'I played with Beatles in Hamburg – they loved a drink and perfromed to gangsters'

The Luger pistol that Gene Vincent was pointing at Cliff Bennett was real, but the rockabilly legend’s eyes looked colder and meaner.

“I’d walked into the dressing room in Hamburg’s Star-Club and the first thing Gene said was ‘Who the **** are you?’,” Cliff, 85, recalls. “Then he whipped out his gun and asked if I’d been sleeping with his wife Margaret, although not so politely.

“It wasn’t exactly how I’d expected my idol to be.

“Luckily Peter Grant [Led Zeppelin’s future manager] disarmed him and told him to sit down; I was shaking.”

Be Bop A Lula star Vincent later pulled the same stunt on Jet Harris of The Shadows.

Sixties legends Cliff Bennett & The Rebel Rousers, fondly remembered for Top Ten hits Got To Get You Into My Life and One Way Love, performed regularly at the Star-Club where they shared bills with The Beatles. But Cliff says the famous German venue was more villainous than glamorous.

“It stayed open until 6am and was heaving at weekends. We did two one-hour sets at night, one for a young audience and the later one for an older audience who were all gangsters. They used to send up trays of drinks with requests. It was a scary place, just off the Reeperbahn” – Hamburg’s red-light area.

In his memoir, Cliff recalls seeing the waiters swindle customers. If anyone objected, co-owner Horst Fascher, an ex-boxer who had served time for manslaughter, would knock them out.

“You witnessed things like that nearly every night. It was very violent.”

In 1998, Bennett backed George Harrison and testified against Fascher in the High Court, to stop the sales of bootlegs of live Beatles shows recorded at the club.

“The Beatles were wild at the start,” says Cliff. “They were good kids but they liked to drink. I was impressed by them, especially when Paul McCartney told me they were writing their own songs and played I Saw Her Standing There. I got on well with Paul.”

Macca loved Cliff’s soulful voice and the band’s R&B prowess so much that he convinced Beatles manager Brian Epstein to manage them.

“I had respect for Epstein, he told it like it was. He took 25%, but for that he did everything,” says Cliff.

One night, Brian came into their dressing room in Essen, Germany, with Paul and John Lennon.

“He said, ‘The boys have written your next big record. It was Got To Get You Into My Life. John played it and Paul sang it. Even in its infancy, it sounded great. Paul said it was tailor made for our brass treatment.”

Epstein booked them into London’s Abbey Road studio to record it. “Paul lived nearby. He used to turn up to our recording sessions in pyjamas and a leather jacket and ended up producing it for us. It reached No 6 in August 1966.”

The Beatles’ version appeared on Revolver that same month. A little later, the Fab Four were recording Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

“We were all at Abbey Road and Paul invited me to come to hear Strawberry Fields Forever. The door opened and Brian Epstein walked in. Lennon who was sitting with Yoko Ono turned and said, ‘What the **** do you want? **** off!’

“I felt sorry for Brian. He said to Paul, ‘I’ll catch you later’ and left. It was so embarrassing. John could be a nasty piece of work if he wanted to be.”

Cliff got to meet his rock’n’roll heroes in Hamburg, including Jerry Lee Lewis, later a good friend. “The only one I never met was Elvis.”

Rock n roll legend Bo Diddley borrowed Cliff’s rhythm section one night and was so impressed by their prowess that he had the second set recorded so he could tell his own drummer and bassist “This is how you’re supposed to play!”

Clifford Bennett was born in Slough, Berkshire, on June 4, 1940, the third son of a steelworker father and a seamstress mother who were champion ballroom dancers. He grew up in Iver Heath, Bucks, before the family relocated to Shepherds Bush, west London.

Cliff, whose first musical influence was Lonnie Donegan, formed the Acme Skiffle Band at 16. His father suggested they get a residency at his local pub and within three weeks the place was packed. As rock’n’roll overtook skiffle, they became the Rebel Rousers taking the name from Duane Eddy’s 1958 hit Rebel-’Rouser.

By1961, they’d wowed eccentric producer Joe Meek who co-wrote their first single, You Got What I Like, with Cliff, leading to an appearance on TV’s Juke Box Jury. Several Ready Steady Go bookings followed.

Starting out as rockers, the band branched into R&B and soul adding a brass section and covering James Brown numbers.

“One particular fan called Reg would always help us with our gear when we played the Harrow Weald Social Club,” Cliff recalls. “Sid Phillips, our tenor sax player, nicknamed him the Milky Bar Kid because of his glasses. He also told him, ‘Drop this and I’ll drop you’.”

Cliff’s next band, prog rockers Toe Fat opened for Eric Clapton and Elton John at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre in 1970. “Afterwards Elton asked me, ‘Do you remember the Milky Bar Kid? That was me!”

Other fans included Deep Purple star Ian Gillan who spent decades trying to replicate Cliff’s tone in his vocals. In the foreword to new book, Cliff Bennett & The Rebel Rousers, The Who’s Pete Townshend recalls, “They were hugely respected, immensely tight and super cool – nobody could understand why they didn’t break bigger.”

It wasn’t for lack of effort; the band played constantly, one night Leeds, the next Cardiff, travelling in a six-seater Ford Galaxie Cliff had bought from Lonnie Donegan. They broke into the university circuit, then dominated by trad jazz bands.

At one stage the notorious Don Arden, ‘aka the Al Capone of Pop’, wanted to sign them but Peter Grant advised Cliff, “He’ll stiff you.” Peeved, Arden refused to let Cliff backstage when Jerry Lee Lewis played the Ricky Tick club in Windsor in 1964.

“When Jerry heard about it, he came out without a shirt on and said, ‘If Cliff don’t come in, I don’t go on’.” Arden relented.

The book details the Rebel Rousers’ many personnel changes. Over the years, their ranks included Chas & Dave’s Chas Hodges, Frank Allen (The Searchers), Nicky Hopkins (the Rolling Stones) and Roy Young (Bowie’s Low album).

In 1968, the group – jealous of Cliff’s many European TV appearances – left him to form the less successful Roy Young Band.

Bennett formed a new line-up and was performing four shows a week for BBC radio shows until they played the Beeb’s 1969 Eurovision reception at the Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington. “All of the ‘gods’ of the BBC were there, unfortunately they were sitting right under a speaker. First Sir Huw Wheldon and then Sir Hugh Fraser asked us to turn down the volume.”

But Cliff’s stand-in trumpet player told Fraser forcibly where to go. “That was the end of my BBC career,” he says. “They sent a memo banning us and we disbanded. I thought ‘That’s it, I’ll have to get a proper job. I’d served an apprenticeship at a foundry and hated every minute of it…”

Instead, he joined Toe Fat, half of whom later formed Uriah Heep. Broken by management chicanery, Cliff released a solo album and then joined blues rockers Shanghai. Finally quitting the music business circa 1980, he formed a shipping company with his son-in-law.

Guitarist Mark Lundquist persuaded him to reform the Rebel Rousers in 1988. They played their farewell show at the Beck Theatre, Hayes, in 2022.

“I got fed up with the travelling, that’s why I stopped,” Cliff recalls. He and Ann, his wife since 1961, now live in Somerset “away from the hustle and bustle” enjoying the company of their nine grandchildren.

Mark persuaded him to write his book – “I did the basics, then [writer] Gemma Barnes cleaned it up”.

He has no regrets. “I’ve worked with really nice people,” he says. “I’ve met my idols and made good friendships. I’ve had my time.”

*Cliff Bennett & The Rebel Rousers – Pioneers of the British Music Industry is available from Amazon.