Stuart Sutcliffe
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Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe (23 June 1940 – 10 April 1962) was a British artist who, until his death, worked in a style related to Abstract Expressionism. An art school friend of John Lennon's, he was the original bassist of the British rock band the Beatles for two years, and is often credited for naming the band (after Buddy Holly's band the Crickets). Along with former drummer Pete Best, he can accurately be called one of only six true members of the Beatles. Sutcliffe is often referred to as "the fifth Beatle".
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Life
He was born at Simpson Memorial Maternity Pavilion Hospital in 1940, Edinburgh, Lothian in Scotland and brought up in the St Johns area of Huyton, Merseyside in England. He attended Prescot Grammar School and was himself a schoolteacher's son.
While Sutcliffe was a gifted painter who showed great promise, with personal charisma and looks comparable with James Dean's, his musical skills were not remarkable. Sutcliffe became a Beatle mostly because of his friendship with Lennon, whom he met while studying at the Liverpool College of Art. Lennon convinced him to buy a bass guitar (choosing a Höfner 500/5 model, known in Europe as a 500/5 President) [1] with the money he had made from the sale of his picture The Summer Painting (1959).[2] Sutcliffe has been described as appearing very uncomfortable on stage and even played with his back to the audience, but early Beatles drummer Pete Best says that these claims are exaggerated, and that Sutcliffe was usually good-natured and "animated" onstage[3]. Sutcliffe's musical style was elementary, mostly sticking to root notes of chords. (An example of Sutcliffe's bass playing with the early Beatles is the track "Cayenne", on the Anthology 1 album.)
Bill Harry, founder and editor of the Mersey Beat newspaper, has said that Sutcliffe was a competent, although not brilliant, bassist, and that accounts of his musical ineptitude were exaggerated. Original Beatles drummer Pete Best has expressed similar views[4]. Nevertheless, Sutcliffe's importance to the group derived from his artistic rather than musical talent. His sense of style, influenced by his lover, Astrid Kirchherr, contributed to the Beatles' early "look". He also had a profound influence on his close friend Lennon, reinforcing the rebellious Lennon's aspiration to art and the bohemian lifestyle, which were on display during the Beatles' psychedelic period (1966–1968) and Lennon's solo Avant-garde work with Yoko Ono.
[edit] Death
Sutcliffe left the Beatles before they achieved their success to pursue his career as an artist and to marry Kirchherr. Paul McCartney, previously second lead guitarist in the group, replaced Sutcliffe on bass. Months afterwards, in the spring of 1962, at age 21, Sutcliffe died from a brain haemorrhage; after collapsing in the middle of an art class, he was taken to a hospital, but died in the ambulance.[5] It has been claimed that his death was the result of a beating sustained in Liverpool while still a member of the group[citation needed], but it is more likely to have been a congenital disorder[citation needed].
Lennon later said that he was profoundly affected by his friend's death. Sutcliffe's sister, Pauline, has always claimed that Lennon was the cause of her brother's death, asserting that the two had fought in Hamburg, Germany a short while earlier. According to her account, Lennon had repeatedly kicked Sutcliffe in the head and Sutcliffe never recovered from the injuries. (Her claims are echoed in Albert Goldman's controversial 1988 book The Lives of John Lennon.) In 2001, she claimed that late in his life, Lennon himself had admitted this attack and felt guilty over the possible role it played in Sutcliffe's death. However, beyond Pauline, there is no corroboration. Kirchherr, former manager Allan Williams, the other Beatles and many close associates have stated repeatedly that the attack against Sutcliffe occurred at the Litherland Town Hall in Liverpool after a live performance sometime in 1961. The Beatles were protective of each other as many Liverpool musical venues were located in seedy areas of the city and well known for frequent fights instigated by local roughs. According to published accounts, it was Lennon and Pete Best who saved Sutcliffe from much worse injury by fighting off attackers and taking him to safety.
Because of the limitations of medical knowledge at that time, it has never been known what caused the brain haemorrhage that took Sutcliffe's life. But according to descriptions of the symptoms he suffered, and thanks to advanced study of neurovascular afflictions, it has been suggested that the cause of death was arteriovenous malformation.
The Beatles paid homage to Sutcliffe by including his portrait among those on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967 (he appears at the extreme left, next to fellow-artist Aubrey Beardsley).
[edit] Art
As an artist, Sutcliffe displayed considerable talent from an early age. His few surviving works show the influence of the British and European abstract artists contemporary with the Abstract Expressionist movement in the United States. His earlier figurative work is reminiscent of the kitchen sink school, particularly John Bratby, though he was also producing abstract work by the end of the 1950s, including The Summer Painting, the sale of which to John Moores fincanced his guitar. His later gestural abstractions were influenced by his art tutor in Hamburg, Eduardo Paolozzi.[2] They also bear comparison with the work of John Hoyland and Nicolas de Staël, though they are more lyrical. These later works are typically untitled, constructed from heavily impasted slabs of pigment, in the manner of de Staël, overlaid with scratched or squeezed linear elements creating enclosed spaces. Hamburg Painting no. 2 was purchased by Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery.
[edit] Anthology 1
The Beatles' compilation album Anthology 1, consisting mostly of previously unreleased recordings from the band's early years, was released in 1995. Sutcliffe is pictured on the front cover, as he was on Sgt. Pepper 28 years before. More importantly, he is featured playing bass with the Beatles on three songs that the band recorded in 1960: "Hallelujah, I Love Her So", "You'll Be Mine", and "Cayenne". These songs are, to date, the only officially sanctioned recordings of Stuart Sutcliffe playing with the Beatles.
[edit] Film Portrayals
Sutcliffe's role in the Beatles' early career, as well as the factors that led him to leave the group, is dramatised in the film Backbeat, in which he was portrayed by Stephen Dorff. He was also portrayed by David Wilkinson in the film Birth of the Beatles and by Lee Williams in In My Life: The John Lennon Story (2000).
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ [1]
- ^ Sutcliffe's art
- ^ An Evening With Pete Best, Part I: The Interview URL accessed Jan 20, 2007
- ^ An Evening With Pete Best, Part I: The Interview URL accessed Jan 20, 2007
- ^ Cynthia Lennon– “John”. p110.
[edit] References
- Lennon, Cynthia (1980). A Twist of Lennon. Avon Books. ISBN 0-380-45450-5.
- Miles, Barry (1998). Many Years From Now. Vintage-Random House. ISBN 0-7493-8658-4.
- Spitz, Bob (2006). The Beatles: The Biography. Little, Brown and Company (New York). ISBN 1845131606.
[edit] External links
- Stuart Sutcliffe and The Beatles exhibition at the Museum of Liverpool Life
- Describes Pauline Sutcliffe's claims
- Stuart - The Life and Art of Stuart Sutcliffe
