Cynthia Lennon Shared Why Stuart Sutcliffe Was Better Than John Lennon’s Other ‘Cronies’
Cynthia Lennon said that she, Stuart Sutcliffe, and Paul McCartney were the people closest to John Lennon before The Beatles. Lennon had a number of friends, but she didn’t think he could be his full self around them. Of everyone in Lennon’s life, though, she believed Sutcliffe offered him the most. Even McCartney, who had a fulfilling creative relationship with Lennon, didn’t treat him as an equal at first. She believed this set Sutcliffe apart.
Stuart Sutcliffe treated John Lennon as an equal
Sutcliffe and Lennon met at art school in Liverpool. While Sutcliffe helped Lennon with his classwork, Lennon taught his friend about music. Cynthia believed Lennon was a positive force in Sutcliffe’s life.
“Stuart was so wrapped up in his work that he didn’t have a girlfriend and often forgot to eat,” she wrote in her book John. “Most days he would stay after classes to paint. John was good for him because he reminded Stuart to take time out to have fun, and taught him to play the guitar.”
She also thought Sutcliffe was a good presence in Lennon’s life. Most of his friends wanted to be him. They tried to emulate his attitude and style of dress. Sutcliffe, by contrast, treated Lennon as his equal.
“Unlike many of John’s cronies, Stuart didn’t look up to John or try to ape him,” she wrote. “He respected John and treated him as an equal, which was something John valued a great deal.”
Paul McCartney tried to emulate his older bandmate
McCartney was another one of Lennon’s close friends, but Cynthia believed he was more awestruck by Lennon than Sutcliffe was. McCartney was younger and tried to act like Lennon to seem more mature.
“In those days, Paul tried hard to impress John, posing and strutting with his hair slicked back to prove that he was cool, because John was very much the leader,” Cynthia wrote. “It was his band, and he had the final say about who got in and who didn’t, and what they played.”
Unfortunately for McCartney, Cynthia said he couldn’t quite pull this off.
“Then, he was everything Paul wanted to be — laid-back, self-assured, and in charge,” she wrote. “As the schoolboy he still was, Paul could only aspire to those things.”
As McCartney got older, though, he and Lennon were on more equal footing.
John Lennon was devastated by Stuart Sutcliffe’s death
Sutcliffe was a member of The Beatles in the band’s earliest days, but he quit to pursue his art. Not long after this, he died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage. Lennon, who reportedly viewed Sutcliffe as a soul mate, was devastated.
“John went into hysterics,” Sutcliffe’s girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr said, per The New Yorker. “We couldn’t make out . . . whether he was laughing or crying because he did everything at once. I remember him sitting on a bench, huddled over, and he was shaking, rocking backward and forward.”
Yoko Ono, who never met Sutcliffe, said there was never a point in Lennon’s life in which he did not discuss his friend.
