Since leaving the band, Stuart had lived with Astrid in the penthouse flat at her mother’s house in Altona, studying with the British artist Eduardo Paolozzi, then teaching in Hamburg, developing considerably as a collagist and painter in the abstract expressionist style. Latterly, he painted big, dark canvases that coincided with a severe deterioration in his health. Stuart suffered increasingly from headaches; his mood became erratic and his beautiful handwriting degenerated into a scrawl. He felt tired, and suffered seizures. Tests failed to show what was wrong. On Tuesday 10 April 1962, at Astrid’s flat, Stuart shrieked with pain, collapsed and died. He was 21.
The tragic circumstances of his death have given Stu a posthumous significance he might not otherwise have enjoyed, and there has been a great deal of supposition about the cause of his death and his relationship with the Beatles, some of it wild. In her book, The Beatles’ Shadow, Stuart’s sister Pauline writes that she believes her brother died as a delayed consequence of a kick in the head he’d received from John Lennon during an altercation in Hamburg. In the same book Pauline speculates, sensationally, that John and her brother had a homosexual relationship. ‘I have known in my heart for many years that Stuart and John had a sexual relationship,’ she writes, though she fails to provide any firm evidence. Pauline wonders whether this ‘relationship’ was the real cause of the antagonism between Paul and Stu. Astrid Kirchherr, who is best placed to know the facts, dismisses both the kick in the head and gay sex theories as ‘nonsense’, saying Stuart had an existing physiological condition that simply caught up with him in April 1962. ‘John never, ever raised his hand towards Stuart. Never ever. I can swear that. That’s all Pauline [saying that],’ she says with irritation. ‘The doctor explained it to me that his brain was, in a way, too big for his head – one day it just went click.’
John became hysterical when told Stuart had died. Stu had been his best friend. Not so Paul who, when Mrs Sutcliffe arrived from Liverpool, tried to be consoling, but managed to say the wrong thing, as he had before, and would again when faced with death. ‘My mother died when I was 14,’ he supposedly told the grieving woman, according to Philip Norman’s book Shout!, ‘and I’d forgotten all about her in six months.’ If he really did say this, it can be excused as the sort of gauche comment young people do make at times of crisis, and of course it wasn’t true. Paul often thought about Mary McCartney. As the years passed it became plain that he was very deeply affected by memories of his mother.
The Beatles did not return to Liverpool for Stuart’s funeral. They stayed in Hamburg to play the Star-Club, the newest, biggest rock ’n’ roll venue in St Pauli, which attracted not only two-bit Liverpool bands, but such established American stars as Gene Vincent and Little Richard, heroes whom Paul now found himself rubbing shoulders with in the club’s changing rooms, which like everything else about the Star-Club were superior to the facilities the Beatles had experienced previously in Germany. The Star-Club was the best club the Beatles had played, and the band was correspondingly more professional-looking now that Brian had got them out of their leathers into suits and ties, though they hadn’t lost the elemental, slightly rough sound they’d developed in the clubs. There was also still a loutish element to these young men, as was demonstrated by the way they treated their new digs, an apartment opposite the club on Grosse Freiheit. Lennon, roaring at the world now that Stu had died, on top of the traumatic loss of his mother, erected a profane crucifix outside the apartment window, decorated with a condom, and urinated over nuns walking to nearby St Joseph’s Church. When George threw up in the flat, the vomit was left to fester; the boys made a feature of the sick, stubbing their cigarettes out in it. The next group into the flat after the Beatles was fellow Merseysider Kingsize Taylor and his band the Dominoes. ‘I just nearly threw up,’ recalls Kingsize (whose tape recording of the Beatles at the Star-Club became one of the most famous of all Beatles bootlegs). The vomit wasn’t the worst of it. ‘There was a heap of crap behind the door where somebody would have a crap and put a newspaper over it … the whole place was just a total shambles. It had to be fumigated.’ Horst Fascher recalls another less than charming habit the Beatles had: a filthy game whereby John and Paul would hawk up against the wall to see whose phlegm slid down first.
