When They Were Boys

by Larry Kane

  Whenever, and however, the lore of Litherland made its way into the Beatles’ history, there was and remains a very good reason for it: the boys themselves.

  Three years and seven months later, in a dressing room at the famed Montreal Forum, I asked John Lennon what the real turning point was in their evolution from unknown to fame, from boys traveling on a snowy night on the number 81 bus to budding celebrities in their hometown and beyond.

  WELL . . . YOU COULD LOOK AT MANY EVENTS . . . OUR PERFORMANCE BEFORE THE QUEEN MUCH LATER . . . THOSE MARVELOUS HAMBURG NIGHTS [HE SAID WITH SARCASM], THE CAVERN. . . . BUT TO BE TRUTHFUL, IT ALMOST ENDED AROUND CHRISTMASTIME IN 1960. . . . WE WERE DOWN AND OUT . . . AND WE PLAYED AT THIS PLACE . . . LITHERLAND TOWN HALL . . . AND ALL OF A SUDDEN WE GRABBED IT BY THE HORNS . . . AS YOU AMERICANS WOULD SAY, WHATEVER THAT MEANS . . . AND WE STARTED TO MOVE FORWARD . . . GOT MORE DEALS . . . BEFORE EPPY [EPSTEIN] . . . AND ON THE BACKS OF SEVERAL HUNDRED KIDS, JUST LIKE US, WHO THOUGHT WE WERE GOOD . . . AND LET ME TELL YOU, LARRY [HIS GESTURES SUDDENLY CHANGED FROM HUMILITY TO HUBRIS] . . . LET ME TELL YOU, WE WERE GOOD. . . . WE JUST WEREN’T SURE WE WERE GOOD ENOUGH. DID WE KNOW THAT IT WOULD CHANGE EVERYTHING? NO, LARRY, WE REALLY DIDN’T, BUT WE FELT A BIT BETTER AFTER OUR SO SAD AND PAINFUL RETURN FROM HAMBURG. AND LARRY, IT WAS VERY, VERY PAINFUL,” HE CONCLUDED, CHUCKLING WITH FOND REMEMBRANCE.

  Litherland was, as Professor Brocken describes, “small beer” in the big Liverpool scene. But to the boys, it was a jolt, a shot of hope in the midst of a dark period of despair. They survived December 1960. There were new bookings ahead, and they would earn pocket change. But not far away, before the young music retailer walked into their lives, before Bill Harry exploded on the scene with tabloid music genius, and despite internal feuding, their pockets would be a little less empty.

  After genuine depression, the humiliation of being booted from Hamburg, and internal debate about whether they should split, the Litherland Town Hall experience transformed the young men from gloom to optimism. That in itself, the transfusion of hope, makes the Litherland concert a meaningful event in saving the boys from possible destruction at their own hands.

  All this came on the heels of the first trip to what appeared to be a forbidden city. They had barely escaped Hamburg. Despite their ambivalence, there would be more trips to the city of the night, but along the way, a personal tragedy, one that left a lifelong imprint on the founder of the band.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE LIFE AND DEATH OF STUART SUTCLIFFE

  “It may be something John Lennon regretted for the rest of his life, not that he struck the blows that killed, but that he thought he might have, a bit like everyone comes to a crime scene and every witness is unreliable.”

  —Ron Ellis

  “Most mothers believe their children are the most brilliant and the most beautiful—but it happened to be true about Stuart.”

  —Martha Sutcliffe (aka “Millie”), mother of Stuart Sutcliffe

  THE STORY OF THE STRIKINGLY BEAUTIFUL BOY IS THE CENTERPIECE OF THE BEATLES’ FIRST MOMENTS IN HAMBURG. It is also a story of deep love—man to man, and man to woman—portrayed as a romance for the ages, yet one that lasted so briefly.

  If Hamburg was on the cutting edge of art and pop culture in 1960 and 1961, then the most forgotten Beatle, Stuart Sutcliffe, was in the right place at the right time. An inspiration to his best friend, John Lennon, and a startling sex symbol on stage, Stuart, in the Hamburg days and nights, arrived at the confluence of three driving forces: music, art on canvas, and love. Mostly love.

  Yoko Ono talks of Stuart’s friendship and its impact on John, and then wistfully, she remembers her talks with John about Hamburg.

  “He told me everything. He loved to talk about Hamburg. There were no secrets. It was the kind of life I never knew. . . . It meant total freedom. At his side always was Stuart, sweet Stuart. There wasn’t a time in John’s life when he didn’t think about Stuart. He spoke always of his love and respect for Stuart.”

