Reeperbahn must come as something of a shock to the naïve Beatles fan. There are no real monuments or museums, none, at least, that would justify the journey, and the few remaining venues associated with The Beatles are nestled among grim outlets of the sex trade. I'm told it's less sleazy now than it was, but it was plenty sleazy for me. On the day I visited, a fittingly foul Sunday, my only hope was that I was projecting enough of a 'Beatles fan' vibe to distinguish myself from the men who had come here to ejaculate against one-way mirrors.
My history with The Beatles extends back about as far as I can remember. The first music I purchased—my very first purchase, in fact—was a copy of Past Masters, volumes I and II, on double-cassette, which I found in an odds-and-sods shop near Melbourne Central. That is not to say I was precocious; it was simply that my taste in music, at that malleable age, was wholly a reflection of my parents' influence. There were many treasures to be found in their collection of LPs, but it was the Beatles records that my brother and I enjoyed the most—to the point where they began sounding like album-length extensions of 'Revolution No. 9'. We further repaid our parents' trust by cutting out all the cut-outs from an original mono pressing of Sgt. Pepper's.
In Primary School, when I was scarcely taller than the American basketball caps I wore, I would boast of my ability to name a hundred Beatles songs off the top of my head. I can't imagine this endeared me to anyone, but I remember an intrigued teacher stepping in once to correct me, gently, on one of the titles I had rattled off. He probably hadn't expected an argument.
"It's 'Buffalo Bill'!" I insisted, red and indignant; I was not backing down.
When my teenage years hit, I rejected the music of my childhood, as one does, and sought to define myself via more contemporary sounds. This meant that for a spell—and it must have been a spell—I subjected my poor ears to entire Offspring records, end-to-end. My brother and I even ceased our habitual borrowing of Help! on VHS. But as my taste matured, The Beatles returned. For all their grotesque ubiquity, I could not shake their achievement. The buggers were in my bones.
At the bar across from Kaiserkeller, the bar where The Beatles and their peers drank and where McCartney, in 1989, famously settled an outstanding bill, I climbed onto a stool and tried to drink away the taste of my lunch. The bartender, a descendant of the original owner, was enjoying a radio set firmly to '80s pop, the music of her youth. Out of the cycle, perfect and pure, came a call from my homeland: John Farnham's 'You're the Voice'. There was no use denying it.
I was glad I hadn't come to Hamburg solely for this—to say I had stood near the building where a Beatle had nailed a condom to the wall and set his room on fire. I had spent the previous day with a couple of old friends in Wedel, one of whom had finally cleared up the mystery of snooker for me. A horizontal hailstorm may have cost me my umbrella—a tragedy from which I am yet to fully recover—but the day had made the trip from Berlin worthwhile.
I sloped out of the bar and into the fading afternoon. Failed secret agents eyed me cautiously from their brothel-adjacent posts. Searching for change for my ticket back, I realised I was out of cash.
I'll say this about Reeperbahn: for all its seediness and substandard lunches, you certainly don't want for ATMs.