Holocaust victim

Stuart Sutcliffe collapsed in his art class in Hamburg, Germany, in February 1962. He had been complaining of headaches for months, and they were steadily getting worse. He couldn't see clearly anymore, and the light hurt his eyes.

When he fell to the floor, the class panicked. Stuart was only 21 years old—a young Scottish painter, engaged to a beautiful German photographer, and studying under one of the most famous artists in Europe.

He also had a secret life he had just left behind. He used to be in a band. That band was called the Beatles.

Six months later, they would have their first hit. Eighteen months later, they would change music forever. But Stuart wouldn't live to see any of it.

Here is how he got there.

Stuart was born on June 23, 1940, in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of a schoolteacher and a civil servant. The family moved to Liverpool when Stuart was three. His father went to sea, and his mother raised the children. Stuart was different from other kids—quiet, smart, sensitive, he drew constantly and painted obsessively.

In 1956, at age 16, he started at the Liverpool College of Art. That was where he met John Lennon.

John was loud and rough; Stuart was quiet and elegant. Despite their differences, they became best friends. John was already trying to start a rock band with his school friend Paul McCartney. They called themselves the Quarrymen, then the Silver Beetles, and went through a few other names.

The band desperately needed a bass player. Stuart didn't play any instrument and didn't really care about rock music, but he had just sold one of his paintings for £65—big money for a teenager back then. John talked him into spending that money on a Höfner bass guitar, and then taught him three basic chords.

Stuart officially joined the band in May 1960. He couldn't really play, so he would often stand on stage with his back to the crowd so people couldn't see his fingers. He couldn't sing well either, but he had something the rest of the band didn't have: he was incredibly beautiful.

Tall, with dark hair, sharp cheekbones, and wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses before anyone else, he looked like a movie star. Whenever Stuart sang Elvis Presley's "Love Me Tender," girls in the audience screamed louder than they did for any of the other Beatles. It even made Paul McCartney a little jealous.

Stuart and John also invented something else: the band's name. Both were huge fans of Buddy Holly's band, the Crickets, and wanted a similar name with a double meaning based on a bug. They came up with "Beetles," and John tweaked the spelling to "Beatles"—like a musical beat.

In August 1960, the band got an offer to play in Hamburg, Germany. It meant playing eight hours a night, six nights a week a few months of brutal, exhausting work. They took the gig.

Hamburg changed everything. The Beatles played in seedy clubs and lived in tiny, cramped rooms behind a movie theater. They slept on bunk beds, and through the grind, they grew tougher, faster, and much better.

It was also where Stuart met someone special in the audience: Astrid Kirchherr. A German photographer, she was 22, tall, blonde, and exceptionally cool, specializing in taking photos of art-school groups. She came to a Beatles show, and she and Stuart locked eyes. By November 1960, they were engaged, exchanging rings in the German tradition

Astrid was the first person to take serious photographs of the Beatles. Her black-and-white shots later became legendary: the young Beatles in leather jackets, smoking, looking dangerous.

She did something else, too. Stuart asked her to cut his hair, and she gave him a French art-school cut, brushed forward and cut straight across the forehead. At first, the other Beatles laughed at him and called him a "mop top." A few months later, they all wanted the same look. It became the most famous haircut in music history, and Stuart wore it first.

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