Post by ekauqodielak on May 21, 2019 23:28:45 GMT -5
I was trying to organize some undated photos in my hoard & came across this one:
My original notes suggested this was from '60 in Germany. That seemed reasonable. In trying to verify that, I instead found this:
"Early '62". We're told Stu died on April 10th, 1962, in Hamburg. Okay. And 'The Beatles', supposedly, arrived without knowing about his death on the 13th of April.
Of Sutcliffe, Wikipedia claims:
But first hand witness, Mike Mc, told us Stu was in Liverpool "just prior" to his death. Why would he be in Liverpool if classes were in session and he was in the midst of a medical mystery crisis? Maybe "just prior" is a matter of semantic differences?
Conflictingly, The Beatles Bible states:
So, did he collapse in class in April or did he drop out of college in February?
In an interview Astrid gave to Terry Gross of NPR's Fresh Air, in 2008, Kirchherr states that none of them thought the headaches Stu had been getting were indicative of a serious medical problem (like a brain tumor). However, Sutcliffe's own sketchbook, from October '61 and on, which his sister, Pauline, put up for auction in 2003, tells a different story:
Stu's Wiki goes on to tell us:
First of all, having spent time in Hamburg and having had numerous German friends for decades, I find it very unlikely that German doctors would suggest a podunk Liverpool hospital would prove superior to their own diagnostics, unless the suggestion was made sarcastically in the face of a 'you bloody morons' tirade.
An analog Lennon bio (to which I have no access) is given as the source for this info in the Wiki. This may simply be my own googlefu failure tonight, but I can't find any evidence to verify Stu & Astrid made a trip to Liverpool in the first 3 months of '62. This effectively unsourced wiki mention and Mike Mc's "early '62" timing of the photo are the only instances I can find of anyone claiming Stu & Astrid traveled to the UK "just prior" to his death, amidst what's otherwise a rather tediously documented short life. In contrast, I've found many mentions of a trip Stu & Astrid took to the UK in the summer of '61. I would think 'Stu's Last Trip Home' would be deserving of some mention, beyond a throwaway clause and a possibly misdated photo. Wouldn't his sister, who now runs his estate, have some quote about the last time she saw him? Or, possibly, a recounting by Astrid of lunch with his mother, Millie, or a description of this last John/Pete encounter preserved by Mike Mc's photo? Shouldn't there be something? Even if it was just a journal scribbling to the effect of 'went to see Drs. Useless & Useless at the Regardless Street Clinic for Brain Worms in Liverpool and still received no diagnosis'?
Do any of you have a verifying citation for Stu & Astrid having traveled to and from Hamburg in "early '62"?
We're told 'The Beatles' left the UK on the 10th and, presumably, having taken what was then the most direct flight path available, did not arrive in Hamburg until the 13th. Multiple sources agree that Astrid met 'The Beatles' at the airport in Hamburg on April 13th and, there, gave them the news of Stu's death.
Stu's Wiki implies (with reference to Astrid's NPR interview, that is: Astrid's word being the only source of verification) that, 'The Beatles', then, sometime later, contacted Brian to inform him that Stu was dead. It is implied that Brian, in turn, sometime later, contacted Millie Sutcliffe to give her the bad news. The further implication is that Brian, then, sometime later, flew with Millie from the UK to Germany to collect the body. However, I've listened to the NPR interview and Astrid makes absolutely no reference to any of the arrangements made nor the chain of communication in making said arrangements. In fact, the subjects of his remains, the transport thereof, his mother, or anyone being notified of Stu's death are never even broached.
Astrid's Wiki, fills in some gaps, over-writes some of the implications made in Stu's wiki, and raises more questions. Again, with only her NPR interview as reference, we're assured that Astrid did, in fact, send a telegram to Millie, on some unspecified date. As noted before, in the actual interview, Kirchherr gives zero mention to having sent a telegram to Millie Sutcliffe, or to anyone else, for that matter. The wiki, also, incorrectly cites this interview as verification of the information that George, did not travel with the others and, so, was on hand to make the belated journey with Brian and Stu's mom. Why Brian and George did not travel with the rest of the group is not explained here, though I'd guess we'd be encouraged to believe it might have something do with greasing palms over a now 18 year old Harrison's previous child labor law deportation. The question of why 'The Beatles' were, again, being sent to the Hamburg red light district rather than staying in the UK to take advantage of Merseyside-mania, play legit clubs and build a same-language, native fan-base is, as always, elided.
Both variations of the story we're given hinge upon facts that are not provided at all by the source from which they are claimed to originate. Was the interview edited to remove these cited sections? If so, why? There's no mention of it having been whittled down on the NPR website and, given that Gross allows her guests to veto any content they regret having shared, prior to the show airing, it seems unlikely that this 2008 interview would have been edited sometime after 2011, which is the cite date given. If the interview wasn't very belatedly edited, who decided to insert these fabrications into the official record of events? Did any of the events in the story of Stu's death happen the way we are told they did? Do any of the sources cited verify the text of the story?
There's no reason to believe that, had Millie Sutcliffe been notified of her son's death in a timely way, that she would have chosen to wait, at minimum, half a week before embarking on what would be, at minimum, a six day roundtrip journey to retrieve Stu's body. There is no reason why she would have had fore-knowledge of the travel plans of her son's former bandmates and manager (the latter of whom Stu, himself, had presumably never met, as the band signed with Brian nearly 8 months after Stu left the group). We are to believe Millie either made no travel plans or other arrangements and just sat on her hands until Brian Epstein reached out to her sometime after April 13th, or that she changed her plans to delay her trip, prioritizing the pre-existing schedules of a kid she barely knew and a man she'd never met over the exigency of her only son's death.
Further, does it not seem logical and likely that Germany would have an agreed upon policy with the British Embassy for the latter to simply send the remains of an identified British citizen home, as quickly as possible? The alternative is that, in a military port city with a red light district teeming with transients, addicts and hookers (and all the associated deaths the drug and sex trades write off as tax losses), official protocol was to leave rotting bodies stacked up until/unless someone physically arrived to claim them. We know the latter is not the case because (of common fucking sense, and), if that had been standard procedure, there would have been a devastating Typhoid, Cholera and/or Bubonic plague resurgence in Hamburg, everywhere downstream from it and on military bases around the world, as infected soldiers were re-stationed. It is unbelievable that Kirchherr, her mother, German authorities or the UK consulate would wait until sometime after Best, Lennon and McCartney arrived in Hamburg, three days after Sutcliffe's death, to notify Sutcliffe's next of kin and/or make any arrangements to get his body to the UK.
So, if it's not believable that Stu's mom willingly waited to go to Hamburg and it's not believable that there was an unseemly deferral in the next of kin notification of an identified foreign national and we're being lied to about Astrid notifying Stu's mother and we're being lied to about Stu's mother traveling with Brian and George, what really happened? Is there any evidence that Millie Sutcliffe went to Hamburg at all? Is there a believable scenario or coincidence that would have her delay a trip of such urgency for so long? Was she unable to secure the necessary funds to make the trip? Did she mistakenly assume she would hear from Stu's father, who was unreachably at sea at the time, and want to wait until speaking with him before making plans? Was she on the phone with the British Embassy the whole time arguing about why they couldn't just send his body home and excoriating them for failing to give her proper official notification of Stu's death? Did Stu Sutcliffe die on April 10th, 1962? Was the guy tagged as 'Stu Sutcliffe' in pictures Millie Sutcliffe's son? Your guesses are as good as mine.
It has further struck me as peculiar that we have no photos, other than the dodgy Mike Mc pic that incited this post, of Stu with any of the Beatles anywhere in the UK. If you have any images that contradict me on this, please, share them. And, for that matter, if you have solid data that contradicts any of my conclusions or suspicions, please, show me where I'm wrong.
Another item of note, sourced to Barry Miles:
Stu's condition worsened after he moved in with Astrid and her mother, Nielsa. In the most common story, Stu and Nielsa were the only people home when, we're told, Stu had his final collapse. In Astrid's NPR interview, she claims he collapsed at school again (you know, the school he dropped out of three months previously?) and was sent home. Variously, we're told that Nielsa called Astrid at work, either simply to inform her that Stu was ill again or instead of an ambulance, after finding Stu incapacitated. That he'd become a pill-head under their watch, doesn't make the scenario any less suspicious. Even if Kirchherr and her mother were not responsible for Stu's condition and death (personally, I lean more towards Lennon's boot to Stu's skull having made more of an impact than a needle-free speed habit), waiting to obtain readily available help for someone in obvious medical distress is certainly suspect, if not criminal. Neither Astrid nor John, respectively, Stu's fiancée and best friend, bothered to attend his funeral.
One More Curiosity:
Astrid Kirchherr enrolled in art school, right out of high school. She was convinced by the head of the photography department, Reinhard Wolf, to switch her major from fashion to photography. After graduating, she worked as the assistant to Wolf for four years ('59-'63). She took some of the best known (and best) photographs of Stu and the Hamburg Beatles. In '64, she embarked on a career as a freelance photographer.
And, then, in 1967, she quit taking pictures. She didn't just stop working as a professional photographer. She completely quit making art. Forever. Her wiki claims: "She then worked as a barmaid, as an interior designer, and then for a music publishing firm." Additionally, over the last 30 or so years, she's worked as an advisor on a variety of Beatle and Stu-related projects and she co-owns a shop that sells her early prints. Even the latter, hasn't apparently inspired her to click a shutter again. In the NPR interview, she 'explains' that she began to doubt she had any talent because people only wanted to buy her Beatles photos. Clearly, that's not an explanation at all. To cease making work does not answer her question of "am I any good or valuable only by association?" and it, also, contradicts what we have been told about Wolf going out of his way to mentor her. And, then, there's the problem with the fact that people don't buy shitty pictures, even or especially of their favorite bands. No one lines up to buy Dezo Hoffman prints of 'The Beatles' because his pictures are somehow always creepy and they suck.
If you're an artist, you know and, if you're not, I can tell you that artists don't just stop being artists. They may change mediums a thousand times over, they may have long dry spells, they may even actively try to disown their artistic inclinations and frustratingly find themselves sketching in the margins of expense reports or sculpting a cocktail napkin into a figurine. An actor may turn into a con-man, a writer may turn into a fabulist. But the instinct to conjure something out of nothing never goes away and cannot be suppressed. So, again, something just doesn't add up.
I'm not going to venture down the "But is photography really art?" path; the woman surrounded herself with artists and eccentric thinkers of all stripes from the moment she had the agency to do so and her talent was recognized and encouraged by professionals. Either she is an artist or…she was recruited to be an infiltrator. Are the pictures credited to her really her photos? Is the Astrid Kirchherr of today the same human being as the Astrid of 1961? Was she taking pictures of the Hamburg Beatles for some reason other than artistic inclination, i.e. intelligence assignment? Dunno.
Other Beatle-related things that ended in 1967: Dezo Hoffman stopped being 'The Beatles' official photographer. Brian Epstein's father died. Brian Epstein died. Joe Orton and his partner Kenneth Halliwell died. Joe Meek died. The (possibly) deceased Tara Browne's 'Dandie Fashions' became the 'Apple Boutique'.
I apologize for treating Wikipedia as though it should be considered a reliable source in this post; however, given that it is increasingly considered the word of record on so many matters, it seems important to take notice when that official word fails to adhere to logic, common sense, the laws of nations & material reality, etc.
My original notes suggested this was from '60 in Germany. That seemed reasonable. In trying to verify that, I instead found this:
Rare shot of John Lennon and Astrid Kircherr in Hamburg.
Early 1962 - Mike McCartney’s photograph taken of Astrid, John and Stu standing outside The Cavern.
Astrid and Stu came over to Liverpool just prior to Stu’s death.
Published in Mike McCartney’s first book in which he commented:
“I sent this one to John and Yoko in New York, just for the memory.”
Early 1962 - Mike McCartney’s photograph taken of Astrid, John and Stu standing outside The Cavern.
Astrid and Stu came over to Liverpool just prior to Stu’s death.
Published in Mike McCartney’s first book in which he commented:
“I sent this one to John and Yoko in New York, just for the memory.”
"Early '62". We're told Stu died on April 10th, 1962, in Hamburg. Okay. And 'The Beatles', supposedly, arrived without knowing about his death on the 13th of April.
Of Sutcliffe, Wikipedia claims:
In April 1962, he collapsed in the middle of an art class after complaining of head pains. German doctors performed various tests, but were unable to determine the exact cause of his headaches. After collapsing again on 10 April 1962, he was taken to the hospital, but died in the ambulance on the way.
But first hand witness, Mike Mc, told us Stu was in Liverpool "just prior" to his death. Why would he be in Liverpool if classes were in session and he was in the midst of a medical mystery crisis? Maybe "just prior" is a matter of semantic differences?
Conflictingly, The Beatles Bible states:
In February he had collapsed during an art school class, and dropped out of education. The Kirchherr family suspected a brain tumour, and sent him for x-rays, although nothing amiss was found. Two doctors subsequently saw Sutcliffe but they too could find nothing wrong.
So, did he collapse in class in April or did he drop out of college in February?
In an interview Astrid gave to Terry Gross of NPR's Fresh Air, in 2008, Kirchherr states that none of them thought the headaches Stu had been getting were indicative of a serious medical problem (like a brain tumor). However, Sutcliffe's own sketchbook, from October '61 and on, which his sister, Pauline, put up for auction in 2003, tells a different story:
The pages of the book are peppered with cries for help. Words and phrases such as "torment", "shout", "explode" and "the bloody brain" appear in shaky handwriting, often surrounded by exclamation marks and accompanied by unsettling abstract designs. Elsewhere, Sutcliffe uses sketches to "dissect" his brain and tries to rationalise his condition while comforting himself with details of the help he can expect from medical specialists. The book's content stands in stark contrast to that of the various earlier pads included in the archive, which show Sutcliffe flowering as a gifted draughtsman and poet.
Stu's Wiki goes on to tell us:
German doctors….suggested he go back to Britain and have himself checked into a hospital with better facilities, but Sutcliffe was told there was nothing wrong with him, so he returned to Hamburg.
First of all, having spent time in Hamburg and having had numerous German friends for decades, I find it very unlikely that German doctors would suggest a podunk Liverpool hospital would prove superior to their own diagnostics, unless the suggestion was made sarcastically in the face of a 'you bloody morons' tirade.
An analog Lennon bio (to which I have no access) is given as the source for this info in the Wiki. This may simply be my own googlefu failure tonight, but I can't find any evidence to verify Stu & Astrid made a trip to Liverpool in the first 3 months of '62. This effectively unsourced wiki mention and Mike Mc's "early '62" timing of the photo are the only instances I can find of anyone claiming Stu & Astrid traveled to the UK "just prior" to his death, amidst what's otherwise a rather tediously documented short life. In contrast, I've found many mentions of a trip Stu & Astrid took to the UK in the summer of '61. I would think 'Stu's Last Trip Home' would be deserving of some mention, beyond a throwaway clause and a possibly misdated photo. Wouldn't his sister, who now runs his estate, have some quote about the last time she saw him? Or, possibly, a recounting by Astrid of lunch with his mother, Millie, or a description of this last John/Pete encounter preserved by Mike Mc's photo? Shouldn't there be something? Even if it was just a journal scribbling to the effect of 'went to see Drs. Useless & Useless at the Regardless Street Clinic for Brain Worms in Liverpool and still received no diagnosis'?
Do any of you have a verifying citation for Stu & Astrid having traveled to and from Hamburg in "early '62"?
We're told 'The Beatles' left the UK on the 10th and, presumably, having taken what was then the most direct flight path available, did not arrive in Hamburg until the 13th. Multiple sources agree that Astrid met 'The Beatles' at the airport in Hamburg on April 13th and, there, gave them the news of Stu's death.
Stu's Wiki implies (with reference to Astrid's NPR interview, that is: Astrid's word being the only source of verification) that, 'The Beatles', then, sometime later, contacted Brian to inform him that Stu was dead. It is implied that Brian, in turn, sometime later, contacted Millie Sutcliffe to give her the bad news. The further implication is that Brian, then, sometime later, flew with Millie from the UK to Germany to collect the body. However, I've listened to the NPR interview and Astrid makes absolutely no reference to any of the arrangements made nor the chain of communication in making said arrangements. In fact, the subjects of his remains, the transport thereof, his mother, or anyone being notified of Stu's death are never even broached.
