Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Those photos were taken by Jergen Volmer in the late morning at The Top Ten Club. He talks about these photos in his Genesis Publications book titled 'From Hamburg To Hollywood'. The Beatles promised him the chance to take photos of them but when he arrived George was the only one awake. That's why the George was posing with John's '58 325, John was still waking up! The rest of the photos are posed too, although they may have actually been playing to an empty Top Ten Club. Paul was actually still playing his Rosetti Solid 7 at this time. It must have been just before they all trashed it on stage!

Interesting. Amazing shots, still and all. That last one of George is Astrid's, no?

There is a photo where Stu is sitting on stage wearing sandals and off to the side you can see the Beatle bass as Stu is playing his own Hofner. I believe I remember the photo showing Paul at the piano. I'll see about digging the picture up and posting it.

Regards,

good source for pix (although not all are pickable)
http://www.dmbeatles.com/pictures.php

and here...
http://www.beatlefans.com/film.htm

In this pix it looks like George and Paul still hadn't worked out that lefty-righty thing at the mic... perhaps because Paul (ever the ham) wanted to be in the middle? (Aug '61, Aintree Institute)


A note from HELP!...
"A hell of a lot of pot was being smoked while we were making the film. It was great. That helped make it a lot of fun...In one of the scenes, Victor Spinetti and Roy Kinnear are playing curling: sliding along those big stones. One of the stones has a bomb in it and we find out that it's going to blow up, and have to run away. Well, Paul and I ran about seven miles, we ran and ran, just so we could stop and have a joint before we came back. We could have run all the way to Switzerland. If you look at pictures of us you can see a lot of red-eyed shots; they were red from the dope we were smoking. And these were those clean-cut boys! Dick Lester knew that very little would get done after lunch. In the afternoon we very seldom got past the first line of the script. We had such hysterics that no one could do anything. Dick Lester would say, 'No, boys, could we do it again?' It was just that we had a lot of fun -- a lot of fun in those days." --- Ringo Starr on filming Help!

The 'Another Girl' sequence in HELP! shows George 'playing' John's 325.

People wondered about the shots with Stu just sitting in after Paul took over bass. Well here is proof if I can get the picture to upload.

Look at the lower left of the shot and you can see Paul's bass next to Stu playing his Hofner.

Regards,

I have seen some other pic's of George holding the 325 when it was black. Looked like it was a recording session.

I have a pic of of an Ed Sullivan sound check where they switched guits. I'll see if I can find it... and somehow make it small enough to post...

I'm not claiming to be an expert, but the guitar George is playing doesn't look like a 325 to me...The pickguard's the wrong shape, the board looks like maple and the headstock doesn't look like the right shape.

Perhaps that wasn't the point of the original post, but the title made me take a look. I'm happy to be corrected if I'm mistaken.

Any thoughts?

The one in the very last shot of George is a Neoton Grazioso, or "Futurama".

George had a few photographs taken the same day while holding John's 325. He still was playing the Futurama at the time. I believe his next axe was the Duo-Jet.

Regards,

Speaking of the Futurama (and sorry to drift), that was actually Pete Best's brother Rory's guitar. George had one but the neck popped and he borrowed Rory's for Hamburg. When Graham and I met him at the Casbah, he said that he was going to put up the Futurama at auction soon.

wow, interesting piece of trivia! I wonder if even the great Lewisohn knows that one.

George has said that the Futurama was not a good guitar at all and the first "really good" guitar he ever owned was the Gretsch Duo Jet.

The Futurama was a popular guitar back then:

Rory had originally loaned it to "The Beatles Story" at Albert Dock in Liverpool but once he saw the value of Beatles-affiliated guitars (he specifically mentioned the one that McCartney played a couple times that sold for six figures), he figured there was an opportunity to be made!

Rory also said that he bought his because he saw Harrison's and thought it was cool.

So what ever happened to George's original broken one?