Before The Beatles were the Fab Four, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Pete Best, and Stuart Sutcliffe made up the band. The group eventually fired Best, and Sutcliffe stepped down, hoping to refocus on his art career. He remained on good terms with The Beatles and spent time with them when he could. Still, he knew what they were like after spending time with them in Hamburg. He warned his sister not to associate with them.
Stuart Sutcliffe told his sister to stay away from his former Beatles bandmates
In 1960, The Beatles traveled to Hamburg to play a residency in the city. Here, they grew tremendously as musicians. They learned to perform live and keep an audience’s interest. They also matured on this trip. According to Barry Miles in the book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Hamburg “placed them in the front line of what would become the sixties sexual revolution.”
While there, the band slept with women, drank, and took drugs. Sutcliffe, who quickly jumped into a committed relationship with Astrid Kirchherr, disapproved. While he still considered them all friends, he told his sister, Pauline, not to associate with his former bandmates.
Per the book The Beatle: The Biography by Bob Spitz, Sutcliffe told Pauline to have the “good sense to keep away from the Beatles because they’re a bad lot, completely lacking in moral fiber.”
Stuart Sutcliffe left The Beatles not long after a fight with Paul McCartney
While Sutcliffe was close friends with Lennon, animosity had been building up between him and McCartney. McCartney was jealous of the attention Lennon gave Sutcliffe and didn’t believe Sutcliffe was a strong enough musician to be in The Beatles. All of this boiled over on stage.
After McCartney made a comment about Kirchherr, Sutcliffe dropped his bass and went after him. They got into a vicious fight that only ended when their bandmates pried them apart. According to Best, the fight was the “beginning of the end of Stu as a Beatle.”
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In 1961, Sutcliffe left The Beatles to pursue his painting career, which he’d neglected in favor of music. He died in 1962 of a brain hemorrhage.
Pauline Sutcliffe auctioned off her late brother’s notebook
Pauline Sutcliffe wrote the book The Beatles’ Shadow: Stuart Sutcliffe & His Lonely Hearts Club about her brother. She continued to keep his memory and connection to The Beatles alive by auctioning off a sketchbook belonging to him.
Per The Independent, the sketchbook included letters written by Kirchherr to the Sutcliffe family after his death, sketches, love notes, and five lost Beatles songs believed to have been co-written by Lennon.
Pauline Sutcliffe said she wanted to auction off the material to “give it its wings.” She donated some of his work to the Museum of Liverpool Life. While her brother was a key member of The Beatles as he helped name them, she wanted people to see him as the talented artist he was.
“Hopefully, it reveals he wasn’t just a pretty face who played the bass guitar very badly,” Pauline said.
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