Astrid Kirchherr

I was always introduced as the Beatles photographer and I gave it up in the end. I was so unsure of myself. Am I good or am I just the Beatles photographer? People were not interested in what I did before. I could not stand it any more.

And I was very, very much influenced by the films of Jean Cocteau and by Sartre and everything that came out of France because it was closer than America or England.

You couldn't buy any English authors or anything that came from America, like jeans. It was impossible. So we had to do our own clothes if we had weird ideas like wearing long scarves like the French people did. You had to knit them yourself.

Well, the first time I met The Beatles was through my former boyfriend, Klaus Voormann, who saw them one night when he was wandering around Hamburg and then he heard this beautiful sound of rock 'n' roll music.

Well when you're young, you're just in love and every day is so new and so fresh and so beautiful. You just don't think of the future.

All my friends in art school used to run around with this sort of what you call Beatles haircut. And my boyfriend then, Klaus Voormann, had this hairstyle, and Stuart liked it very, very much. He was the first one who really got the nerve to get the Brylcreem out of his hair and asking me to cut his hair for him.

The most important thing I gave the Beatles was my friendship. They trusted me: there was no fear in being photographed.