After he got out of prison, Fascher started working in the district, mostly tending bar but also managing bands at a club called the Top Ten, where the Beatles had performed in 1960. But he had a fight with his boss and was fired. Soon thereafter, he persuaded a strip club owner to bankroll his idea for a new music club featuring British bands.
That was the fabled Star Club. Fascher immediately set off to Liverpool to lure the Beatles away from an earlier commitment they had made to play at the Top Ten.
"I knew if I could get the Beatles for opening night, I'd have no trouble selling out the club," he said. At first, the Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein, said no, a deal is a deal. But Fascher went out with the Beatles themselves and, apparently, they had a very good time, because the next day Fascher walked away with a contract for them to perform at the Star Club.
"I saw it as part of my assignment to provide the musicians with a good time," he said, stating a sort of general principle that he assiduously applied in Hamburg and that was one reason for his success.
The Beatles came to the Star Club a few times, providing Fascher with some of the stories he recounts in his book, like the time he caught John Lennon in the bathroom with a female fan.
Fascher ordered Lennon to go onstage right away, naked if necessary, and that's about what he did, causing an uproar when he appeared wearing only his briefs and a toilet seat around his neck.
Then came a series of misfortunes, beginning with a fight one night in which Fascher, still apparently bloody strong and quick, broke a customer's jaw. He served two years of a three-year sentence and when he got out, he was banned from the Star Club. It was then that Fascher, who clearly had a knack for meeting people who could help in hours of dire need, was hired by the USO to manage entertainment tours in Vietnam.
More recently came the worst imaginable tragedy. Fascher lost two of his three children -- one in an accident, another to a congenital heart defect -- an experience that threw him into a depression that lasted four years, and from which he has only recently emerged.
These days, he spends a good deal of time promoting his book, but he is more than just a man with a lot of memories of rock stars.
He is not only about to marry a woman he met a few years ago. He is also working with two Danish entrepreneurs who have a plan to reopen the Star Club as a music club, museum and retail store.
"At my age, to have the Star Club again in the place where it started -- that's a dream," Fascher said.
"It's a different time now and it takes more money" to attract the bigger acts, he said. "But I think some will come for fun, and some will come because that's where the Beatles played."
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