In total, inside just fourteen weeks, they’d rocked Hamburg for about 415 hours—like 276 ninety-minute shows or 830 half-hours—and every night tried not to repeat themselves. No one stopped to realize it, and there was no way of knowing anyway, but the Beatles had to be the most experienced rock group in the world, not just Liverpool. And Hamburg didn’t only multiply their repertoire, it toughened their voices, seasoned their characters, enriched their personalities and strengthened their stamina. Four months earlier they would have struggled to play more than a couple of hours, now it was a
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