The Beatles: John Lennon Commemorated Stuart Sutcliffe’s Tragic Death With Photos

The Beatles experienced tragedy since the early days of the band. The deaths of John Lennon and George Harrison rocked Beatles fans, and their survivors, but The Beatles lost a key collaborator in 1962. Stuart Suttcliffe has been called “the fifth Beatle.” He was the original bass player and a personal friend of Lennon’s. He died young in 1962 and Lennon commemorated his memory at the time. 

Beatles historian David Bedford appeared on the Beatles City podcast on Aug. 23, 2020 to discuss Sutcliffe. The author Bedford was also in charge of Sutcliffe’s fan club. Here’s how Lennon commemorated Sutcliffe in photos.

John Lennon and The Beatles learned about Stuart Sutcliffe’s death the day after

Sutcliffe left The Beatles to pursue his art in 1961. Only one year later, he died of a brain hemorrhage. Lennon and company only found out when they arrived from an international flight.

“It’s one of those tragic things,” Bedford said on Beatles City. “They were flying back to Hamburg to open The Star-Club in April 1962. George had been ill so he came out the following day. So it was John and Paul [McCartney] and Pete [Best] flew into Hamburg airport. Normally Astrid [Kirchherr] and Stuart would be there to greet them. This time it was just Astrid. John says where’s Stuart and he’d died the previous day. Astrid had to tell him.”

John Lennon asked Stuart Sutcliffe’s fiance, Astrid Kirchherr, to take his photos

Kirchherr was a photographer and she had taken some photos of Sutcliffe. Lennon asked Kirchherr to take photos of him in Sutcliffe’s memory.

“A tragic way of finding out the news and John was devastated,” Bedford continued. “One of the things he did, he said to Astrid, he wanted to pose in exactly the same place in her studio as Stuart had done. there’s a series of photos of John standing in the same pose, exactly the same place as Stuart had done.”

Bedford said those photos truly evoke Lennon’s anguish at losing his friend.  

“In the attic, there’s the skylight window shining through,” Bedford said. “You can just see because Astrid was such a good photographer, you can just see the pain on John’s face.”

The Beatles kept in touch with Astrid Kirchherr

The Beatles would call upon Kirchherr’s services again, and Yoko Ono would confirm Lennon always thought about Sutcliffe. Kirchherr herself died May 12, 2020.

“Astrid came out to Liverpool,” Bedford said. “Brian [Epstein] engaged her to do some photographs of The Beatles here in Liverpool. They kept that connection. They stayed close. Part of that came from John’s point of view to still have a connection with Stuart. I remember Yoko Ono saying a number of years ago hardly a day went by that John didn’t mention Stuart. Even all those years later, that influence of Stuart on John was still there on John’s life.”