  Stuart joined the group because of John. All those meetings at Ye Cracke, all the soul-searching between them, had created a bond that few men have in a lifetime. Was Stuart the brother John never had? Maybe. But mostly the boy Paul McCartney once described as a “typical pimple-faced art student” was just a wide-open conduit for John’s innermost feelings.

  John worshipped Stu as a confidante, a brother almost, a best friend in a life of seeking real and genuine friends. Their journey to Hamburg, that fateful first trip in 1960 during which they lived in near-poverty conditions, ended badly. But in life, living in a certain moment and trying to understand what that moment means, can be a mystery that, in time, can unlock abilities never before considered. What the young Beatles accomplished in Hamburg in 1960 seemed irrelevant in the moment, but became strong and durable when the moment was over. Stuart played a powerful role in that moment. With Astrid Kirchherr by his side, his talent for fine art and her extraordinary view through the lens of a camera not only strengthened his bond with John, but also led to the creation of a revolutionary look and style that would define the early Beatles—with the dark suits, thin ties, and mop-top haircuts. They would later embrace their acid and spiritual period in 1968 with longer hair, freakier clothing, and a new look that was more compatible with their contemporaries who were in the same funk of drugs, protest, war, and revolution. But it was the original look that will always endure, and the beautiful son of Millie Sutcliffe was a certifiable originator of it.

  Along with that enduring style, there was an energy between John and Stuart that outlived Stuart.

  “They were like soul mates,” says Yoko, who adds that she wishes she could have met Stuart. In my earlier book, Lennon Revealed, Yoko emotionally recalled, “There was not a period in our lives, daily, weekly, or whenever, that John did not remember Stuart.”

  What Stuart brought to the table—especially the wooden table at Ye Cracke in a post-beatnik environment of great social debate—was a vision of life that John might never have experienced. Stuart, unlike the young John Lennon, was spiritual—not in the religious sense, but in the curious and empathetic way he looked at people, the environment, and the joys of everyday life. Stuart, remembered fondly by Bill Harry as a member of the beatnik-like Dissenters, was often the conscience of the debating group. Although John would do most of the talking at the pub, he freely gave the platform to his close friend.

  “We were plotting for a better society, and we thought we had all the answers for our generation,” Harry says. “The interesting thing was that, while we were wide-eyed with large hopes, Stuart, in general, had what I would say was a larger view of his canvas of the world. Unlike most rebellious teenagers, he had a worldview and was quite ready at seventeen or eighteen to make his point with art.”

  Colin Fallows of Liverpool’s John Moores University (formerly the Art Institute), and an expert on Stu’s work, revels at the talent and the connection between art and the rock and pop revolutions of the fifties and sixties.

  “Many people will point out that the art schools of England were the incubators of a generation of musicians, but in Stuart’s case, the Art Institute was the incubator of his own brilliant career in art itself. He enhanced the Beatles’ early life, but at the same time, in Hamburg, escalated his art to a higher level.”

  Fallows shows me the interesting little courtyard through which Paul and George would sneak into the Art Institute from their own school, to jam with John and Stuart. There is probably no single expert more versed on Stuart’s art work than Fallows.

  “You have to understand that Stuart, so influential in John’s life, is not a footnote able to bridge the interface of sound, music, and visual arts. He was a very serious student. His and Astrid’s [art] should not be viewed as Beatles memorabilia, but rather interesting art on its own. It’s also interesting that at the time Stuart and the Beatles came to Hamburg in 1960 and 1961, the world was turning to Hamburg not just for music, but its burgeoning art scene.
The timing was fascinating.”

  Unfortunately, Stuart is not around to crow about his influence. One would guess he probably wouldn’t boast about his impact. He was much too busy painting his canvases and looking, along with his love-mate, Astrid, and his best friend, John, for the real meaning of life.

  But there are many survivors still here to explain the magical being of Stuart Sutcliffe.

  George Harrison, in his special comments in Derek Taylor’s rambling and revealing autobiography, Fifty Years Adrift, offered his always-candid view: “Stuart Sutcliffe was like our art director. In a mysterious way, Stuart in conjunction with the German crowd [not just Astrid] was really responsible for that certain look we had. . . . I had a lot of fist fights with Stuart, but I really liked him and we were very friendly before he died.”

  Life model June Furlong still talks about how sweet Stu was, yet so serious about his work—much more serious than his friend John, also an artist but a great and funny mischief-maker in class.

  “Now, there was a talent,” Furlong remembers. “He couldn’t wait for their makeshift rehearsals, when Paul and George would sneak over from the Institute. But I always felt, you know, that for Stuart, the art was everything. He put his heart into it, with a passion.”

