irondoorclu ... floor.html

Of the “three separate Clubs” Peter McCormack alludes to; I was more familiar with the third (and last) in the series than I was with numbers one and two. My personal timeline, more or less, spanning the near two-year period covered by the below examples of two Iron Door Club membership cards I came across on a German memorabilia auction site on one of my cyber-travels.
63.jpg
64.jpg
Like the later Goodison blue better - Anfield red was never my colour Geoff.

Peter, why on earth were you cyber-travelling 'round Germany?

Well, the very last time I went to the Iron Door Club was, I remember, to watch a couple of German groups who were billed as Hamburg Star Club regulars. Date-wise; I've managed to narrow it down to March 1964. I remember it was a full house and the weather was thankfully pleasant as hundreds of us queued the length of Temple Street to get in. The Beatles were taking the US by storm, everybody was coming to Liverpool, things seemed to be kicking off big time.

Meanwhile, out in Hamburg, Star Club boss Manfred Weissleder had done a deal with Philips Records to record groups under his own Star-Club Records label. So, sending German groups to play dates in and around Liverpool at the time was a means of promoting sales of Star-Club Records released in the UK under the Philips label. I know because I bought a few of them. Then top German group The Rattles were regular visitors to Liverpool for a time.
images.jpg
I suspect the two German groups I saw on my last ever visit to the Iron Door were The Phantom Brothers and The Four Renders, that is according to this online interview I came across with one Olgerd Wokock and Phantom Brothers band member at …

http://ugly-things.com/the-phantom-brot ... eat-group/

The relevant quote from the interview is:
Around March of 1964, the band flew over to England, along with Tony Sheridan and the Four Renders, and played a show in Liverpool. “The boss of the Star Club, Manfred Weissleder, organized a Battle of the Bands in Liverpool at the Iron Door Club, similar to the Cavern Club,” remembers Olgerd. “We flew in three little charter planes, without work permits. We played rock’n'roll and Beatles songs, which went down really well with the kids.”

While there half the band underwent an image transformation. “We all still had rocker haircuts,” says Olgerd, “so the girls in Liverpool combed Horst’s and my hair to the front to make them into Beatles hairdos. Wolfgang and Rudi did not go along with that and still had the rocker hair for months after.”
Also, from the same source; the below photograph is of The Phantom Brothers said to be on stage inside the Iron Door Club during that gig ...
Phantom-Brothers-Iron-Door.jpg
The Phantom Brothers really were two sets of brothers; Rudi & Horst Kruger and Olgerd & Wolfgang Wokock. And, according to YouTube, were still playing occasional gigs round the German nostalgia circuit up to a few years ago. But, below is how they looked posed in 1964 …
Phantom-postcard-1964-300x198.jpg
I couldn’t find out much about The Four Renders, the other German group on the Iron Door bill that night, other than this Star-Club Records cover …
Four Renders SB 9887.jpg
Once the novelty value of seeing these German groups perform wore off they quickly stopped coming over to Liverpool. Basically, they were just better dressed and presented cover band copies of the many cover band copies that we already had in and around Liverpool at the time. It could get somewhat tiresome on our finely tuned to English ears after a while repeatedly having to listen to numbers sung phonetically by non-native speakers. Also, because of the language barrier, there was very like interaction going on between these visiting groups and within-touching-distance audiences. While the female element of audiences often found these German groups exotic (especially the blonde haired ones), it was difficult for the majority of us to generally relate to / identify with them. After all, less than 20 years had passed since the end of World War II and that awareness was still here under the surface for some. At the end of the day we just got bored with it all, things were getting stale, no freshness, no originality. I love greasy chips (aka french fries) and can eat them by the bucketful but I know I’ll get sick of ‘em if that’s all I have to eat.
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13_temple_street
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Re: A Star Club Night at the Iron Door

Post by 13_temple_street »

Once the novelty value of seeing these German groups perform wore off they quickly stopped coming over to Liverpool
.
After the success of the Beatles and other groups in Brian Epstein's stable on the recording scene the atmosphere around the groups in 1964 onwards changed instead of the usual enthusiasm overnight gloom and doom appeared.
Bringing the German groups over to perform in front of Liverpool audiences offered a glimpse of positives to challenge the Liverpool groups, for a while the music scene appeared to be back to normal, this situation did not last long and a gradual decline in group numbers appeared.
There was at least one group who did not submit to the Epsteins stable and found fame and fortune on their own merit with a little help from their friends The Searchers,.
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