I don't know enough about art to know if Stuart Sutcliffe was an especially talented artist or not, but I do know that I like some of his paintings and collages.
Untitled, Hamburg Series
Hamburg Painting No. 2
Untitled (1961-62), exhibited at Victoria Gallery and Museum, University of Liverpool
Just as importantly to me I was always interested in this guy who was once a part of what was to become the most famous pop group in the world - that would be The Beatles - before they became famous.
Also I'm fascinated with 'pop culture personalities' who are not captured on moving images because in our day and age EVERYONE is on video and EVERYTHING is captured and uploaded to YouTube. But not Stuart Sutcliffe. No film footage exists of Stuart Sutcliffe that I'm aware of and that to me makes him even more special somehow.
By all reports he wasn't a very good musician and he was very aware of that, which was also one of the reasons why he left The Beatles. Another major reason for him leaving the band was meeting the love of his life, a German art student and photographer Astrid Kirchherr.
Stuart and girlfriend Astrid
They met in Hamburg when The Beatles were playing there in the early 60's. Kirchherr later became known for having taken some of the most iconic early pictures of The Beatles. Like this one:
Pete Best (the drummer in The Beatles until he was sacked and Ringo Starr joined), George Harrison, John lennon, Paul McCartney, Stuart Sutcliffe.
Stuart Sutcliffe was born in 1940 - same year as John Lennon - in Edinburgh but he grew up in Liverpool from 1943 onwards. He met Lennon as a teenager at art college, they became close friends and Lennon persuaded him to join his band when Sutcliffe won a cash award for a painting he'd done. John's band needed a bass player - and a bass - and figured Stuart's money would be well spent on a bass for their band. Thus Stuart joined though he couldn't play (kinda punk) and he was part of The Beatles when they were booked to play in Hamburg in 1960.
Stuart Sutcliffe and John Lennon on beach near Hamburg, early 1960's.
Stuart on the beach
Stuart and George Harrison on stage in Hamburg
The Beatles played on and off in Hamburg night clubs and strip bars (Indra, Kaiserkeller, Star Club, and the Top Ten) for the next couple of years but Stuart left the band in the summer of 1961 (a little more than a year before The Beates released their first single, Love Me Do in autumn 1962). Instead he stayed in Hamburg with Astrid when The Beatles returned to Liverpool and decided to pursue a career in art, like he'd always wanted. In Hamburg he studied under future pop artist Eduardo Paolozzi and he intended to stay to marry Astrid.
Unfortunately Sutcliffe began having violent headaches also resulting in temporary blindness. He went to the hospital in Hamburg as well as in Liverpool for tests but the doctors didn't find anything wrong. As The Beatles got more and more popular back home in Liverpool, Stuart got increasingly ill in Hamburg. On April 10, 1962, shortly before The Beatles were to return to Hamburg for yet another stint, Stuart collapsed and tragically died of an brain haemorrhage, aged 21.
Stuart Sutcliffe in his atelier, Hamburg, 1961 or 62.
Many years later there have been some speculation that Sutcliffe might have got his head injured in a fight with Lennon previously and that the injury led to his death a few years later.
It has also been speculated that Lennon and Sutcliffe had been lovers. In fact Sutcliffe's sister Pauline wrote a book where she states she thinks that Stuart may have been homosexual though a lot of people dispute that. One thing's for sure, according to the many letters Sutcliffe wrote home, he appears to have been very much in love with Astrid.
The Beatles remained friends with Astrid Kirchherr and two other German friends, Jurgen Vollmer and Klaus Voormann - in fact Voormann did the cover art for one of The Beatles later records Revolver and also played bass on some of John Lennon's solo records. The picture that is used on the cover of John Lennon's Rock 'n' Roll album from 1975 was an old picture taken by Vollmer in the Hamburg days.
Rock 'n' Roll, 1975. The 3 blurry people in the foreground are Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Stuart Sutcliffe.
Klaus Voormann, Astrid Kirchherr, Stuart Sutcliffe at party in Hamburg, early 1960's.
Stuart Sutcliffe was 'immortalised' when he became one of the many faces bracing the cover of The Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. In an homage to their old late friend they included him on the cover among some of the other people they had been inspired by over the years.
Stuart is on the far left, number three from the top (and three from the bottom)
A fitting tribute to an old friend who never became a star in his own right but then again he didn't need to. Despite becoming famous by association there was clearly more to Sutcliffe than his superstar mates. And the fact that he didn't become as famous as his friends and the fact that he died young, makes him less accessable and a little mysterious - and that, in many ways, makes him even more special.
