The Beatle Paul McCartney said everyone was jealous of
When it comes to The Beatles, you can tell a lot about someone from their choice of ‘The Fifth Beatle’. George Martin is the intellectual’s choice, the pick of those who see the band as a true collaboration. Simultaneously, Billy Preston is the muso’s choice, for those who just want to see a bunch of great players playing together. Regardless of who it is, from Pete Best to Brian Epstein, there’s an argument for it.
However, what of the aesthetes of this world? The kind of people who know that deep down, people only really cared about The Beatles because of how cool they looked and sounded? They have Stuart Sutcliffe. While I may sound like I’m looking down on them, their argument for the original Beatles bassist is a convincing one, as few people have ever had the impact on The Fabs that Stu did.
Especially because of his impact on the band, which, due to tragic reasons, would only occur when the members were little more than teenagers. Sutcliffe was there when the band were at their most impressionable, chiefly because he was John Lennon’s best friend. The two were inseparable at art school, and, more importantly, Sutcliffe was absolutely the cool one.
He was considered one of the stars of the whole school for his phenomenal skill at the easel and his impeccable taste, not to mention his smouldering good looks. No wonder Lennon, ever the social climber, attached himself to Sutcliffe’s hip and never looked back, even moving in with him once they graduated from art school.
Why were The Beatles jealous of Stuart Sutcliffe?
In an interview conducted for the DVD version of The Beatles Anthology, Paul McCartney talked candidly about Sutcliffe and Lennon’s relationship. He said, “We were all slightly jealous of John’s friendship with him. John being a little older, certainly than me, certainly than George, you wanted to sit next to him on the bus. He was the older fella, y’know, it’s just the way it was.”
He elaborated, “When Stuart came in, it took a little bit of that position away from us. So, we had to take a little bit of a back seat.” At the time, the first incarnation of The Quarrymen had come to an end, and Lennon, McCartney and George Harrison were tooling around as Johnny and the Moondogs, wondering what to do next. Stuart then sold possibly the most fateful painting in the history of rock music.
No matter how jealous the rest of the band were, they knew an opportunity when they saw it. The band convinced him to spend the £75 he’d received as payment on a bass guitar and join them to form a new band, one that would need a new name. Sutcliffe, ever the man to know what was cool and what wasn’t, helped name The Beatles and coined the style that would define their early 1960s breakout.
Which was all just as well, because Sutcliffe had all the bass-playing ability of a chair. He didn’t need to play, though, since his legacy is arguably baked into The Beatles, despite his tragic passing at just 21 years old.
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