BBC Hamburg Days Drama Puts Lord Woodbine Center Stage
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- BBC is producing a six-part drama called "Hamburg Days" about the Beatles' 1960-1962 Hamburg period, during which they played more than 250 gigs near the Reeperbahn.
- Lord Woodbine (Harold Adolphus Phillips), a Trinidadian calypso musician who arrived in Britain on the Empire Windrush alongside Lord Kitchener, will be played by Jorden Myrie as the Beatles' early co-manager who taught Lennon and McCartney chords at Liverpool's Jacaranda club.
- Malik Al Nasir, who researched Phillips for the British Library's Beyond the Bassline exhibition, said Phillips and Black Liverpool's influence on the group had been "airbrushed" out of history.
- Phillips co-managed the Beatles with Allan Williams, and one of John Lennon's first songs — "Calypso Rock" — reflected his calypso influence; Phillips died in a house fire aged 72 in 2000.
- Phillips's family unveiled a Windrush Foundation plaque outside the Jacaranda in Liverpool last summer, recognizing his cultural impact on the band.
- The drama is being shot in Liverpool and Germany and is inspired by the memoirs of Klaus Voormann, the artist who met the Beatles in Hamburg and later designed their 1966 album cover for Revolver.
- Sam Mendes is also producing four separate Beatles biopics due in 2028, casting Paul Mescal, Harris Dickinson, Joseph Quinn, and Barry Keoghan as McCartney, Lennon, Harrison, and Starr, respectively.
Why it matters: The BBC's "Hamburg Days" will be the first major screen treatment to foreground Lord Woodbine's mentorship, correcting what academic Malik Al Nasir called the "airbrushing" of Black Liverpool's influence on the Beatles — a story that survived largely in oral history after Phillips died unheralded in a 2000 house fire and saw his image removed from a Hamburg-era group photo.
