Stuart
Sutcliffe (23rd June 1940 to 10th April 1962)
After a day seeing the sights at Liverpool I got in the car to
head home to Manchester. For some reason the motorway had been closed. I tried
driving an odd route through suburbia and found myself heading toward Huyton. I
decided to head to the parish church as I knew the “lost” Beatle Stuart
Sutcliffe was buried there (also hoped passing some time would mean the motorway
would soon open.) I’d been there before and only found ancient graves round the
back then driven away disappointed. I didn’t know then that the main cemetery
was across the road through a small steel gate.
I
parked up by the church ready to search again. I had not eaten much and was
slightly weak so I grabbed a Kitkat and decided I’d eat it when I’d Stuart’s headstone.
Hours earlier I’d been at The Beatles Experience at Albert Dock and seen a
photo of him. I soon got to consume the Kitkat as the graveyard was small and I
found the headstone in five minutes. Here it is.
Stuart
was the bassist in The Beatles before Paul McCartney. At the time they were “The
Beetles”, a name invented by Stuart and John Lennon as they loved Buddy Holly’s
band “The Crickets”. Before the group became known globally they lived and
played in Hamburg, Germany. However at this time the group were not much
different from others playing with instruments they were paying off weekly.
Stuart
left the group to study art at The Hamburg College Of Art (lending his guitar
to Paul McCartney until Paul could buy his own left-handed version.) He banged
his head but didn’t know something was seriously wrong with him. He suffered
headaches that temporarily blinded him and collapsed one day in an art class. Doctors
suggested he return to Britain to get examined in a hospital with better
technology. He did but they found nothing wrong with him. He returned to
Hamburg but collapsed again and died of a cerebral haemorrhage (a ruptured
aneurysm.) He had died in his girlfriend’s arms before the ambulance reached
the hospital.
There
seem to be two versions of how he banged his head:
1)
He
was kicked in the head in a fight after a Beatles performance (John’s little
finger was broken as he fought off the attacker.) He refused medical attention
and even failed to keep an X-ray appointment at Sefton General Hospital. If
he’d had a scan the fracture might have been spotted and the death prevented.
2)
His
own mother heard Stuart had fallen down the steps leading to the attic at his
girlfriend’s mother’s house in Germany.
The other Beatles
didn’t hear of the death for a few days. Stuart’s mother flew to Hamburg with
the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein to bring the body back to Liverpool. Stuart’s
dad didn’t hear of his son's death for three weeks. He was sailing to South
America and found out when he docked in Buenos Aires (his dad is buried in this
grave, too.)
There are four
television documentaries and five books about Stuart Sutcliffe. Who knows how
different The Beatles would have been had Stuart stayed with them after they
returned to Liverpool and wrote all those hits?
I ate the Kitkat
and stayed in the graveyard for about 20 minutes. From any spot you could see
just about all the other graves. I saw about ten war graves dotted around and
went to read every one (and do a salute.) There were some rooks playing on
nearby branches and one magpie on the grass. One for sorrow two for joy, I
thought, and looked round for a second magpie. I didn’t see one so “one for
sorrow” was true here: a kid in a grave at 21.
It had been an
odd day. I’d been around the Beatles seminal spots with a friend (Mendips,
Strawberry Field gate, etc.) We had called in The Cavern for a drink. Shortly
after I heard Cilla Black had died at her home in Spain. We’d only just seen
photos of her as the cloak room girl/waitress at The Cavern.
It took a long
time to get home as the motorway was still closed but I drove back under a late
evening sun with the Fab Four for company.
The link : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Sutcliffe
About to enter
the grave to the cemetery. I’ll eat the Kitkat (holding it up) when I find the
headstone…
I found it quite
quickly…
Eating the
Kitkat as planned…
In 2020...
