#stuart sutcliffe
6.23.1940“Stu… Everyone knew Stu was a brilliant painter. But I defending Stu, he was really good playing bass guitar. Old rock and roll was simple in those days… bass and drums coordinated well in the band, and the band played great. And he also got a beautiful woman that we meet in Hamburg, Astrid Kirchherr. This made us feel so jealous, because we all wanted something like it.”-Pete Best
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On 10 May 1960, The Silver Beatles auditioned for Larry Parnes. They would end up being hired as a backing band for Johnny Gentle on a tour of Scotland. (Tommy Moore, the band’s drummer at the time, showed up late, so Johnny Hutchinson — of Cass and the Cassanovas — filled in for a few songs). Photos by Cheniston Roland.
TheScotland tour, post 1 of 2.
“It was a bit of a shambles. Larry Parnes didn’t stand up saying that we were great or anything like that. It felt pretty dismal. But a few days later we got the call to go out with Johnny Gentle. They were probably thinking, ‘Oh well, they’re mugs. We’ll send a band that doesn’t need paying.’” - George Harrison, The Beatles Anthology
“I remember asking my big brother [Harry], ‘Would you pack in work and have a go at this if you were me?’ He said, ‘You might as well — you never know what might happen. And if it doesn’t work out you’re not going to lose anything.’ So I packed in my job [as an apprentice electrician at Blackler’s in Liverpool], and joined the band full time and from then on, nine-to-five never came back into my thinking.” - George Harrison, The Beatles Anthology
“That was our first professional gig: on a tour of dance halls miles up in the North of Scotland, around Inverness. We felt, ‘Yipee, we’ve got a gig!’ Then we realized that we were playing to nobody in little halls, until the pubs cleared out when about five Scottish Teds would come in and look at us. That was all. Nothing happened. We didn’t really know anything. It was sad, because we were like orphans. Our shoes were full of holes and our trousers were a mess, while Johnny Gentle had a posh suit. I remember trying to play to ‘Won’t you wear my ring around your neck?’ — he was doing Elvis’s ‘Teddy Bear’ — and we were crummy. The band was horrible, an embarrassment. We didn’t have amplifiers or anything. What little pay we did get we used to take care of the hotels. And we all slept in the van. We would argue about space. There weren’t enough seats in the van, and somebody had to sit on the inside of the mudguard on the back wheel. Usually Stu.” - George Harrison, The Beatles Anthology(x)
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The Beatles Book Monthly | April 1994
Scan - John in a Hamburg street in his underpants, shortly before the Beatles returned to Liverpool. On the reverse of the photograph he wrote: ‘Me sightseeing, Hamburg, November 1960. One Giant Photo ComingSoon.’
This isn’t the exact photo that goes along with this story, but it’s similar and amusing nonetheless:
“It was hard work [in Hamburg], but we were just five fellows having a good time. We did daft things all the time. John had a pair of Long John underpants, as it was getting very cold with winter drawing on. George bet him ten marks that he wouldn’t go out, wearing them and nothing else. He went out in the street, just in his Long Johns, with sun specs on and read the Daily Express for five minutes. We watched him, killing ourselves laughing.” - From The Beatles by Hunter Davies
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“John mentioned (probably with a groan) that people were always asking what it meant and how they’d thought of it, and Bill replied - with Mersey Beat in mind - ‘Why don’t you tell them?’
So John wrote the history of the Beatles, and because he and George were knocking around together, he was on hand to contribute. John had been happy to let Paul help him write a comic piece or two in 1958, notably ‘On Safari With Whide Hunter’, now he allowed George to get involved in what became known as 'Being A Short Diversion On The Dubious Origins Of Beatles’.” - From The Beatles - All These Years: Tune In by Mark Lewisohn
A poem entitled ‘Beauty’ written by Stuart Sutcliffe, inside a1956 copy of The Prescotian school magazine. Sutcliffe would have been 16 when this was published.
‘It comes and fades, but
No excuse is proffered
For this myth which captures
Mankind under some ghoulish
Spell. Who knows what fruitless ventures,
Lost in this world’s entirety, are inspired,
Allured by some clownish
Amazon. Mentioned, whispered, from
Some shadowed corner
Of this brazen earth.
Cut off, save for this wonderful thing
Of Gods ! Beauty ! And ‘twill cling
Forever to this dungeon cell.
Call’t what you will, I call it Hell.’
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