  An artist he was. His paintings are the object of desire here in the twenty-first century. A “very good rock ’n’ roll bass guitar player,” says Bill Harry. Certainly a physical presence, as well. But his sister Pauline wants people to know that Stuart was much more than eye candy.

  He was, she says with endless love, “a man of supreme spirituality who was preoccupied and completely fascinated with the questions of life and death. He was a trusted friend with a solid moral base. Yes, he could be naughty and wild, but there was in Stuart a morality that few his age would ever understand. And also, more than anything, he was so interesting to be around.”

  He was also a talented musician, although the fading truth of time, always the enemy of telling the real story, has distorted his talent. Witnesses from Klaus Voorman to Bill Harry and many others still remember Stuart’s talent on the bass guitar, and his brief but alluring stardom and appeal to the crowds in Hamburg. Perhaps, though, his most significant contribution was his impact on the former milkman.

  Bill Harry sees Stuart’s own life as a prism in which John could see joy, despite so many moments of indecision, distrust, and hurt inflicted on him by his splintered early life.

  JOHN WAS SMITTEN WITH STUART’S COOL AND INTRIGUING WAY. . . . STUART WAS NOT A MAN WITH SUPERLATIVE WORDS OR DEMONSTRATIVE PROCLAMATIONS. HE WAS A QUIET, SENSITIVE THINKER WHO BROUGHT A SPECIAL INTELLECTUAL ACCENT TO THE GROUP. I THINK GEORGE HAD A SPECIAL ATTRACTION TO HIM. GEORGE WAS ALSO A THINKER, ALWAYS TRYING TOO HARD TO FIND LIFE’S TRUE MEANING. IT IS NO SURPRISE, TO ME, THAT IT WAS GEORGE WHO ACCOMPANIED JOHN ON THOSE VISITS OF CONSOLATION AND REFLECTION TO ASTRID AFTER STUART’S DEATH. JOHN NEEDED GEORGE TO HELP HIM COPE; HE NEEDED THAT TIME.

  Stuart’s impact on the group, especially John and Paul, was never premeditated or calculated. He was in the forefront of the group’s early rise because he was so understated. His actions were spoken in looks, appearances, and a genuine concern about the inner workings of people. He had an inner warmth that radiated in his eyes. He was a fascinating young man. His avant-garde personality reflected so many aspects of the group’s evolving success: a cleaner look, yet an appearance of modernism; a step ahead of current fashions; a daring, reflected in Stuart’s most sexual and stirring movements on stage. Stuart and his young love Astrid Kirchherr mesmerized the group—he, merely with his presence, and she, with her beauty, photographic art, and themes that corroborated their music with a futuristic style that reverberated throughout the world of pop culture.

  Yet, with all due credit to Ms. Kirchherr, it was, according to Stu’s sister Pauline, “less Astrid and more Stuart” that changed Johnny’s boys into a first-class physical attraction.

  “Astrid deserves so much credit, but Stuart was the inspiration,” Pauline says. “It was her love, her dedication to him, and his for her, that led them to this amazing collaboration of art, photography, and ideas.”

  No one who testifies in this story will deny that. But also, no one can deny that the eye and spirit of the photographer brought alive the boys’ youth and vitality. As the decades have passed, Kirchherr’s photographs have provided a vibrant retrospective of that time in the boys’ lives, and behind them is a backstory of her influence, Stuart’s lasting legacy, and the two love stories that shaped the Beatles in Hamburg.

  The first is a story of young love: Astrid and Stuart.

  One privately held photograph is proof of the endless affection of this love story. In a rare contemporary interview, Kirchherr told colleague and fellow Lennon biographer Tim Riley that a photo of Stuart remains at her bedside, a picture she acknowledges each and every night.

  She told the Woman’s Hour program on the BBC during the opening of her photography retrospective at the Victoria Gallery and Museum in late 2010, “I still love him up to now, and he is my first and last love, in my life.”

  As the other boys scrambled to the safety of home, three of them disgraced by the law, Stuart decided to stay in Hamburg. Astrid emphasizes that their relationship was one reason, but she adds, “Don’t forget the art. Well, he had the chance to get a scholarship in the University of Hamburg, the Art College. So that was something brilliant for him. And he always wanted to become a painter. He loved the idea of being a rock ’n’ roll musician, and, you know, all the behavior that came with it. But in his heart, he was just an artist, and when the opportunity came up to stay in Hamburg, and his teacher was Mr. Paolozzi, he just couldn’t resist not to do that. So . . . that’s why he [eventually] left the band.”

  The second love story—between Stuart and John—was not romantic, as far as we know. Although Pauline acknowledges it was possible.

