Stuart Sutcliffe – The Forgotten Artist

In May of 1960, Stuart Sutcliffe was a brilliant young artist with a bright career ahead of him when he sold one of his paintings and his friend John Lennon talked him into buying a bass. He didn’t know how to play bass but was taught by John, Paul, and George because like George said…it was better to have a bass player that couldn’t play than no bass player at all.

StuSutcliffe

Stuart Sutcliffe 1960

Stuart did learn to play bass and had a lot of stage time in Hamburg. He was never a great bass player but good enough to hold the position down. Stuart and John came up with the band name Beatles. Stuart wanted it to be Beatals but John stuck with Beatles. He quit art college to go on tour with The Silver Beatles to help back up a performer named Johnny Gentle in Scotland. After that they went to Hamburg and that changed their career. John also quit art college but he didn’t have the talent that Stuart did. 

After a year or so he wasn’t at the other Beatles level and Paul never let him forget it. Paul was jealous of Stuart because of him being so close to Lennon. George also was a little jealous but not like Paul. John was basically hero-worshiped by Paul and George. In Hamburg, Paul said something about his girlfriend Astrid and tiny Stuart tackled Paul while they were on stage…they rolled around a bit and then it was finally over. Paul still talks about how he feels bad for the way he treated him.

He probably would have never got to their level musically because although he was good friends with John… his heart was in art not music. He was with them from May 1960 to August of 1961. 

Many art experts say Stuart would have been a major artist had he lived… with or without the Beatle connection. He was indeed a sought-after artist when he quit the Beatles. He was the James Dean of the Beatles…He was the Artist…the Stylish one who attracted new friends in Germany that forever changed the Beatles. Some pictures of him make him look ahead of his time.

While playing in Hamburg Germany he met Astrid Kirchherr who would become the love of his life. Astrid would take some of the most famous early photographs of the Beatles.

astrid beatles.JPG

Astrid’s soon-to-be ex-boyfriend Klaus Voormann would befriend the Beatles and later designed the Revolver cover and play bass for John, George, and Ringo at different times in their career. Jürgen Vollmer, a photographer in the circle of Astrid’s friends would end up cutting John and Paul’s hair into the famous haircut …after Astrid had already cut Stuart’s hair in that fashion first. Stuart was of course laughed at by the rest until they got theirs cut. Pete Best refused and did his own thing. 

Stuart’s influence went beyond playing bass. Without Stuart, things may have turned out differently for The Beatles.

Stuart finally quit The Beatles to concentrate on art and to marry Astrid. He got a scholarship while living with Astrid in Germany, at the Hamburg College of Art in 1961. He produced a lot of paintings in the last year of his life. He started to lose weight, got terrible headaches, and had trouble walking. He kept going to college and kept painting in Astrid’s attic. They wanted to marry in May but on April 10, 1962, he had a ruptured aneurysm and passed away on the way to the hospital in Astrid’s arms.

If Stuart had lived he would have almost certainly stayed in the Beatles circle although not playing…he may have been remembered more as an artist than a one-time bassist of the Beatles that happened to be an artist. 

For the Beatles part…he was a major influence in coming up with the name, helped bring on the haircuts, and gave them a more sophisticated style other than leather jackets and boots. 

John Lennon would remember his friend in his song “In My Life.”

George Harrison: “He wasn’t really a very good musician. In fact, he wasn’t a musician at all until we talked him into buying a bass, we taught him to play 12-bars, like ‘Thirty Days’ by Chuck Berry. That was the first thing he ever learnt. He picked up a few things and he practiced a bit until he could get through a couple of other tunes as well. It was a bit ropey, but it didn’t matter at that time because he looked so cool. We never had many gigs in Liverpool before we went to Hamburg, anyway.”
John Lennon: “I looked up to Stu. I depended on him to tell me the truth, Stu would tell me if something was good and I’d believe him. We were awful to him sometimes. I used to explain afterwards that we didn’t dislike him, really.”

