The Beatles’ future bassist Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe was born on 23 June 1940 at the Simpson Memorial Maternity Pavilion Hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland, which was incorporated into the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
His father Charles was a naval officer, and his mother Millie was a school teacher. The Sutcliffe family moved to Liverpool in 1943.
Sutcliffe later became firm friends with John Lennon, a fellow student at the Liverpool College of Art who invited him to join his band. Although he was never a talented musician, Sutcliffe did help contribute to a key part of The Beatles’ story: their name, which was a tribute to Buddy Holly’s band The Crickets.
Sutcliffe died of a brain haemorrhage in Hamburg on 10 April 1962.
utcliffe
Page last updated: 2 February 2023
Stuart actually was a talented musician and according to Klaus Voormann, Stuart actually taught him the basics of the bass guitar. Additionally, Stuart asked David May of The Silhouettes to teach him how to play bass the right way and he sincerely made the effort to learn how to play properly, even writing in a letter to that they had improved significantly after arriving in Hamburg.
He had a diverse musical background: singing in the church choir, piano lessons, playing bugle and guitar chord tuition from his father Charles.
Stuart didn’t just have two sisters named Joyce and Pauline, but he also had three half-brothers named Joe, Ian and Charles and a half-sister named Mattie, all of whom were the product of his father’s first marriage.