The Beatles were rescued from their own muck by a telegram from home. Wired by Brian Epstein on Wednesday 9 May, the message read:
CONGRATULATIONS BOYS. EMI REQUEST RECORDING SESSION. PLEASE REHEARSE NEW MATERIAL. Having initially suggested Brian bring the boys in to audition when convenient, George Martin had met with Brian again and was showing a keener interest in the Beatles as a Parlophone act. He agreed that a contract should be drawn up so that, if he liked what he saw and heard when he met the boys, he could sign them forthwith. This justified Brian’s telegram.
CHANGES
It was love at first sight, as George Martin would write of the moment he met the Beatles at Abbey Road on 6 June 1962. He noted how well groomed they were – Brian’s influence – and the unusual haircuts. ‘But the most impressive thing was their engaging personalities. They were just great people to be with.’ The band performed for him with gusto, Paul singing favourite numbers from their stage show, including old chestnuts such as ‘Besame Mucho’ and Fats Waller’s ‘Your Feet’s Too Big’. Martin wasn’t madly impressed by these covers, nor by the original songs John and Paul had written, including an early, dirge-like ‘Love Me Do’, sung in harmony by Paul and John, the latter interjecting a bluesy harmonica in the style of Delbert McClinton on Bruce Channel’s ‘Hey! Baby’. When John was blowing the harp, Paul sang on his own, and he sounded nervous. Still, the boys exuded an energy and charm that gave Martin a warm feeling. If audiences could be made to share that feeling the Beatles could be big. The producer agreed to sign the band for one year, during which time he would have the right to record six titles, with the Beatles receiving a niggardly but then standard royalty of a penny-per-disc. At least they had a deal and, surprisingly, it was with an EMI label, even though they’d previously been turned down by head office. Brian had sneaked the Beatles in through the back door of ‘the greatest recording organisation in the world’, which led to problems later.
A more immediate concern was that Martin didn’t like the Beatles’ drummer. He found Pete Best personally less engaging than the others, ‘almost sullen’, and didn’t think he kept time well. The producer asked John and Paul if they would consider replacing him. ‘We said, “No, we can’t!”’ Paul recalls. ‘It was one of those terrible things you go through as kids. Can we betray him? No. But our career was on the line.’ In truth, Pete had never fitted in. He didn’t share the same history with John, Paul and George: hadn’t been with them in the Quarry Men; didn’t go to Scotland. He’d been hired as a stopgap for Hamburg and, despite the orgiastic evenings they shared in the Bambi Kino, he often seemed the odd man out in St Pauli, not sharing the same jokes and references. Curiously, this enhanced his image with fans on Merseyside. The lonesome persona Pete had involuntarily acquired was taken for ‘mean, moody magnificence’, in the oft-quoted words of Cavern MC Bob Wooler. Girls fancied Pete, more than the other Beatles, as became evident when the band went to Manchester on Whit Monday 1962 to record a radio show.
The Beatles had a fan club now, run in the first instance by Cavern dweller Roberta ‘Bobbie’ Brown, then Frieda Kelly, who went to work for Brian Epstein, bringing the fan club under his management. The relationship between the fan club and the band was symbiotic. The girls (and most fan club members were female) got to have a relationship with the Beatles, directly at first, when the members were virtually all Cavern-goers, then more remotely by post. In return Brian could marshal supporters whenever the boys needed a boost. When the Beatles travelled to Manchester, on 11 June 1962, to perform for the BBC Light Programme – one of their first BBC broadcasts – fan club members were invited to go on the coach with them to ensure the band had an enthusiastic audience. This worked well except that after the show the fans made much more of a fuss of Pete than the other Beatles, to the obvious displeasure of Paul’s father who found himself sitting on the bus with his son waiting for Pete. ‘It was Pete Best all the girls wanted,’ recalls Bill Harry, who was also on the coach. ‘Eventually Pete was able to extricate himself, got into the coach, and Jim McCartney started telling him off, saying he was