Meet people from all over the World
Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Pages: 1 [2]

Author Topic: Klaus Voormann  (Read 15515 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Ligger

  • A Beginning
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 111
Re: Klaus Voormann
« Reply #20 on: May 14, 2009, 01:39:41 PM »

All that wonderful stuff
might not have happened
if he hadn't had a quarrel with Astrid and Jurgen,
and then stormed off
to the sleazy St. Pauli, Reeperbahn, Grosse Freiheit area of Hamburg
where the fab five were cutting their teeth
alongside Alan Caldwell and his boys.

...or so the story goes.
Logged
Sheet Music Plus Homepage

AngeloMysterioso

  • A Beginning
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 185
Re: Klaus Voormann
« Reply #21 on: February 18, 2010, 02:58:03 PM »

Just to revive this topic, a video interview of Klaus Voorman about the early Beatles, their hairstyle, and their Revolver LP http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/video/2009/sep/04/the-beatles-klaus-voorman
Logged
Music's all right John, but you'll never make a living out of it.

Ligger

  • A Beginning
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Male
  • Posts: 111
Re: Klaus Voormann
« Reply #22 on: February 19, 2010, 05:30:50 AM »

Thanks for that Klaus interview. He still looks great and seems like a real gentleman.
Logged

sgt. peppie

  • Getting Better
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Gender: Female
  • Posts: 995
  • Lolwut?
Re: Klaus Voormann
« Reply #23 on: February 19, 2010, 11:01:58 PM »

He's a great artist. I just love the Revolver cover, there's so many tiny little details, including the picture of himself in George's hair!
Logged

George does not approve.

LennonStarrFan

  • A Beginning
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 228
Gary James' Interview With Klaus Voormann
« Reply #24 on: May 04, 2010, 04:54:46 PM »

Gary James' Interview With
Klaus Voormann

Talk about being in the right place at the right time - that describes Klaus Voormann.

He was walking down the street in Hamburg, Germany and heard music coming out of the Kaiserkeller Club. He heard and saw a group called Rory Storm and The Hurricanes, whose drummer was none other than Ringo Starr. The next group up was called The Beatles. To make a long story short, Klaus Voormann became friends with The Beatles. He went on to design the album cover of "Revolver". He played bass on the solo albums of John, George and Ringo. He also played bass on albums by Harry Nilsson, Carly Simon and Lou Reed to name just a few. He was a member of Manfred Mann.

What a story Klaus Voormann has to tell!

Q - Did you attend John and Yoko's This Is Not Here art exhibit at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York?

A - Yes.

Q - Did you go to John's birthday party at the Hotel Syracuse?

A - Yes. I wound up playing a conga or something. I saw a video somebody took of it...a black and white video.

Q - Did you like the exhibit?

A - It was a great exhibition. It was so fantastic because people could participate. That's what I like. You have an exhibition and people just stand at the picture and another picture and another picture. But that was great 'cause you actually went into a room that was dark. Then you had another room where you couldn't see anything. Yoko and John had gas masks somewhere with prism glass that you couldn't orientate yourself at all or they were completely black. People were just walking around touching each other. You could climb up some ladders or a wall. It was great. It was really good.

Q - What do you do these days?

A - Well, I have this "Sideman's Journey", a box set. I got Paul McCartney playing on it. Ringo is playing drums. I got Jim Keltner. I got Don Preston. David Hood is playing some bass. I've got some great people together. Bonnie Bramlett is singing. I got lots of stuff on it. You can order it on Amazon, or if you go on the internet to Sideman's Journey - Voormann And Friends , then you will see it. You'll see kind of a teaser too, how the whole thing happened. That's my latest thing.

Q - How are you promoting this box set of yours? Do you play select days with some of the people on the CDs?

A - We have done promotion in Germany, but not with a band or concerts. We just did one thing in Munich and we did lots of TV and it's selling very, very well. If you take the business the way it is today, it's really selling well. I don't know what's gonna happen promotion wise in America, but we definitely want to promote it wherever we can.

