In Hamburg we got very good as a band because we had to play eight hours a night and we started building a big repertoire of some of our own songs, but mainly we did all the old rock songs. In fact, we did everything. We used to play "Moon Glow" and lots of other old song, whatever we could come up with in order to try not to repeat too many. Of course, we had our favorites, which we'd play a couple of times in the night in the main sets when most of the crowd were there. But w got very tight as a band. And it was the period in England when it was all "matching ties and handkerchiefs" and doing [really safe] routines like The Shadows, and we weren't there for that. So we just kept playing the rock - and - roll thing and the stuff from records we used to get from Brian Epstein's shop before we met him.

We used to do lunchtime dates. So we'd get up and go down to the Cavern and play from probably about 12 noon to about 2:00 p.m. It was very casual, you know. We'd have our tea and sandwiches and cigarettes onstage,sing a couple of tures, and tell a few jokes. There was something that he [Brian Epstein] liked about all that, and he wanted to try and push us to bigger audiences.