More about Stuart and his Art…thank you for reading this. 

http://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/8556/a-five-point-guide-to-the-art-and-style-of-stuart-sutcliffe

astrid stu.png

stu1.jpg

stu 2.jpg

Stu 3.jpg

Unknown's avatar

Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

38 thoughts on “Stuart Sutcliffe – The Forgotten Artist”

    1. Yes he was really significant…not as much on the music but everything else…but he did help them get to Hamburg because they needed a bass player….but the name and the look stemmed from him and his new art friends he made in Hamburg.
      Didn’t he look ahead of his time in that top picture?

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. very true! If I hadn’t known, I’d say…hmm … one of the Psychedelic Furs circa 1984? Stuart from Big Country? Not an early-’60s Beatle. I’ve heard of Astrid too, she was important to them in those early days but I had forgotten what she did.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Yea she took all of those pictures plus was with them after they got famous a little…when she liked Stu…they met all of her friends and all of the image happened.

        Liked by 1 person

  4. Good to learn more about Stu, about all I knew before was his name and his connection to The Fab 4. That John trusted him and honored him in that song tells me a lot about who he was as a person. The art is interesting and really like that last one. Have saved the YT to watch later.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  6. Yeah, this is probably where they first started to innovate, with a push from the arty Astrid and Stuart.
    Off on a curve ball here- but would John have gone to an art show by some weird Japanese artist without Stuart’s influence?
    And… discuss.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    1. You know…probably not. I’ve never thought about that but it’s true. Stuart is the one that got him into a variety of art. They were close…they wrote like 20 page letters to each other when he lived in Hamburg.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. This is one of the reasons I enjoy WP. My mind goes off to places other than the comfort of our own thoughts. Had I not read this post the thought never would have occurred to me.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Yes I never thought of it but I would almost bet that it is true.
        WP sure makes the world a smaller place. If you would have told me of a contraption 40 years ago that could do this…I would have laughed.

        Liked by 1 person

    1. He was so important to John…and to the Beatles future…if not for him…things would not have been the same.
      They sure didn’t treat him well but being that age…it happens.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  10. I thought about the film “Backbeat” when I read the headline, too. I enjoyed that film. There was a Dick Clark production called “Birth of the Beatles” that was pretty cheesy. There’s a line where Astrid says, “Stuart’s dead” and then some dramatic orchestra music kicks in. Terrible. Stuart, Astrid, and Klaus definitely had their influence on the Fab Four.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Oh yes…I watched Birth of the Beatles when it came out…I remember a Hamburg scene full of 70s haircuts in the year 1961….there is one thing I liked about that movie…the band “Rain” did the soundtrack…they did a good job. Their Please Mr. Postman is really good…ok sorry I went way off topic.
      But yea….I have that movie…the guys that played them werent’ bad…it was the script that was really bad.
      Stephen MacKenna played Lennon…he was alright.

      Like

      Reply

      2. At the time in 1979 I was 12…and you are not as old as me but you know back then there was nothing about the Beatles out there…not much so anything beat nothing.
        Then The Compleat Beatles came out and I must have watched that 10 times….the thing that pissed me off about that is…when they started a song…such as Hey Jude…Paul goes “Hey Ju…” and George Martin starts talking over him.
        But it was great…now we have a huge library of clips…then we didn’t.

        Liked by 1 person

    1. He probably would have…maybe more than one.
      After looking at that picture near the top…it looked like it came out of the 80s not the 61. Without him things about them could have been different.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  14. I didn’t know a whole lot about Stuart Sutcliffe, so the BBC documentary was quite interesting to watch. It was a terrible shame and huge loss that he died so young, and even more terrible if it there was any truth to the story that it might at least partly been due to John Lennon having kicked him in the head.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Yea…the reason I don’t think it’s so is because Pete Best, who has NO alliance with the Beatles said he was there and that Stu was already down and John broke a finger trying to get him out. That is the only reason I dont’ think John did it.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  15. Pingback: Tony Sheridan and The Beat Brothers – My Bonnie – PowerPop… An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture
  16. Pingback: In Loving Memory: 34 Remarkable Individuals We Lost on April 10 Throughout History - Back in Time Today

Leave a comment