See/read more:
The Lost Beatle - video (watch trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8CtVD1_D6Y)
Backbeat - film ft. Stephen Dorff as Stuart Sutcliffe (watch trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrLGwxh47pM)
5+6+7+8 of 8 - Beatles Anthology, Part 1:
Kirchherr interview:
Stuart Sutcliffe page:
http://www.stuartsutcliffeart.com/
Short video about exhibition of Sutcliffe's art:
http://lifeofthebeatles.blogspot.com/2009/05/beatle-people-stuart-sutcliffe.html
Article, John causes Stu's death?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/fifth-beatle-died-after-fight-with-lennon-sister-claims-586684.html
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p.s. Hey. This weekend, the mighty d.l. Dandysweets charismatically fills the arena portion of the blog with thoughts, details, and data of various sorts re: the artist and Beatle who might have been, Stuart Sutcliffe. It's a beauty, and, of course, I hope you'll lend it your attention and responses over the next couple of days. Thanks, everybody, and my super warmest thanks to you, Dandysweets! Also, my alert today targets those of you in the Los Angeles environs. To wit, the Little House on the Bowery and friends roadshow makes the final stop on its West Coast swing tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon, 4 pm, at Book Soup, 8818 W. Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood, with Lonely Christopher reading from 'The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse' and the extraordinary writer Joseph Mattson aka d.l. emptythesun reading from Matthew Stokoe's 'Cows'. I hereby declare it to be your perfect getaway from the loud noise that is the Super Bowl. More info here. Please be there if you can. Thanks! ** David Ehrenstein, Thanks, David. Yeah, it would seem like Christophe is making a getaway from the 'off the cuff', but this new film has been in the works for a long time, and 'Homme au Bain' was, like I said, a fluke, since it was originally supposed to be a twenty or so minute short film. Here's hoping his new film turns out great and does really well because, if so, he wants to use the clout to make a film based on one of my novels, and, of course, I kind of crave that possibility. ** Empty Frame, Hey. Yeah, the Dutch are kind of the gods of graphic design or rather of design of all different kinds. My TPR interview is face to face. I mean, the interviewer is being flown over here from the States to do it. Twice. And it'll be a several day long interview. Pretty intense. I think face to face is one TPR's requirements. Will Self, ahem, yes. ** Bernard Welt, Yeah, the Coupland mix-up is very weird. I'm sure I've said this on here before, but the really common mix-up is that people often think I'm the same Dennis Cooper who wrote the 'Miami Vice' and 'Chicago Hope' and other TV series. It's not all that unusual for an interviewer to start an interview by saying 'I know your television work, but I haven't read your novels, so most of my questions are going to be about your television scripts, if that's okay.' I don't know what was the precise appeal of the last 'FD' film to its cult following, and I don't know that I'll ever find out. ** Nick, Hey, Yeah, I would love it if you don't mind sending me some of the music when it get it recorded. If it's no big problem, that would be terrific and really kind of you, man! ** Pilgarlic, I saw the billboards for 'Spartacus' when I was in LA the last time. It did look ... unlike the Kubrick version, yes, ha ha. ** MANCY, Thanks a lot, man. Things good with you? ** Tomkendall, Hi, Tom! Why?, wow, I haven't listened to that in a long time. I think I'll have to listen to it again to know what I think of it. It's a fuzz. Cool about the reading, man. Yeah, if there's video evidence, please point the way. ** Esther Planas, Ah, welcome back, Esther! Thanks for the links. I'll go catch on your awesomeness when I get out of here today. Everyone, catch up the recent works, views, and more of living legend artist and d.l. Esther Planas by clicking this and/or this. Take care, Esther. ** Squeaky, Hey, D! So lovely to see you, of course, and I'm so pleased to hear you had fun at the shebang. I have to say I'm kind of irked that City Lights wasn't told that I wasn't going to be there since I gave the Akashic people very advance warning that I couldn't come precisely so they would do that. But, okay, whatever. Anyway, it sounds wonderful, and new friendships, awesome. I love it when the blog can help play cupid, platonically or otherwise. Yeah, Zwart was kind of a wizard, no? I even learned some writing tricks from studying and translating ideas from his work. Me too: I hope I can get to see you my next time out there, for sure. ** Math, Awesome about the reading and dinner. Super cool bunch of people, right? And I'll skip right over your Julian Cope lack of enlightenment, shall I? Kisses. ** Rigby, Hey, Rigster! Ah, you're a Zwart fan too, awesome! What are these record covers that you design and speak of? Oh, if you missed my mention the other day, 'I Apologize' might be performed at the ICA in London. We're working on it. I think you mentioned once a while back that you hoped to see it. Fingers crossed that you will. ** Allesfliesst, Can't you just say, 'And then there's 'Hamlet' obviously, that tired old thing'. