Stu Sutcliffe Biography

Stu Sutcliffe - Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe (June 23, 1940 – April 10, 1962) was a painter, and the original bassist of The Beatles for eighteen months (January 1960 - June 1961). Sutcliffe earned praise for his paintings, which mostly explored a style related to Abstract Expressionism. Sutcliffe is one of the group of people sometimes referred to as "the fifth Beatle".
Stu Sutcliffe and John Lennon are credited with coming up with the name for the Beatles, as they both liked Buddy Holly's band, the Crickets. Sutcliffe played with the Beatles in Hamburg, where he met photographer Astrid Kirchherr, to whom he was later engaged. He enrolled in the Hamburg College of Art after leaving The Beatles, and studied under future pop artist Eduardo Paolozzi.
Sutcliffe suffered from debilitating headaches while he was studying in Hamburg, and although tests were carried out by German doctors, no reason could be found for his worsening condition. He died of a brain hemorrhage on the way to the hospital on April 10, 1962, with Kirchherr sitting alongside him in the ambulance.

Stu Sutcliffe - In His Own Words

There are very interviews with Stu Sutcliffe so I found this interview with Bill Harry the Editor of Mersey Beat Magazine talking about Stu:

Q: One of the more repeated legends about the Beatles is that Stu Sutcliffe wasn't really a musician, couldn't play bass at all, and he just joined a band as a way of enhancing his image. Is this an accurate portrayal of him?

This is one of those stories that get exaggerated over the years, ending in people who never knew him disparaging his musical ability without ever knowing or hearing him. I heard Stuart, right at the beginning when we booked John's group for our college dances (they hadn't settled on a name yet). I went into the room back of the stage and he showed me his new guitar. He handed it to me and I tried playing it, and then noticed that the skin was coming off the edge of my bleeding fingers. I was unaware of the use of a plectrum at the time!

As I've mentioned before, Allan Williams always comes out with the story that Stuart Sutcliffe played with his back to Larry Parnes at the Wyvern Club audition because he couldn't play the bass, and that Parnes said that he would take the group as Billy Fury's backing group if they got rid of Stuart. This story first appeared in Williams' book 'The Man Who Gave The Beatles Away.'

In regard to the Wyvern audition, Williams' allegation is untrue. Parnes himself was to say that he had no problem with Stuart that his objection was to drummer Tommy Moore, who turned up late for the audition, was dressed differently from the other members and was a lot older than them.
When we used to book the group for the art college dances, there seemed no problem with Stuart's performance! In fact, I never heard any criticism of Stuart as a musician until the publication of Williams' book.

Pauline Sutcliffe, Stuart's younger sister, told me that Stuart had had piano lessons, along with the rest of the family, and his father had brought him an acoustic guitar from Spain as a present some years before.Stuart, who had always been interested in music and art, was a big Presley fan. When he obtained his bass guitar on hire purchase from Frank Hessy's (he never bought it with the money he received from selling a painting at the John Moores' exhibition, as legend has it) he began to practice to Elvis records on his tiny record player and had David May, a fellow art student who was in a local group the Silhouettes, teach him how to play the Eddie Cochran number 'C'mon Everybody.' May also began to coach him on further numbers.

Pauline said that from letters she received and what people told her, Stuart was a popular performer in Hamburg, and a highlight of the Beatles' act was Stuart's solo on 'Love Me Tender.' He left the Beatles for reasons other than his musical ability, but still hungered for the stage and actually joined a German rock group, the Bats, for a few weeks to fill in for their absent bassist, shortly before his death.

She also told me that he was a better musician than history remembers him, commenting, "I don't think he was as outstandingly bad as he's been described, because none of them were excellent, were they, until they went to Hamburg and started to play." She added, "George was better, Paul was better, but nothing like the musicians they became. I mean, they were just more competent, but according to Stuart's letters, and conversations with him, he thought himself good enough to do session work after he left them and, I've got the letters, he was asked to be in other groups."

