Brian Griffiths reveals what it's like to rock out with the Beatles

Post-war Germany had a passionate fan base for American-style rock 'n' roll, but a shortage of musicians.

That's why English bands, including the Beatles, made their livings and developed their sounds playing for audiences in Germany in the late '50s and early '60s.

Calgary guitar teacher Brian Griffiths was part of that scene.

He played guitar in a band called The Big Three, which performed on the same bill as the Beatles in Hamburg and Liverpool.

The band also shared a manager and sometimes a drummer with the Beatles. Griffiths knew the Beatles personally and even taught guitar licks to John Lennon.

Now the story of those years will be told in an upcoming documentary film about The Big Three. It's called Some Other Guys, and Griffiths is planning an August trip to Europe to do interviews for the film.

Griffiths spoke to the Calgary Eyeopener's David Gray Tuesday about what it was like.

• Click the audio button above to hear the full interview and a song by The Big Three.

In the late 1950s, Griffiths was in a band called Derry and the Seniors. At the time, he thought they had more going for them as a band than the Beatles did.

"We had a black singer and a saxophone player, so we had the credentials to be a real American rock-and-roll band," he said. "Whereas the Beatles just had two guitars, bass and a drummer who never turned up."

Bad boy reputation

The Beatles later followed Griffiths's band The Big Three to the Hamburg clubs, arriving just two weeks after Griffiths and his bandmates started performing there.

Griffiths said his band was friends with the Beatles, partying together and exchanging guitar licks.

Reflecting on the runaway success of the Beatles, Griffiths now thinks their signature sound was born from musical necessity.

"A lot of the stuff they were doing was Chuck Berry, Little Richard, but without the saxophone or the piano," he said.

"So they developed this really good guitar sound, you could tell it was the Beatles. Not so much in Hamburg, but round about '61 they developed a certain sound, and it was just guitars."

In those days, The Big Three had at least an equal shot at popular success as the Fab Four, Griffiths says, but they argued over whether to compromise their sound to become more popular, as their then-manager urged them to do.

They also got into fights sometimes, and their bad boy reputation followed them.

"We were with [Beatles manager] Brian Epstein. It was the Beatles, it was Gerry and the Pacemakers and it was us. But [Epstein] couldn't control us. We couldn't control ourselves."