Video: 'Stuart Sutcliffe, The Lost Beatle'
(Tuesday, April 10, 1962) — Stu Sutcliffe, a painter and musician best known as the original bass guitarist of the English rock band The Beatles, died today of a brain haemorrhage while riding in an ambulance on the way to a hospital in Hamburg, West Germany. He was 21 years old.
When he performed with The Beatles in Hamburg, Sutcliffe met photographer Astrid Kirchherr, to whom he was later engaged. After leaving The Beatles, he enrolled in the Hamburg College of Art, studying under future pop artist Eduardo Paolozzi, who later wrote a report stating that Sutcliffe was one of his best students. Sutcliffe earned other praise for his paintings, which mostly explored a style related to abstract expressionism.
However, all was not well for Sutcliffe in Germany. While studying, he began suffering from intense headaches and experiencing acute light sensitivity. In February 1962, he collapsed in the middle of an art class after complaining of head pains.
German doctors performed tests but were unable to determine what was causing the headaches. After collapsing again today, he was taken to the hospital but died in the ambulance on the way there with Kirchherr at his side. The cause of death was a brain hemorrhage, specifically a ruptured aneurysm resulting in cerebral paralysis, due to severe bleeding into the right ventricle of the brain.
On the following day, Apr. 11, 1962, Kirchherr met three current members of The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Pete Best, at Hamburg Airport, telling them that Sutcliffe had died.
The fourth member of the band, George Harrison, was unwell at the time, and so flew to Germany the following day (Apr. 12, 1962) with The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein.
Sutcliffe’s mother flew to Hamburg and returned to Liverpool with her son’s body for burial at Huyton Parish Church Cemetery. Sutcliffe’s father did not hear of Stuart’s death for three weeks, as he was sailing to South America on a cruise ship, although the family arranged for a padre, a military chaplain, to give him the news as soon as the ship docked in Buenos Aires.
Sutcliffe was born June 23, 1940, at the Edinburgh Royal Maternity Hospital and Simpson Memorial Maternity Pavilion in Edinburgh, Scotland, and after his family moved to England a few years later, he was brought up at 37 Aigburth Drive in Liverpool.
The cause of Sutcliffe’s aneurysm is unknown, although it may have been started by an earlier head injury, as he was either kicked in the head or thrown, head first, against a brick wall during an attack outside Lathom Hall in Liverpool, England, after a performance in January 1961.
According to booking agent Allan Williams, Lennon and Best went to Sutcliffe’s aid, fighting off his attackers before dragging him to safety. Sutcliffe sustained a fractured skull in the fight and Lennon’s little finger was broken. Sutcliffe refused medical attention at the time and failed to keep an X-ray appointment at Sefton General Hospital.
Although Lennon did not attend or send flowers to Sutcliffe’s funeral, his second wife, Yoko Ono, remembered that Lennon mentioned Sutcliffe’s name very often, saying that he was “[My] alter ego … a spirit in his world … a guiding force.”
As a tribute by the surviving Beatles, Stu’s image appears on the cover of their masterpiece album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