Q - When you first saw The Beatles, did you go on your own or were you with Astrid?

A - I went on my own. Then I convinced all the other people and said "You have to come and see this band." Everyone came after me, I would say. I was the first of the bunch and then I got all these art people coming in and seeing the band.

Q - This happened by chance, didn't it? You got into a fight with Astrid, walked down the street, heard a band playing an walked in the club. Is that how it happened?

A - I would call it more of an argument. (laughs) It was in Hamburg at the Reeperbahn. There was a window and I heard the 'live' Rock 'n' Roll music.

Q - Why did you think that this band was so special?

A - It was the first Rock 'n' Roll band I ever heard in my life.

Q - That would make it special.

A - On its own, oddly enough. (laughs) But the band was just so great. They played only cover versions. They did not have any songs they wrote themselves. They just played all of the American things like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino...maybe some Gene Vincent. They all were singing. George was singing. John was singing great. It was just amazing, these people to see them. It was really special.

Q - Did they charge admission at the door to get in?

A - Yeah.

Q - Were The Beatles moving around onstage?

A - Well, you see, Rory Storm and The Hurricanes, that was the band Ringo was playing in, they were making sort of like a show band thing where they did move steps to the side and all that, but not wild acts. People always think it was a concert. Those are not concerts. It's a dance hall, where people wanted to dance. They didn't want to dance just to records in those days. They wanted to actually have a band. So the band was mainly just standing there, like The Beatles were later standing there onstage singing. Of course the announcements were much more provoking and dirty, because in those days they didn't have to check every word they were saying.

Q - I ask because in his book Lennon Remembers, John Lennon stated that after Hamburg, they had to clean up their act. I guess John would come onstage with a toilet seat around his neck.

A - Yeah. They were crazy. In general they were just excited about the music. George was 17, so...

Q - On that same day, you heard Rory Storm and The Hurricanes with Ringo.

A - The first band I heard was The Beatles, through the window. And since I got my guts together to go in there, that's when Rory Storm and The Hurricanes were onstage. So, I saw Ringo first, with Rory Storm and The Hurricanes and then I was The Beatles.

Q - Did Ringo stand out in that band?

A - Very much so. He was a fantastic drummer. Really incredible.

Q - Some contemporaries of Ringo have said he wasn't that good of a drummer.

A - They're just jealous. (laughs) Ringo was always great. You see, Rock 'n' Roll drumming is not necessarily very difficult. He always had that feel on the very first day I saw him. He stuck out immediately. On the very first day, I may not have realized that it was the drummer who was holding that band together, but the band was just solid. Even thought his playing wasn't that "hot", Ringo was just incredible. He was really, really good.

Q - Pete Best was the drummer in The Beatles when you first heard them. How would you rate his drumming?

A - He was doing OK, but if you compare it to Ringo, he just did not have that swing. He just did not have that rock. He just didn't.

 


Full Interview: http://www.classicbands.com/KlausVoormannInterview.html
Logged

"John was the best. I loved John. He was fine singer, a fine musician and he was a fine friend." -Ringo
“He's (Ringo) every bloody bit as warm, unassuming, funny, and kind as he seems. He was quite simply the heart of the Beatles.” – John

Bobber

  • Guest
Re: Klaus Voormann
« Reply #25 on: February 17, 2015, 09:10:10 AM »

Picked this up from peregrine9's news.

Beatles fan Dr. Dieter Hoffmann has fulfllled a labor of love and produced an official limited edition 10-inch colored vinyl EP with all six tracks released by the Beatles-connected group Paddy (Chambers), Klaus (Voormann) and Gibson (Kemp), Beatles author Thorsten Knublauch told Beatles Examiner. Voormann, of course, has multiple connections to the Beatles, beginning with their days in Hamburg and his involvement with Astrid Kirchherr before Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe.