  “They were experimental boys. So anything was possible, but their friendship was deep in another way. . . . He was a man, a young boy of huge integrity, and I also remembered the quote John Lennon said about him—that he looked up to him, he trusted him, he respected him because he always told him the truth, and that’s what he was like as a brother as well. So it echoes to me in the same way that it did—so it has the same authenticity—when John Lennon said that, because he was like that with everybody.”

  Beatle buddy Tony Bramwell was privy to the friendship in its earliest days.

  “Stuart Sutcliffe was his closest friend. They shared secrets, women, and their influence on each other was incalculable.”

  All the time, watching on the sidelines, was Paul McCartney, who along with George, was not impressed with Stuart’s musical talents. Still, the musical record shows how powerful and memorable Stu’s solo rendition of “Love Me Tender” was to Hamburg audiences.

  Horst Fascher and others were eyewitnesses to Paul’s open jealousy of Stuart. Yet George, who cared little for Stuart’s music, was fond of him on a personal level. Pauline Sutcliffe, who has fond memories of George, believes that Paul wanted Stuart to leave but was not prepared to take action.

  “Paul knew that he and John were going to be something special, so when Stuart decided to leave the band, it sort of cleared the deck, so to say,” she says. “Paul was a bit jealous of Stu’s good looks, and he didn’t appear too impressed with his musical impact, which I believe was totally underrated in the day. George, on the other hand, was sensitive to John’s eventual guilt and grief, and his own as well.”

  Was Paul jealous? Jealous, perhaps, of Stu’s good looks, but also a bit envious of his relationship with John—“as close as two men could be,” according to Pauline. There were tensions on stage, and a few fistfights between Paul and Stu. There was a double-edged sword for Paul—a feeling that Stu was not up to the task musically, and Stuart’s closeness to John.

  The legend of John and Stu’s relationship is also confirmed by John’s sister, Julia Baird, who says, “H
e was a lovely boy. He moved with grace, and John was so dependent on him.”

  Paul, who today is bounded by his own code of silence regarding anything that may reflect a tad of controversy (certainly his right), will not comment on his suspected jealousy of Stu or, for that matter, anything else in this body of work. But unlike the overt and covert eventual moves toward ousting Pete Best, there doesn’t appear to have been a coordinated effort to push Stuart out. To the contrary, it was the other factors that contributed to his departure: his love of Astrid, and his passion for art. His departure from the band was voluntary. About that fact there is no dispute.

  Allan Williams, the man who brought the boys to Hamburg, knew that in his heart Stu was devoted to the canvas.

  “He was more a friend of John’s; he wasn’t really a musician. John persuaded him to come to Hamburg, which upset Paul, because Paul wasn’t stupid and he knew that Stu was no guitarist and he wanted to be the bass player.”

  John’s loyalty to Stu was amazing and unswerving. In fact, there were times, not all the time, mind you, when John had his back and conspired a bit to cover up any of Stu’s musical shortcomings.

  One memorable episode was at Sam Leach’s Casanova Club on February 11, 1961.

  First Leach complained to Stuart that he was turning his back to the audience. Stu didn’t seem to care. Then Leach noticed something else. In his book Birth of the Beatles, and a subsequent conversation with his American friend John Rose, Sam explained how he almost gave a secret away:

  NOTICING THAT THE LEAD FROM STU’S GUITAR WAS DETACHED FROM THE SPEAKER, I THOUGHT I COULD HELP BY PLUGGING IT IN. UNNOTICED BY THE REST OF THE BAND, I SLIPPED ACROSS THE BACK OF MY STAGE, PICKED UP THE LEAD, AND INSERTED IT INTO THE SPEAKER SOCKET. AT ONCE, THE MOST DISCORDANT RACKET EXPLODED IN THE ROOM AND ALMOST BLEW THE ENTIRE AMPLIFIER APART. THE AMOROUS DANCERS SMOOCHING IN A WORLD OF THEIR OWN JUMPED SEVERAL FEET INTO THE AIR. HANDS WERE CLASPED OVER THEIR EYES. STU HAD BEEN HAPPILY PLUCKING AWAY AT THE STRINGS, SAFE IN THE KNOWLEDGE THAT NOBODY COULD HEAR WHAT HE WAS OR RATHER WASN’T PLAYING. . . . PAUL LEAPED ACROSS THE STAGE AND YANKED THE OFFENDING LEAD FROM THE SPEAKER, WHISPERING HARSHLY, “WHY DID YOU DO THAT SET? YOU KNOW HE CAN’T PLAY.” . . . TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE, PAUL’S STAGE WHISPER CAME OUT OVER THE ENTIRE SPEAKER SYSTEM. . . . I SEARCHED FOR THE NEAREST HOLE. LENNON GAVE ME A SLY SMIRK.