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The Beatles · S2 E2
Stuart Sutcliffe
John's best friend from art school. A brilliant painter who buys a bass guitar with prize money and joins the band despite barely being able to play it
Liverpool, late 1959. A nineteen-year-old art student wins £65 at the John Moores Exhibition for a painting, and his best friend John Lennon talks him into spending every penny on a bass guitar he has no idea how to play.
Built from a John Lennon home demo, "Free as a Bird" was completed by Paul, George, and Ringo thirty years later. The music video flies through Beatles history like a ghost revisiting everything that was. Stuart Sutcliffe left something unfinished too.
Free as a Bird (1995)
John recorded the demo on a cassette at his Dakota apartment in 1977. Yoko gave the tape to Paul, George, and Ringo in 1994, and they built a full song around his voice, produced by Jeff Lynne. The technical challenge was enormous: they had to work around the hiss, the uneven tempo, and the ache of singing harmony with a dead friend. Listen for the moment all four voices come together in the chorus.
TAP TO REVEAL: How did Stuart hide the fact that he couldn't play bass?
The Bond
John and Stuart meet at Liverpool College of Art and recognize something in each other immediately. Stuart is quiet, intense, intellectual. John is loud, defensive, funny. They become inseparable, sharing a flat at 3 Gambier Terrace where the walls are covered in Stuart's paintings and the floor is covered in John's chaos.
Baby's in Black (The Beatles)
A waltz in 6/8 time from Beatles for Sale (1964) about a woman dressed in mourning who can't let go. Many scholars believe it references Astrid Kirchherr, Stuart's girlfriend, who wore black long after his death. John and Paul wrote it face to face, and it's one of the few songs where their grief sits right on the surface.
Liverpool College of Art
Hope Street, Liverpool. Where John Lennon enrolled in 1957 and met Stuart Sutcliffe. The art school sat right next to the Liverpool Institute, Paul and George's school, and the buildings shared a back entrance.
Stuart is in, and the group now has a bass player, a visual identity, and a flat full of paint and ambition. Next: a terrible pun, Buddy Holly's Crickets, and a night of brainstorming produce the most famous band name in history.
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