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Thank you, sir. JY4ever! Photo set would be, mm, yes, nice. Could be a springboard for a JY Day some day. Yeah, I found out about Piet Zwart in my Amsterdam phase. If you can get your eyes on one of the books of and/or about his work, do, because that disorganized pile of jpegs yesterday didn't do it justice at all, really. ** Trees, I was sad too. Not to be there. And, after seeing Michael Karo's photo documentation, doubly so. And yet, and alas, what is one to do? Just go on and live my life as best I can, I guess. Moving again? Wow, but the new joint sounds good. Oh, I will tell you when I finally get my LA dates in place 'cos it would be stellar to see you and Math there. I'm glad you and she hit it off. I had this sixth sense and hope that you guys might. ** Steven Trull, Ssssh about that veracity thing. You promised. Math is a girl?! Well, it sounds like you made the best of the situation. I'm not Squeaky, but, if I were, my real name would either be D.L. or Darrell, depending on the context. Missed you too. ** _Black_Acrylic, Oh, I'm really glad you liked 'Jerk', of course, Cool. And nice to see the pix. I didn't realize that panel would be so populated. Everyone, a few pix of 'Jerk' in Edinburgh courtesy of the honorable _B_A, here and nowhere else. Really nice about the green light on the review. Thank you a lot for that, Ben! ** Dusty rose, All in all, your new place sounds nice. Comforted wins the day. Cool about the post. Yeah, any questions or anything, just ask. Thanks really a lot for that, man. And have a superb weekend. ** Statictick, You're in LA, lucky you. I'm glad the standby gods were kind. What are you doing in LA? What part are you staying in? ** Chris Cochrane, A 'Them' soundtrack benefit maybe? Good hearted superstar line-up? Oh, so you did get a regular house band kind of gig after all. That's great, right? I remember we were talking about that possibility. Hope my kind of concerned email yesterday didn't land with too big of a thud. I just wanted to air that before we nailed it down. A productive and all around great weekend to you, big C. ** Sypha, Well, obviously, I hope the health crap gets solved as early in the process of analysis as possible. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff! I like Sonny Sharrock for sure, yeah. I'd love to hear a lot more, so I'll go take advantage of the DO offer. Speaking of which, it was cool to see DO propped in The Wire, even if I think it was re: your earlier pricing policies, which I hope didn't end up causing problems. But it was really cool to see that. I think I know the writing dilemma you speak of, yeah. I don't think it's an issue that goes away with time, or not if you're always trying to do something new and exciting with the form. I guess you do develop initial instincts that can be preventative at times, or that allow you to have a fuller grasp of the potential problems at the time that you're originally penning the stand-out portions. How to do deal with it depends entirely on the situation and on your overall strategy. It's hard to say without having the examples and context to consult. For instance, I love disrupting a novel's flow and the reader's comfort level and throwing wrenches into the novel's apparent intentions, but the disruptions or self-reflexive stuff has to serve the whole, and it just depends on what you want the whole to be. Sometimes you do just have to lose things that you think are the best things, it's true, and use them to generate other projects or to stand alone. Obviously, if using the workshop context here to help get a sense of what works and doesn't on a crowd would help, do that. I wish I could be more specific. Happy to talk more about this if you want to say/ask more. ** Creative Massacre, Hey, pal. Chocolate mint flavored water? That's a totally new one on me. Wow, interesting. I'd totally be into trying that, and I'll see if by some miracle France has that drink. Excellent about the productive photo shoot. Look forward to seeing it. Hope the weekend is a sweet one for you. ** Zack, Hey. Oh, that's interesting about the mutated 'Alien' film. Hm, I wonder if that's a good or bad sign? For some reason, just the fact that Ridley Scott is doing a sci-fi film seems promising to me. And I 'pray to God' that Russell Crowe isn't in it. My day was okay. Well, from my perspective, you got some good writing done, and those business school guys talked shop, and you're an artist, and they're willing cogs in the corporate machine or whatever, and they'll get fat and financially comfortable and spend their lives as stressed out details in the office portion of life, and you'll make a completely unique mark upon the world and have really interesting friends and an unpredictable, relatively free floating life wherein you'll be rewarded for being exactly who you are, and so you win, hands down. ** Kevin Killian, Mr. K! Oh, wonderful, and thank you, thank you! Someday, everyone will be living inside my blog, and you will be a pioneer in yet one more field. I remember that restaurant and waiter very well, yes. Anyway, thank you so very kindly for being so regal and generous with your royalty. How strange that Barbara Guest was never interviewed for TPR. I'm really surprised to hear that. Have you ever had poems published in TPR? Not me. I've got a mile high stack of cookie cutter rejection slips from them back in LA. Being interviewed there is just about as weird as winning the Lammy was. Well, maybe not quite as weird as that, ha ha. Oh, Kevin, I've been meaning to ask you, and of course you needn't answer if it's not cool to do so, but what is up with 'Spreadeagle' post-Alyson? 