Stu Sutcliffe

Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe (23 June 1940 – 10 April 1962) was a British painter and musician, best known as the original bass guitarist of the Beatles. Sutcliffe left the band to pursue his career as a painter, having previously attended Liverpool College of Art. Sutcliffe and John Lennon are credited with inventing the name "Beetles" , as they both liked Buddy Holly's band, the Crickets. They also had a fascination with group names with double meanings (as Crickets, for example, the word referring to both an insect and a sport), so Lennon then came up with "The Beatles", from the word beat (though Lennon's original spelling was "Beatals"). As a member of the group when it was a five-piece band, Sutcliffe is one of several who are sometimes referred to as the "Fifth Beatle".

When he performed with the Beatles in Hamburg, he met photographer Astrid Kirchherr, to whom he was later engaged to marry. 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.

While studying in West Germany, Sutcliffe 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 a cause. After collapsing again on 10 April 1962, Sutcliffe was taken to a hospital, but died in the ambulance on the way. The cause of death was later found to have been a brain haemorrhage in the right ventricle of his brain.

Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe was the eldest child of Charles and Martha (known as "Millie") Sutcliffe. Charles – "a public school boy, army officer, prominent member of the Tory party and leading fellow of the masons" – had moved to Liverpool in 1943 to help with work for the War Office, administering the Cammell Laird shipyards munitions department in Birkenhead. He subsequently signed on as a ship's engineer, so he was often at sea during his son's early years. Millie was a teacher at an infants' school and "an active supporter of the Labour party". Sutcliffe's father was Protestant and his mother Catholic; their families disowned them and they "probably did not marry". Sutcliffe had two younger sisters, Pauline and Joyce; three older half-brothers, Joe, Ian, and Charles; and an older half-sister, Mattie, from his father's first marriage to a woman also named Martha.

Sutcliffe was born on 23 June 1940 at the Edinburgh Royal Maternity Hospital and Simpson Memorial Maternity Pavilion in Edinburgh. After his family moved to England, he was brought up at 37 Aigburth Drive in Liverpool. He attended Park View Primary School, Huyton (1946–1951), and Prescot Grammar School from 4 September 1951 to 1956. When Sutcliffe's father returned home on leave, he invited his son and art college classmate Rod Murray (also Sutcliffe's housemate and best friend), for a "real good booze-up", slipping £10 into Sutcliffe's pocket before disappearing for another six months.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.