The Beatles' early mentor Lord Woodbine, a Trinidadian calypso musician who co-managed the band during their formative Hamburg years, will be a central figure in a new six-part BBC drama, Hamburg Days. The series, written by Jamie Carragher, focuses on the band's two-year stint in the German port city from 1960 to 1962, where they played over 250 gigs near the notorious Reeperbahn.
Lord Woodbine's overlooked role
Woodbine, whose real name was Harold Adolphus Phillips, was a friend and partner of the Beatles' first manager, Allan Williams. He was older than the band members and a musician himself, knowledgeable about music. Carragher told the Guardian: 'He's represented as very much the friend and partner of Allan Williams. Woodbine was older than the Beatles, but also played music himself. He knew about music.'
Phillips came to Britain in 1943 during World War II, serving as a Royal Air Force flight engineer. After the war, he returned to the Caribbean before coming back to the UK on the Empire Windrush. He stood beside Lord Kitchener in the famous footage of the calypsonian singing 'London Is The Place For Me' at Tilbury Dock. Phillips managed the Jacaranda club in Liverpool and, along with Williams, became co-manager of the Beatles early in their career.
Influence on Lennon and McCartney
According to Carragher, 'McCartney and Lennon respected him in a musical sense. There weren't many people in their lives at this point who wrote their own songs, and Lord Woodbine did that via the calypso tradition.' One of the first songs John Lennon wrote was called 'Calypso Rock.'
Academic and author Malik Al Nasir researched Phillips for the British Library's Beyond the Bassline exhibition, highlighting how he had been 'airbrushed' out of history. Al Nasir said of Lennon and McCartney: 'They used to come and offer to clean and collect glasses for Woodbine. In return Woodbine would feed them and help them out by teaching them chords.'
Hamburg move and later life
Some histories claim that Phillips initiated the move to Hamburg, driving the Beatles to Germany in a beaten-up Volkswagen. Al Nasir noted: 'I don't even know if Woodbine even had a contract with the Beatles. But he certainly picked them up when no one else cared; he took them to Hamburg, a place that nobody else really thought about.'
After the group began being managed by Brian Epstein, Phillips' influence and legacy were mostly left out of the official Beatles story. He briefly appeared in the 1994 Channel 4-funded film Backbeat, played by Charlie Caine. In 1992, while attending a Beatles-themed play in Liverpool, Phillips saw a group photo used on stage from a Hamburg trip but he had been removed. 'When I saw that it hurt me,' he said in 2000. 'That was the end of the Beatles memory and me.'
Death and recognition
Phillips died in a house fire, aged 72, in 2000. Last summer, his family unveiled a plaque from the Windrush Foundation dedicated to him outside the Jacaranda in Liverpool, recognising his cultural impact. The BBC drama, shot in Liverpool and Germany, is inspired by the memoirs of Klaus Voormann, who met the band in Hamburg as a young artist and designed the cover of their 1966 album Revolver. Sam Mendes's four Beatles biopics are also due in 2028, with each film dedicated to a different member.
