“I didn’t think he was a very good musician”: The worst musician Paul McCartney said The Beatles had
There’s a certain magic that came whenever The Beatles that wasn’t lost on Paul McCartney.
He may have been the one who wrote all of those classic songs with John Lennon at the start of their career, but if it wasn’t for all of them finding their place in every single one of their tunes, chances are the whole thing would have collapsed before it had even got started. But even if they had some of the greatest chemistry that any band could have asked for, there was a lot of trial and error before they really got to that place.
At the same time, no one really understood the magic that the band had until they had played together for the last time. The announcement that they were breaking up was enough to send music fans into a depression for days afterwards, and once John Lennon was assassinated in 1980, the thought of the four of them never getting back together again for a new album made everyone feel like they had lost one of their family members.
But when Macca was first working with Lennon, they were more than happy to be playing music to anyone who would listen. They didn’t even have a drummer for the first few months of their career when George Harrison joined them, and no matter how many times they claimed that “the rhythm was in the guitars”, they needed to find something a little bit more stable when Pete Best came into the group.
Granted, Best was always the slightest bit out of step with the rest of the band. He wasn’t a terrible drummer by any means, but when you hear their Decca audition tape compared to what Ringo Starr would do behind the kit, there’s no question that Starr was the right guy for them when they actually started recording. But if McCartney had it his way, he would have stayed on guitar were it not for Stuart Sutcliffe not having the kind of chops that the band needed to carry on.
Sutcliffe was already on board as one of Lennon’s close friends, but it was clear that he was much more of an artist than he was a musician. He definitely looked the part by being one of the first people to adopt the Beatles mop-top haircut, but given the fact that his bass wasn’t plugged in half the time they played and he usually turned his back to the audience because he was so inaccurate, it wasn’t like McCartney wanted to keep him around when they started to go professional.
They needed something stronger, and while Macca took it upon himself to play bass, he had no problem calling Sutcliffe one of the least talented members to ever join The Beatles, saying, “He wasn’t very musical, Stuart. We actually used to have to ask him to turn his back to the camera if there were any photos being taken, because we knew that people could see he wasn’t necessarily playing in the same key as us. Now, the rumour since has been that I edged him out of the band because we certainly did have our difficulties. For me, it was mainly because I didn’t think he was a very good musician, which he wasn’t, and he admitted it.”
And considering the band was set to become one of the biggest groups in the world, the real tragedy would have been keeping Sutcliffe around and watching him hold the rest of them back. He did indeed look the part whenever he played, but he is a classic example of just because someone has the right looks doesn’t necessarily mean they’re right for whatever band they’re playing with.
The Sid Vicious logic doesn’t exactly apply to a band like The Beatles, and even when they had other legendary musicians working with them, like Billy Preston and Eric Clapton, there was no doubt that Sutcliffe could have never gone the same distance as the rest of them. His story is a lot more tragic when he passed away suddenly due to a brain haemorrhage, but even if his legacy lives on as one of the many ‘Fifth Beatles’, there was no chance that he could have been there for Beatlemania.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.