Hamburg Blues

[selenak]

Title: Hamburg Blues

Author: Selena

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: Everything's fictionalized, nothing is real.

Timeline: Early Hamburg days, 1960.

Summary: Asking questions, getting answers and starting to figure things about about yourself: shortly after the Beatles arrived in Hamburg, they learn more about club bouncer Horst Fascher.

Comments

[dashall]

great, as usual. this one doesn't have the creativity and power as some of the other ones I've read by you, but it's still strong. At the start, I was a bit confused as to whose perspective you were in. I liked the description of Horst's English being a mixture of American pop songs and British sailor speak. I didn't quite agree with the characterization of John being openly soft. George was characterized great, as was Paul, of course. You included small aspects of Paul's character that really nailed him: his beloved 30s songs, his ability to preempt John, his fear of messing up his future

[selenak]

Just discovered to my horror I hadn't replied to your kind feedback yet. I'm sorry! Life has been terribly busy. So: thanks, as ever, for the thorough comment! I'm glad you're still reading. This was something I wrote between some larger things in other fandoms, but the idea wouldn't let me go and I ultimately just went for it.

re: John being openly soft. Well, for one thing, the impression I got from people's memoirs was that as biting, sarcastic and downright mean John could be when the mood took him, he could, indeed, be just as openly kind - "sweet" even, which is the expression memoirists as different from each other as Alistair Taylor and Geoff Emerick use. Derek Taylor's wife has a story about John being this way to her, too. This being said, I wouldn't translate that into John being new age-way gentle. What he does in my story is saying "Life can be pretty shitty sometimes" and putting his arm around a (tough and dangerous) man. This to me still fell within the macho code of mate-ness.