Stuart Sutcliffe was a short-lived member of The Beatles, and a painter who worked in a style related to Abstract Expressionism. He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Sutcliffe was never a skilled musician, having joined the group because of his friendship with John Lennon. Lennon convinced him to buy a bass guitar with the money he had made from the sale of one his paintings. He was very uncomfortable on stage and usually played with his back to the audience. He left the Beatles to pursue his career as an artist before they achieved their success, and died not long thereafter from a brain hemorrhage.
It has been claimed that this was the result of a beating sustained in Liverpool while still a member of the group, but it is more likely to have been a hereditary condition. Paul McCartney , previously one of three guitar players in the group, replaced Sutcliffe on bass. Sutcliffe's importance to the group came from his artistic rather than musical talent. He was the first to have a 'Beatles' haircut, and his sense of style, helped by his lover Astrid Kirchherr .
There is a primitive rehearsal tape from (probably) around 1960 that has been bootlegged, but the recording is so technically lo-fi that it's even difficult to hear a bass, let alone determine the virtuosity of the player; a few songs from that tape were officially issued on the Beatles' Anthology 1. The consensus seems to be that he never became good, or even attained a basic professional standard, on the instrument.
He did, though seldom, sing onstage. According to the thorough listing of songs the Beatles performed live in Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Chronicle, there are just two tunes—the Elvis Presley ballads "Love Me Tender" and "Loving You"—that Sutcliffe is known to have sung lead on. It came to light in the Sutcliffe biography Backbeat: Stuart Sutcliffe: The Lost Beatle that Stuart did actually write some songs, though none seem to have been seriously performed (let alone recorded) by the Beatles. It has sometimes been written that Sutcliffe and Paul McCartney did not get along, perhaps partially due to McCartney's frustrations with Sutcliffe's musical limitations. They did have a fight onstage once (though this apparently didn't have anything to do with music).
Astrid Kirchherr is a photographer and artist. She invented The Beatles haircut during their early time in Hamburg: she met them at a club when she was dating Klaus Voormann (who later designed the cover to The Beatles' Revolver album), left him for Stuart Sutcliffe (at the time a member of the Beatles), and cut his hair in the familiar mop-top, which John Lennon thought was laughable, but later all (except Pete Best) adopted as the early Beatles look.
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 more figurative work is reminiscent of the kitchen sink school, particularly John Bratby. His later gestural abstractions bear comparison with John Hoyland and Nicholas de Stael, though they are more lyrical.
Sutcliffe was never a skilled musician, having joined the group because of his friendship with John Lennon. Lennon convinced him to buy a bass guitar with the money he had made from the sale of one his paintings. He was very uncomfortable on stage and usually played with his back to the audience. He left the Beatles to pursue his career as an artist before they achieved their success, and died not long thereafter from a brain hemorrhage.
It has been claimed that this was the result of a beating sustained in Liverpool while still a member of the group, but it is more likely to have been a hereditary condition. Paul McCartney , previously one of three guitar players in the group, replaced Sutcliffe on bass. Sutcliffe's importance to the group came from his artistic rather than musical talent. He was the first to have a 'Beatles' haircut, and his sense of style, helped by his lover Astrid Kirchherr .
There is a primitive rehearsal tape from (probably) around 1960 that has been bootlegged, but the recording is so technically lo-fi that it's even difficult to hear a bass, let alone determine the virtuosity of the player; a few songs from that tape were officially issued on the Beatles' Anthology 1. The consensus seems to be that he never became good, or even attained a basic professional standard, on the instrument.
He did, though seldom, sing onstage. According to the thorough listing of songs the Beatles performed live in Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Chronicle, there are just two tunes—the Elvis Presley ballads "Love Me Tender" and "Loving You"—that Sutcliffe is known to have sung lead on. It came to light in the Sutcliffe biography Backbeat: Stuart Sutcliffe: The Lost Beatle that Stuart did actually write some songs, though none seem to have been seriously performed (let alone recorded) by the Beatles. It has sometimes been written that Sutcliffe and Paul McCartney did not get along, perhaps partially due to McCartney's frustrations with Sutcliffe's musical limitations. They did have a fight onstage once (though this apparently didn't have anything to do with music).
Astrid Kirchherr is a photographer and artist. She invented The Beatles haircut during their early time in Hamburg: she met them at a club when she was dating Klaus Voormann (who later designed the cover to The Beatles' Revolver album), left him for Stuart Sutcliffe (at the time a member of the Beatles), and cut his hair in the familiar mop-top, which John Lennon thought was laughable, but later all (except Pete Best) adopted as the early Beatles look.
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 more figurative work is reminiscent of the kitchen sink school, particularly John Bratby. His later gestural abstractions bear comparison with John Hoyland and Nicholas de Stael, though they are more lyrical.
