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.
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’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.
PowerPop... An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture 