MOVIES : John, Paul, George, Ringo. . .and Stu : You may never have heard of Stuart Sutcliffe, but the new film ‘BackBeat’ claims he was a prime influence on what became the Beatles

Stu Sutcliffe has been at best a footnote in the history of the Beatles.

A Liverpool art student and perhaps the closest friend of John Lennon, Sutcliffe played bass guitar for three years with the Beatles--but well before their stratospheric rise to fame began in 1963.

He quit the group during the group’s sojourn playing in Hamburg nightclubs and remained in the German city to pursue a life and career as an artist. But the artistic promise shown by his abstract paintings was cut short: Sutcliffe died of a brain hemorrhage in April, 1962, just before his 22nd birthday.

Now, 32 years after his death, there are signs that Sutcliffe’s impact on the Beatles is ripe for reappraisal. In part this is due to “BackBeat,” a British film opening in Los Angeles Friday that deals with Sutcliffe’s short life, his career with the Beatles, his friendship with Lennon and his love affair in Hamburg with Astrid Kirchherr, a young German art student and photographer.

Advance buzz about the movie--and favorable reviews after its opening here two weeks ago--has triggered renewed interest in Sutcliffe’s influence on the Beatles, which some observers feel has been unfairly underestimated.

While in Hamburg, Sutcliffe was drawn to a group of young avant-garde German art students, of which Kirchherr was a member. They called themselves the “Exis,” short for existentialists, and were characterized by their distinctive dress and hairstyles. Because of the relationship between Stuart and Astrid, the other members of the Beatles freely mixed with the Exis, and clearly came under their influence in terms of their appearance and attitudes.

More important in the long term, the Exis helped implant in the Beatles the notion that they could conceive of themselves not merely as a pop group, but as artists working within the field of pop music. Lennon, who admired Sutcliffe and Kirchherr, was apparently intrigued with this notion.

Certainly the Beatles were the first pop musicians whose work consciously developed from album to album and the first to absorb influences from serious art. Many people close to the Beatles in those days now see in the romance of Stuart and Astrid the foreshadowing of another relationship: the one between John Lennon and Yoko Ono, an artist who greatly influenced him.

Kirchherr, speaking by phone from Hamburg, says of the Exis: “You expressed yourself by looking different from other people. We even looked different from each other. But among the Exis, there was a close group of us, Klaus Voormann, Jurgen Wollmer and me. Klaus and I always wore black. The minimum of color would be a white shirt. It was black polo neck sweaters (which the Beatles wore on the cover of their second album “With the Beatles”) and very tight black trousers.

“Klaus and Jurgen had this hairstyle, with the hair brushed forward, which we called the Exicut. When I met the Beatles, they were wearing these funny little leather jackets, which inspired me. I had a suit made for myself out of fine, good black leather. It looked different. I was using leather but putting a different fashion angle on how it looked. So it wasn’t only us influencing the Beatles, but the other way round too.”

Ian Softley, who directed “BackBeat” and has spent nine years researching and developing Stuart Sutcliffe’s story, says: “Astrid gave Stuart an Exicut, with his hair brushed forward. It was the first Beatles cut.

“Only Stuart had the balls to try out the haircut. The others weren’t so keen. Then George cut his hair that way. Later, John and Paul got their haircuts on a trip to Paris.

“The Beatles met Astrid and her friends in Hamburg and saw the life they led, and the way they were living their art. It was a big influence on how the Beatles thought about themselves. The way they wore their hair, the clothes they wore, the fact that they could use contemporary artists to package their albums--these things became important. And for the Beatles, Hamburg became a kind of mythological place where all these seeds were sewn.”

In 1960, Hamburg was a wild city. Like the Beatles’ hometown, Liverpool, it is a port, and like many ports, it boasted an array of attractions for sailors on shore leave. The notorious Reeperbahn district, where the Beatles played in a number of clubs, was the city’s red-light district, littered with brothels and strip joints where drugs were readily available.

“I think they found it extremely exciting,” says Pauline Sutcliffe, Stuart’s younger sister and executor of his estate. “Stuart wrote to me about being given the eye by a gorgeous blonde in the street, only to discover that she was a he. I’m sure they’d never seen a transvestite or transsexual before in their lives. I think they did a lot of growing up.”

Stu Sutcliffe joined the embryonic Beatles in 1959. His skills on bass guitar were rudimentary--but as a student at Liverpool Art School he had sold a painting to local business tycoon John Moores for 60 and bought a guitar.

“You have to ask why they would take someone into their group who was not a musician, and did not even have their beginning skills,” says Sutcliffe, sitting in her elegant West London apartment, the rooms of which are filled with Stuart’s paintings. She is convinced that Lennon was the decisive influence; Stuart was tremendously self-assured and confident for an 18-year-old boy, and Lennon was in awe of him and his artistic talent.

Even so, she insists, the Beatles’ abilities were well hidden at this stage. “I remember in 1959 I was dispatched by my mother to go and see them. My parents frowned on the idea of him being in this group, but they didn’t dismiss it out of hand. So I went along with Stuart to this incredibly seedy joint in Liverpool. I must have been 15. As far as I can remember, none of them were particularly skilled.”

At this point, she pulls from a file the photocopy of a Beatles playlist of a gig dating from around this time. It is a genuine piece of pop music history, and is notable for the number of songs the Beatles performed back then but never recorded: Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say” and “Hallelujah I Just Love Her So,” Chuck Berry’s “Carol” and “Johnny B. Goode,” Buddy Holly’s “True Love Ways” and Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.” Also included on the list were two Carl Perkins songs, “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Honey Don’t,” an unidentified piece called “Rock-a-Chicka,” and two instrumentals written by their group--”Winston’s Walk” and “Cat’s Walk” (Winston was Lennon’s middle name).

“I didn’t describe to my mother how seedy the joint was,” Pauline Sutcliffe continued. “I had the sense not to do that. Instead I said: ‘Well, Mother, they could play a whole tune!’ That’s how low one’s expectations were.

“As the group evolved, none of this was supposed to impinge on Stuart’s art school life. The group was a boy’s hobby; it was not how he intended making a living.”

In summer 1960, Alan Williams, then the Beatles’ manager, offered them a chance to play in Hamburg for a month. One assumes that the lurid attractions of Hamburg night life were spelled out as an inducement. “But Stuart found a way of presenting it to my mother that made it seem all right,” recalls Pauline. “It was an experience, another country, it was just for a month, it wouldn’t interfere with art school. They drove to Germany in Alan’s van, which seemed to be held together with string.”

Hamburg was the place where a number of Liverpool’s “Merseybeat” groups went to cut their teeth in the early 1960s, including the Searchers, the Big Three and Rory Storm & the Hurricanes, who featured a drummer called Richard Starkey or Ringo Starr. The Beatles’ first trip to Hamburg came about only because the Hurricanes, who were of marginally higher status, pulled out, having received a better offer from a vacation camp in England.

John, Paul, George, Stuart and the Beatles’ then drummer Pete Best played their first Hamburg gigs in a strip joint called the Indra Club, as a kind of audition for playing a larger club, the Kaiserkeller.

“There’s a myth which says Stuart still couldn’t really play at this point,” says Softley. “But while they were at the Indra, the bass player in another group at the Kaiserkeller fell ill, and Stuart was sent on ahead of the Beatles, as it were, to deputize for him. So he can’t have been that bad.” In Softley’s research he talked to Liverpool pop group leader Howie Casey, who confirmed that Sutcliffe “had a great live style.” And Klaus Voormann, who was then living with Astrid Kirchherr, remembered him as “a very good dance band bass player.”

Says Softley: “Apparently he was very punk, very insistent. He would turn his bass up really loud, also it was dominant and driving.”

Voormann was the first of the Exis to encounter the Beatles, and became an important figure in their circle for several years. He was signed by Brian Epstein, who managed the Beatles from 1961 until his death in 1967, to a recording contract as one-third of the group Paddy, Klaus & Gibson. In his capacity as artist, he drew the cover of the 1966 Beatles album “Revolver.” He played on Lennon’s album “Imagine” and George Harrison’s “Concert for Bangla Desh,” and toured with the Plastic Ono Band. (Voormann declined to be interviewed for this article.)

Astrid Kirchherr still remembers vividly the night when Voormann first saw the Beatles. “He had gone one evening to the Reeperbahn. He went to the cinema and afterward he was walking around when he heard this noise coming from a cellar. He followed the noise, and saw this English rock ‘n’ roll band playing. He’s heard the music on records, but never heard it played live before. He couldn’t believe his eyes or ears.

“When he got home, he was very excited. He asked me to go along and see them. I didn’t feel like going. . .but he persuaded me and I went along with him to the Kaiserkeller Club. I was wanting something new, and for me the Beatles were. . .outstanding. I was breathless, speechless.”

She remembers they played only cover versions of hits by American artists: Wilbert Harrison’s “Kansas City” and a lot of Chuck Berry and Little Richard songs.

“They all wore very tight jeans and pointed shoes, and they had fantastic hairdos, with their hair swept up high,” Kirchherr recalls. “From the first moment, I found Stuart the most attractive. He had a mystique. He always wore dark glasses on stage. He knew he was a terrific performer just by looking cool and smoking a cigarette. You couldn’t overlook him.”

During a break, Voormann introduced Astrid to Sutcliffe and Lennon. “They were very polite and well mannered, so different from the way they looked,” she says. “My English wasn’t so good then, so our conversation was very draggy. We explained everything with our hands. But they were very pleasant people. Being a portrait photographer, I didn’t know which of their faces I wanted to take a picture of first.”

Astrid and Klaus told the Exis about the Beatles, and started going to see them every night. Word spread among the art-school group, and soon a group of distinctive looking Exis were mingling nightly among the Beatles’ audiences in sweaty, airless little basement clubs like the Kaiserkeller. Jurgen Wollmer, a photographer and an Exi friend of Astrid and Klaus, became a devoted Beatles fan.

French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre was a huge influence to the Exis, she says. So was avant-garde writer Jean Cocteau. She was also a fan of French actors Gerard Philipe and Jean-Louis Barrault, while her preference for black clothes came from the Left Bank chanteuse Juliette Greco.

Sutcliffe was only 20 at the time, but, says Kirchherr, “he was so confident about being an artist. The way he talked, he was so mature and intelligent. From the first time I saw them, I knew they weren’t just five dirty little boys from Liverpool without an education.

“John was. . .”--she pauses, looking for the right word. An enigma? “Yes. He could play tough, there was a pretense, then he could be serious, loving and caring. But Stuart was the one. He knew he could walk on stage and do his cool-cat thing, but when he came off he was an intelligent artist, a charismatic young man.”

Shortly after meeting the Beatles, Astrid started taking her extraordinary pictures of the group in Hamburg. They still had their Teddy Boy pompadours in those days, and favored leather jackets. In many of the pictures, which emphasize how young and innocent they looked despite their affectations of toughness, it is notable that Sutcliffe, his eyes obscured behind dark glasses, seems apart from the rest--detached and in some cases even looking in another direction.

Later she dressed Stuart, then the other Beatles in black leather and collarless jackets of the kind associated with the group in the earliest days of their fame. Put simply, she was an extraordinarily strong influence in shaping the Beatles’ identity, style and sense of themselves.

The affair between Kirchherr and Voormann cooled, and Sutcliffe, who quit the Beatles in 1961, moved into her Hamburg flat. Through her he met the internationally renowned artist and sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi, then teaching at Hamburg Art School; Paolozzi was so impressed by Sutcliffe’s talent that he secured him a scholarship at the school: a rare accolade for a non-German citizen.

Both Pauline Sutcliffe and Kirchherr confirm that Stuart worked relentlessly on the large swirling abstracts he favored. “He painted day and night. He allowed himself almost no rest,” Kirchherr says.

But around this time, Sutcliffe started experiencing splitting headaches. The cause was never clear. But in England, the Beatles had often been the target of young men jealous of their girlfriends’ affections. In one violent incident (dates vary, though 1960 is often mentioned), Sutcliffe was beaten up by a hooligan and suffered a blow to the head.

“We went from one doctor to another,” Kirchherr remembers. “None of them could find out what was wrong. Of course, back then, they didn’t have all the brain scans and equipment they have now.”

He died unexpectedly in April, 1962, about 10 minutes after complaining of a particularly bad headache. He and Astrid were to have been married two months later. An autopsy revealed a brain hemorrhage. “There are areas of doubt,” says Pauline Sutcliffe now. “He was beaten up, it’s a fact, but was the blow to the head the precursor of brain hemorrhage? What with the timing of the incident in relation to his death, I have my doubts.”

Events moved with astonishing speed after Stuart’s death. That month, the Beatles were in Hamburg, on their fourth and last tour of the city’s clubs; outside Liverpool and Hamburg, they were unknown.

In August, 1962, back in England, Brian Epstein sacked Pete Best and replaced him with Ringo Starr.

In September, 1962, the Beatles recorded their first single, “Love Me Do.”

And by the first anniversary of Stuart Sutcliffe’s death, they had become the biggest pop sensations Britain had ever produced.

In the Beatlemania of 1964, Sutcliffe’s paintings drew 10,000 visitors to Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery. Since then, art historian John Willett has described him as “an outstanding loss to Liverpool and quite possibly to English painting, and over and above the merit of his pictures, he has a special significance as somebody whose burning creativity switched from art into pop music and then back again. He showed the way.”

Kirchherr is now back living in Hamburg. “I work as an assistant for a music publishing company,” she says. “I tried to work as a photographer again when I came back here five years ago. But it didn’t work out--you need big studios, 500 cameras, 1,000 flashlights and champagne on the table. That wasn’t me.”

Sutcliffe’s parents are both dead. Pauline Sutcliffe, who was just 18 when her brother died, is now a successful family therapist, and has been working for years on a book about him, featuring his paintings.

And after nine years research, Ian Softley got to direct “BackBeat.”

By definition, a feature film scratches the surface of an era’s historical details, and Softley is unapologetic that “BackBeat” is “about Stuart and Astrid and John, and the divisions and points of contact of love and friendship. It’s about people discovering their identity, discovering relationships with other people, the difference between love and sex, and a kind of breakdown of stereotypes of conventional modes of behavior. Stuart and Astrid’s behavior was certainly ahead of its time.”

Softley views the Hamburg era as crucial for the Beatles: “I was looking for a story that explores what young people are looking for at a time when they spread their wings, go on journeys and break out of the world they live in. For the Beatles, Hamburg was that place.”

In the film, two American actors fill the lead roles. Stephen Dorff (“The Power of One”) plays Stuart while Sheryl Lee, best known as Laura Palmer from David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks,” is Astrid. English actor Ian Hart portrays Lennon.

Kirchherr and Pauline Sutcliffe do not communicate with each other. Sutcliffe says contact was lost when Astrid wed Gibson Kemp, of Paddy, Klaus & Gibson; Kirchherr says she never got along with the Sutcliffe family even when Stuart was alive, but bears them no ill-will. Yet both women are preoccupied by the lack of posthumous recognition Stuart Sutcliffe has received from the Beatles, their myth-makers and biographers.

Sutcliffe does not venture to suggest why this should be. Kirchherr believes the Beatles were too young and immature to be able to cope with Stuart’s death: “They were so shocked and full of sadness when he died that instead of bursting out they just kept it to themselves.”

Sutcliffe regrets that her brother’s reputation as a painter has been dependent on his status as “the fifth Beatle:” “He was an artist first, then a rock ‘n’ roll lover. But when you die that young and you were in the Beatles, it’s as though you can’t be a good artist too.

“That makes me very sad sometimes. I’m still very sad he died. There would have been some things coming of that boy which were unbelievable.”