I Talked to Rick Hardy (aka Richards), who was a member of the first British rock band to appear in Hamburg, the Jets. The Beatles performed on some sessions with the Jets on their first trip and when I told him what Allan had written in his book, he said, "What's the matter with this guy? Stu never turned his back on stage. I remember him as he played 'Matchbox', appearing a lonely figure on stage, dressed like James Dean. He certainly played to the audience and he certainly played bass. If you have someone who can't play the instrument properly, you have no bass sound. There were two rhythm guitarists with the Beatles and if one of them couldn't play, you wouldn't have noticed it - but it's different with a bass guitar.

"I was there and I can say quite definitely, Stuart never did a show in which he wasn't facing the audience." When the group was playing in Liverpool and Hamburg, there seemed to be no complaints about Stuart's ability in the group.

Howie Casey, leader of the first Liverpool band to play in Hamburg, Derry & the Seniors, was topping the bill at the Kaiserkeller while the Beatles were playing at the Indra. Promoter Bruno Koschmider decided to have another band during the interval at the Kaiserkeller rather than a jukebox, so he split up the Beatles and the Seniors and another outfit was formed with Casey on sax, Stan Foster on piano, Stuart on bass and a German modern jazz drummer. If Stu couldn't play, Casey certainly wouldn't have tolerated him in this outfit.

Next we come to Klaus Voormann, who was to become a famous bass guitarist appearing with numerous bands over the years and making several records backing each of the solo Beatles.

Klaus said, "He (Stu) was a really good bass player, a very basic bass player, completely different. So basic that you could say he was, at the time, my favorite bass player, but primitive. But of all the people or groups, and when we saw groups later, he was my favorite bass player." It was Stuart who first began to show Klaus the basics of playing bass guitar.

What happens when a seed is planted in a book like Williams' is that the story grows, and in all subsequent books, mainly by people who never knew him or witnessed his performances, the same story that he couldn't play the bass and performed with his back to the audience is trotted out.
Repeat a story enough times and even some people involved begin to believe it. The mud sticks.

Even Paul McCartney, many years later, was to say, "The problem with Stu was that he couldn't play bass guitar. We had to turn him away in photographs because he'd be doing F-sharp and we'd be holding G."
Initially, all the local musicians were self-taught and in various stages of ability. Paul himself made a hash of it at the New Clubmoor Hall on 18 October 1959, when he attempted to play lead guitar. He played an abominable version of 'Guitar Boogie' and ended his one and only stint at playing lead.

Yet George Harrison would seem to have a different point of view regarding Stu's ability. When the group returned to Liverpool following their Hamburg debut, Stuart stayed behind and they recruited Chas. Newby to appear on three gigs with them. Then, until Stuart returned, Paul took over on bass.

George had refused to become the group's bass guitarist and wrote to Stuart in Hamburg, "Come home sooner, as if we get a new bass player for the time being, it will be crumby as he will have to learn everything. It's no good with Paul playing bass, we'd decided, that is if he had some kind of bass and amp to play on!"

If Stuart was such a hopeless player as many people who never knew him or saw him maintain, why would George be so anxious to have him back in the group?"

It's interesting to note Paul's comments about Stuart literally decades after his death. Yet, if we ignore hindsight and go back to what Paul felt at the time. He had a completely different opinion. In a 1964 interview in Beat Instrumental, in which he was discussing guitars, Paul commented, "I believe that playing an ordinary guitar first and then transferring to bass has made me a better bass player because it loosened up my fingers. NOT that I'm suggesting that EVERY bass player should learn on ordinary guitar. Stuart Sutcliffe certainly didn't, and he was a great bass man."

It's not unusual for someone to report on their experiences or opinions and then years later, perhaps through hindsight, a faulty memory or by being influenced by what they have read, to come out with something that completely contradicts their previous statements.

Other Members of The Beatles include:

• John Lennon
• Paul McCartney
• George Harrison
• Ringo Starr
• Stu Sutcliffe
• Pete Best