In the fall of 1963, Voormann moved from Hamburg to London, where he lived with Ringo Starr at Whaddon House in Williams Mews. Prior to that, he lived on Green Street, where all four Beatles had lived at one point, though John Lennon and Paul McCartney had since moved out and George Harrison had his own apartment there.

Shortly after Voormann found a job in the advertising agency Smith & Warden and moved into his own apartment. He got a call from his friend Gibson Kemp from Hamburg asking him to join his band The Eyes as bass player. Gibson had replaced Ringo in Rory Storm and the Hurricanes and later joined King Taylor and the Dominoes in 1963. Voormann, using Sutcliffe's Höfner bass which he had bought from him in 1961, played bass in the band along with Gibson on drums, Chambers on guitar and John Frankland on vocals and guitar. Frankland had previously also been with the Dominoes. Chambers had been in the Big Three.

One of the first gigs the band played with Voormann was at the Star-Club in Bielefeld, which also featured Pete Best's band in October 1964. During his stint with The Eyes, they released a total of four songs, including the rare Star Club single "She"/"Peanut Butter" (Star-Club 148519). Voormann even painted the group picture for the back cover, which Dieter Hoffmann used as a cover of the new 10-inch record. The Eyes' titles "Baby Baby" and "Another Saturday Night" only appeared on a sampler in the Sixties.

At the end of 1964, they also accompanied Tony Sheridan at the Star-Club in Hamburg. Reduced to a trio, they traveled to England in 1965 under the new name Paddy, Klaus & Gibson. Knublauch says Voormann's age was changed to five years younger. “Even today one finds the wrong year of birth 1943 in biographies of Manfred Mann,” he says.

Brian Epstein became manager of the band. According to a report by the Bravo Magazine Epstein bought out the band for DM 56,000 from the previous management by Tony Stratton-Smith. But Epstein didn't help the band. "We got £50 a week from NEMS as a retainer whether we worked or not,” said Chambers. “And that's all we ever got because we never worked. It was a joke as far as the business was concerned."

They released three singles, but only in England: "I Wanna Know" / "I Tried" (Pye 7N 15906) was released in 1965 and "No Good Without You Baby" / "Rejected" (Pye 7N 17060) and "Teresa / Quick Before They Catch Us" (Pye 7N 17112) in 1966. Unfortunately, the records were not very successful and are now hard to find today. However, the song "Quick Before They Catch Us" became the theme music for a British television series and can be found today on the various Soundtrack samplers.

Paddy, Klaus and Gibson appeared in the show “Thank Your Lucky Stars” on British television. The band broke up after a tour with the Everly Brothers and Cilla Black in 1966 soon and the split was announced on June 13, 1966. Recent accounts have reported that Voormann was released on July 15, 1966 from the contract with Epstein, so that he could join Manfred Mann. Chambers went to join The Escorts and died in 2000.

Voormann played for a short time with the Hollies as a session musician. In the meantime, he designed the cover for the Beatles' "Revolver." He then got the offer from Manfred Mann to join his band as successor to Jack Bruce, who had left to join Cream with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker. In his biography, Voormann said that Paddy, Klaus & Gibson were probably the inspiration for Clapton to form a trio.

Voorman told Knublauch in an email that "The band (Paddy, Klaus & Gibson) was a good live band, but had no good songwriter. It lacked many things that you need to be a successful band. Only playing well is not enough!”

The EP produced by Dieter Hoffmann is a great memory of this episode from Klaus` life. It features these tracks: Side 1, “I Wanna Know,” “I Tried,” “”No Good Without You Baby.” Side 2: “Rejected,” “Quick Before They Catch Us,” “Teresa.” The disc is limited to 300 copies, is available in three colors and can be purchased for €27 ($30.76 USD) including shipping by emailing him.
Logged
Pages: 1 [2]
 

Page created in 0.688 seconds with 50 queries.