A 5th Beatle

The first thing I would like to say is: I was inspired to write this by another Hubber,

eilander1542011 who is "Watching The Wheels". I love your writting my friend, and look forward to each new article you publish!

I became a Beatles fan at a very young age. A time when my "best friend" was a few years older, and when I believed I could run faster when she held my hand and ran with me. So it is a very nice coindidence that the first Beatles song I ever heard was "I Want To Hold Your Hand".

I was used to hearing the twangy sounds of talents like Johnny Cash, and Loretta Lynn on my mother's morning radio. So the Beatles were as new to me as they were to the rest of the world. I was young, but I knew what I liked. And the Beatles filled a spot in my musical heart that has been full ever since.

There have been a zillion articles written about the Beatles. There are those who could teach Beatles Trivia at the college level. So I am not really writting about the Beatles as a band. I will concentrate my efforts here toward one of the few people known as The 5th Beatle, Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe.

Stu Sutcliffe was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on June 23, 1940. By age 19 he was considered one of the most promising art students at Liverpool Art College, where he and John Lennon met and became friends.

Stu was a "James Dean" type at the school. Moody and romantic. Living the life of an up and coming artist in a small, paint splattered house nearby. John lived in the house with Stu for a time, where they drank and discussed their passions for art.

The first stirrings of the Beatles actually started out in 1957 when John Lennon formed a group called The Quarrymen. John convinced Stu to spend the £65 he made from selling a painting, (a large sum for a student artist in 1959), on a bass guitar, and join the band. Forget the fact that Stu did not know how to play. He purchased a Hofner President 500/5 model bass, and learned.

Stu and John are jointly accredited with coming up with The Beatles, (The Silver Beatles first), as the name for the band. They admired Buddy Holly and the Crickets, and John is quoted as having said, "It's all about the beat", in reference to the music. So the play on words was very innovative for the time.

Violence accompanied the shows the Silver Beatles played, and one night after a performance at Litherland Town Hall, north from Liverpool, the band was attacked by a group of street toughs called Teddy Boys as they started for their van. While Stu was down, he was kicked in the head. He sustained a gash that was still bleeding when he made it home. He refused to let his mother call a doctor in to treat the wound.

Stu was still with the band when they play their first tour in Hamburg, Germany. While there he met and fell in love with a photographer, named Astrid Kirchherr. She first gave Stu the distinctive haircut which the rest boys in the band adopted.

Stu gradually left the band durning their second German tour durning 1961.  Returning to his first love, art, and to be with his true love, enrolling in the Hamburg College of Art, where Astrid studied.

Stu loaned Paul his bass until Paul could buy his own (left handed), Hofner. Stu and John remained close friends. Stu's picture appears on the album cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, on the far left.

Stu began to have sever, violent headaches in Germany, which left him temporarily blind. He eventually died from an aneurysm in the right side of his brain on April 10, 1962. The Beatles arrived the next day to start their third Hamburg tour.

Stu was two mouths away from his 22nd birthday.

"In the big picture it doesn't really matter if we never made a record or we never sang a song. That isn't important. At death, you're going to be needing some spiritual guidance and some kind of inner knowledge that extends beyond the boundaries of the physical world."

George Harrison