Miscellaneous questions about Paul McCartney | Page 24 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Oh, yes, @Sea Belt, if you haven't read much about the time from the MACH SCHAU command until Brian got them into suits, you really need to. The way they acted on stage was different than the groups of that time - it made them stand out! Here's what it says in the new John & Paul book:

After Willi Limpensel yelled at them to MACH SCHAU...

     We can regard what happened next as the true birth of the Beatles. John Lennon was first to respond to the absurdity of the situation. Taking Limpensel's instruction as a goad, he started diving around the stage as they played, lurching toward the mic, duck-walking like Chuck Berry. He sang lying on the floor, and pretended he had 'a bad leg like Gene Vincent (or Bruno Koschmider). Paul picked up John's wild spirit, raising the neck of his left-handed guitar to engage in a fencing match. George stamped his feet. A Rubicon had been crossed. The Beatles had answered the German's demand in their own way rather than by attempting to emulate the bland professionalism of acts like Derry and the Seniors. They were doing stagecraft, and doing it wrong. "We did 'mach schauing' all the time from then on," said John. p. 40
     They worked hard at it. In Liverpool, the teenagers could be rowdy, but they were at least there to see a band. In Hamburg the Beatles faced customers who weren't sure if they wanted to be there and had no reason to pay attention. The group learned what kind of noise made people stay and buy beer, how to get applause, what made people dance, how to detect boredom, what to do when people are too tired or too drunk to pay attention. Once customers were inside, the Beatles conscripted them. Breaking the fourth wall became a defining characteristic of their act. They asked for request, bantered with some regulars and genially insulted others, and kept up running jokes...After a few weeks, the Indra Club was regularly jammed with smoking, dancing, beer-drinking customers. p. 41

     Lennon was the wildest. He performed his tasteless "cripple" impression....If he felt that a crowd was unresponsive to the group he might shout, "Go on, you f*****g Krauts, you f*****g ignorant German b******s." This was partly to get a reaction from the audience but also to amuse and scare his bandmates, who were, after all, almost the only people in the room capable of understanding him. p. 42

     So it was that on November 9, 1961, Brian Epstein...walked down the steps into the Cavern....And there on stage a group of skinny young men giving a show that was the opposite of show business. "I had never seen anything like the Beatles on any stage,"..."They smoked as they played and they ate and talked and pretended to hit each other. They turned their backs on the audience and shouted at them and laughed at private jokes." To Brian, a connoisseur of stagecraft, the Beatles did everything wrong. They were undisciplined, unprofessional, and seemed to be entertaining themselves as much as the audience. p. 63

They drank lots of beer and took lots of Prellies during their sets. 

Lennon would "dance around like a gorilla, and we'd all knock our heads together."

Lennon came on stage in just his underpants with a toilet seat around his neck.

Yes, very much. From Joe's page on Brian: "Despite his lack of experience, Epstein became their manager in January 1962, and quickly asserted his influence over their dress and onstage performance."

From John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs: p. 66

[Epstein] got them to stop eating, smoking, and swearing onstage...He encouraged them to swap their leathers for suits. Lennon later described this as "selling out" ... the suits that Brian helped them choose were nothing like the pink or silver lamé follies sported by the Shadows and the Hurricanes. They were tailor-made, in dark blue mohair; single-breasted, narrow-legged, sharply cut; cool.

https://www.the-paulmccartney-project.com/1962/01/the-beatles-sign-a-management-contract-with-brian-epstein/ 

[Epstein] encouraged them to take a more professional attitude to their work. He emphasised that if they wanted promoters to rebook them, they had to be punctual; he stopped them from eating and drinking on stage; he encouraged them to bow to the audience. The distinctive early Beatles haircut pre-dated Epstein, but he got them regular appointments with his hairdresser to ensure their mops were properly styled. He also got them out of leathers and into sharp, Italian-style tailored suits. John in particular would later complain that the suits were a sell-out, but they simply weren’t going to get bigger bookings unless they smartened up. Anyway, as John himself admitted: “Everybody wanted a good suit – a nice, sharp, black suit … We allowed Epstein to package us, it wasn’t the other way around” (Lewisohn, p.1082).