'The Weaklings' got cancelled and is kaput. Is there some other publisher in the works for the novel? You know how I'm seriously dying for that book. ** Bill, Hey. Yeah, just let me know when you've contacted Sonia, and I'll mosey on down to the office and slip in a query and gentle but aggressive nudge. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Hey. How nice that you got snow. I'm getting this feeling that Paris has gotten all the snow it's going to get, which saddens me, frankly. I love that scene of you and the woman across the street. There should be a movie that it could be inside. Wonderful dialogue with your friend, of course, I reiterate my admiration for your great dialogue skills. Oh, you probably know that John Waters is very close with Manson's Leslie, so I'm sure he was being a good friend to her there, 'cos he's a great friend to his friends. My Friday: I was supposed to pay rent, but I forgot, and now I have to wait until Monday, but I guess they won't mind. A bunch of new people moved into the rooms on my particular hall in the Recollets. They're younger than the usual people who usually live in my hall. I don't know what they do yet. They seemed nice. I probably won't get to know them because people here pretty much leave each other alone except to share complaints about how terrible the internet is. My Facebook wall got hit with a wave of 'find out who stalks you' spam/scam posts, and I had to keep deleting them. I went out for a birthday dinner to celebrate Oscar's big day. It was at an Italian restaurant near Alma Marceau which, to novices, is the area where Princess Diana got smushed and where very rich people live. It was O, Kiddiepunk, and me. The food was pretty good. There was a young mother and her little son sitting near us, and the son seemed so completely in love with his mother. He just seemed absolutely blissed and enraptured by her. We had a discussion about whether that was a sign that he would be gay or not. I don't think we came to a conclusion. We discussed whether we wanted to see the 'Tron' movie, which resulted in three yes votes, and 'Scream 4', which resulted in only one yes vote from Kiddiepunk. I said I need to wait and read the reviews before I decide. We came back here, and I had a slice of Oscar's b'day cake that K had bought for earlier. It was pretty good, basic but good. We decided to finally go eat at that new Mexican place in the neighborhood tonight. Exciting. As the evening turned into bedtime, I did some emailing and blog stuff and called my sister to wish her happy b'day, and, uh, yeah. That's all. Your weekend report, pretty please with sugar on top? ** Misanthrope, Hey, G. Oh, movies, I cry at movies, just not at TV unless it's a TV with a DVD of a movie playing on it. I think maybe the Buffy episode just after her mom died might have teared me up a bit, though. My first name is Open-Sesame. Or 'IftaH ya simsim', if you want to get technical about it. Seriously, that's my first name. ** Emptythesun, Hey, Joseph! Sorry to hear about the hair pulling and lurchdom. Hugs. I did not know that you're editing Ashley Blue's memoir. Wow. That must be hell of a job. Fun mostly, I would imagine. Yeah, interesting counter-programming thing there with the Super Bowl. I would think that your and Lonely's fans are more X Games fan-types anyway. But, yeah. Penny-Ante wrote to me, and I'm doing my best to pass along their promo thing on Facebook. Cool of them. They seem cool. Tough choice on the 'Cows' excerpt. You can't lose, I guess. I have not read 'Karate Is A Thing of The Spirit', but what a great title! I might have to check Alibris, et. al. for that. Man, so wish I could be there tomorrow. Thank you so much for doing that! ** Michael Karo, Hey! Yeah, I saw and swiped from your FB album already. Nice pix. Made me melancholy and yet proud. Interesting mood combination, if you haven't tried it. Anyway, it looks like it was the veritable blast, and thank you from the bottom of my ... well, do I even need to say it? Heart, man. From the bottom of my motherfucking heart. ** Bollo, Will do, on the asking front. I would imagine there'll be a copy to score. Hope work didn't break your spirit, man. Good weekend to you in whatever way possible. ** So, now you guys go peruse and absorb Dandysweets' lovely paean to SS, yes? And tell her what you're feeling, yes? That would be cool. I will see you on Monday without much a doubt.
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