The BBC has announced a new drama series titled Hamburg Days, which will explore the early years of the Beatles in the German port city of Hamburg.
The six-part series covers the period between 1960 and 1962, when the band performed over 250 gigs near the notorious Reeperbahn district.
Scriptwriter Jamie Carragher revealed that the production will highlight the often overlooked role of Harold Adolphus Phillips, also known as Lord Woodbine.
Jorden Myrie will portray Phillips, who served as an early co-manager and musical mentor to the young group alongside Allan Williams.
“He’s represented as very much the friend and partner of Allan Williams,” Carragher said. “Woodbine was older than the Beatles, but also played music himself.
He knew about music.”
Phillips was a Trinidadian calypso musician who arrived in Britain in 1943 as a Royal Air Force flight engineer during the Second World War.
He later returned to the United Kingdom on the Empire Windrush and settled in Liverpool, where he managed the Jacaranda club.
“McCartney and Lennon respected him in a musical sense,” Carragher added.
“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.”
Academic Malik Al Nasir researched Phillips for the British Library, noting how the musician helped the band by teaching them chords.
“They used to come and offer to clean and collect glasses for Woodbine,” Al Nasir said of Lennon and McCartney.
“In return Woodbine would feed them and help them out by teaching them chords.”
Historical accounts suggest that Phillips drove the Beatles to Germany in a Volkswagen van, though his legacy was largely excluded from official histories after Brian Epstein took over management.
“I don’t even know if Woodbine even had a contract with the Beatles,” Al Nasir said.
“But he certainly picked them up when no one else cared; he took them to Hamburg, a place that nobody else really thought about.”
Phillips expressed his heartbreak in 2000 after seeing a Hamburg group photo used on stage from which 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.”
Phillips died in a house fire at the age of 72 in 2000, and his family recently unveiled a commemorative plaque outside the Jacaranda.
The upcoming BBC series is inspired by the memoirs of Klaus Voormann, who designed the cover for the 1966 album Revolver.
Concurrently, director Sam Mendes is preparing four separate Beatles feature films dedicated to each band member, scheduled for release in 2028.
