Bill Harry.....straight shooter????

Here is one of the items i tried to send the other day. It's a piece I wrote about the Jets, the first British band to go to Hamburg. I'd been in touch with Ricky Richards over the years and he promised to give me lots of photos, contracts and details of their appearance at the Kaiserkeller, and stories of him going ten pin bowling with Stuart etc. Unfortunately, he got run over and killed by a car two yeas ago before he could send me the items. The other day I got a phone call that Iain Hines was in prison. He's the brother of Jamie Hines, who used to be in 'Doctor Who'. I do have a series of articles he wrote for a girlie magazine in the Seventies about his adventures in Hamburg with the Beatles. Fascinating stuff!

THE JETS:  The first British rock band to perform in Hamburg. Some of the members were present in the 2 1s coffee bar in London when Bruno Koschmider arrived looking for bands for the Kaiserkeller. Pianist Iain Hines said he had a group and used the name the Jets, which he had also called his previous bands. Initially, it took a few days to put the band together because they had difficulty finding a drummer. However Iain failed to show up at Liverpool Street Station when the group departed on 4 June 1960. They tried hard to find a lead guitarist, with musicians such as Keith Charles and Joe Moretti turning them down. Finally, after a meeting at Chas. McDevitt�s Freight Train cafe they decided to ask Tony Sheridan. The Jets began rehearsing on the boat over to the Continent. They comprised Tony Sheridan on lead guitar and vocals, Pete Wharton on bass guitar, Colin Milander (real name Colin Crawley) on vocals and rhythm guitar, Rick Richards (also known as Rick Hardy) on vocals and rhythm guitar and Del Ward on piano and vocals.
      They hadn�t managed to find a drummer to join them. They arrived at the Kaiserkeller at 2 am on 5 June and found the club had a Trixon drum kit. The various members tried to play on it and it was decided that Del Ward, who�d hardly touched a set of drums before, should become their drummer. Their playing times at the club were 5 hours from Monday to Friday and seven hours on Saturday and Sunday.
     After they�d played at the Kaiserkeller for a few weeks, Hines turned up wanting to be included in the line-up. Koschmider said he was quite happy with the band as it was, and if Iain wanted to join them, he wasn�t prepared to pay them any more money. The members wouldn�t agree to Iain joining them as it would have resulted in them taking a 17½% cut in their pay, so Iain then went back to London.
     They signed a new contract with the Kaiserkeller on 30 June, but were then approached by Peter Eckhorn who offered them five marks extra a night to play at his Bavarian bar in the Reeperbahn. There must have been some pressure applied to Koschmider because he agreed to free them from their contract.
     They played their final date at the Kaiserkeller on Wednesday 6 July and opened at the new club on Saturday 9 July.
     As the club, which was in a building formerly called Der Hippodrom, had no proper name, they suggested it be called the Top Ten Club, after a venue they�d played in Berwick Street, London.
     They initially played one hour, followed by a half-hour break and in the evenings they played from 7pm to 3am. Business had boomed to such an extent that Eckhorn decided to present non-stop music.
     During their season there, the Beatles occasionally joined them on stage for a jam and were due to take over the residency at the club when the Jets season came to an end.
     One night, when the Beatles played on stage at the Top Ten with Sheridan, Colin and Iain got up on stage with them and the set included a 70-minute version of Ray Charles� What�d I Say?
     Horst Fascher had been appointed manager of the Top Ten and on 6 August Richards joined Fascher on a trip to London to find new musicians. The idea was to form two bands for the Top Ten. Iain Hines was recruited, along with Chas Beaumont, former lead guitarist with the Worried Men.
     It was planned that Sheridan would lead a trio, with himself backed by Pete Wharton on bass and Ingo Jones on drums. Jones was a former member of German band Fats and his Cats. The second band would comprise Richard, Hines, Beaumont and Del Ward. Unfortunately, on the journey back the car crashed on the autobhan and Richards was hospitalised. In the meantime, Jones had been sacked and replaced by a black G.I., Tony Kavanagh. Colin Milander had fallen in love with a girl called Antje and decided to leave the group and take a job with a road construction company in Hamburg.
     Despite the long-term contract they�d signed, Eckhorn told the Jets in October that he wanted new bands and got rid of them, replacing them with Gerry & the Pacemakers. Wharton, Kavanagh, Beaumont and Richards began playing in the Bambina Bar in the Hamburg suburb of Pferdemarkt, while Sheridan began playing in a club in the Grosse Freiheit, two floors above the Kaiserkeller, called Studio X. On the ground floor over the Kaiserkeller was the well known dance hall where Ivy Benson�s all girl band were in residence.
     Colin left the brewery, returned to England with Iain and joined the Echoes, backing various artists including Gene Vincent, Dickie Pride, Vince Eager and Ricky Valance. Later, Iain was to return to Hamburg and become booking manager at the Top Ten. Richards began a new career in cabaret in Germany before returning to Britain. Ward joined an Indonesian cabaret group and Wharton returned to England to run the family business.