Astrid's Wiki, fills in some gaps, over-writes some of the implications made in Stu's wiki, and raises more questions. Again, with only her NPR interview as reference, we're assured that Astrid did, in fact, send a telegram to Millie, on some unspecified date. As noted before, in the actual interview, Kirchherr gives zero mention to having sent a telegram to Millie Sutcliffe, or to anyone else, for that matter. The wiki, also, incorrectly cites this interview as verification of the information that George, did not travel with the others and, so, was on hand to make the belated journey with Brian and Stu's mom. Why Brian and George did not travel with the rest of the group is not explained here, though I'd guess we'd be encouraged to believe it might have something do with greasing palms over a now 18 year old Harrison's previous child labor law deportation. The question of why 'The Beatles' were, again, being sent to the Hamburg red light district rather than staying in the UK to take advantage of Merseyside-mania, play legit clubs and build a same-language, native fan-base is, as always, elided.
Both variations of the story we're given hinge upon facts that are not provided at all by the source from which they are claimed to originate. Was the interview edited to remove these cited sections? If so, why? There's no mention of it having been whittled down on the NPR website and, given that Gross allows her guests to veto any content they regret having shared, prior to the show airing, it seems unlikely that this 2008 interview would have been edited sometime after 2011, which is the cite date given. If the interview wasn't very belatedly edited, who decided to insert these fabrications into the official record of events? Did any of the events in the story of Stu's death happen the way we are told they did? Do any of the sources cited verify the text of the story?
There's no reason to believe that, had Millie Sutcliffe been notified of her son's death in a timely way, that she would have chosen to wait, at minimum, half a week before embarking on what would be, at minimum, a six day roundtrip journey to retrieve Stu's body. There is no reason why she would have had fore-knowledge of the travel plans of her son's former bandmates and manager (the latter of whom Stu, himself, had presumably never met, as the band signed with Brian nearly 8 months after Stu left the group). We are to believe Millie either made no travel plans or other arrangements and just sat on her hands until Brian Epstein reached out to her sometime after April 13th, or that she changed her plans to delay her trip, prioritizing the pre-existing schedules of a kid she barely knew and a man she'd never met over the exigency of her only son's death.
Further, does it not seem logical and likely that Germany would have an agreed upon policy with the British Embassy for the latter to simply send the remains of an identified British citizen home, as quickly as possible? The alternative is that, in a military port city with a red light district teeming with transients, addicts and hookers (and all the associated deaths the drug and sex trades write off as tax losses), official protocol was to leave rotting bodies stacked up until/unless someone physically arrived to claim them. We know the latter is not the case because (of common fucking sense, and), if that had been standard procedure, there would have been a devastating Typhoid, Cholera and/or Bubonic plague resurgence in Hamburg, everywhere downstream from it and on military bases around the world, as infected soldiers were re-stationed. It is unbelievable that Kirchherr, her mother, German authorities or the UK consulate would wait until sometime after Best, Lennon and McCartney arrived in Hamburg, three days after Sutcliffe's death, to notify Sutcliffe's next of kin and/or make any arrangements to get his body to the UK.
So, if it's not believable that Stu's mom willingly waited to go to Hamburg and it's not believable that there was an unseemly deferral in the next of kin notification of an identified foreign national and we're being lied to about Astrid notifying Stu's mother and we're being lied to about Stu's mother traveling with Brian and George, what really happened? Is there any evidence that Millie Sutcliffe went to Hamburg at all? Is there a believable scenario or coincidence that would have her delay a trip of such urgency for so long? Was she unable to secure the necessary funds to make the trip? Did she mistakenly assume she would hear from Stu's father, who was unreachably at sea at the time, and want to wait until speaking with him before making plans? Was she on the phone with the British Embassy the whole time arguing about why they couldn't just send his body home and excoriating them for failing to give her proper official notification of Stu's death? Did Stu Sutcliffe die on April 10th, 1962? Was the guy tagged as 'Stu Sutcliffe' in pictures Millie Sutcliffe's son? Your guesses are as good as mine.
It has further struck me as peculiar that we have no photos, other than the dodgy Mike Mc pic that incited this post, of Stu with any of the Beatles anywhere in the UK. If you have any images that contradict me on this, please, share them. And, for that matter, if you have solid data that contradicts any of my conclusions or suspicions, please, show me where I'm wrong.
Another item of note, sourced to Barry Miles:
Kirchherr later supplied Sutcliffe and the other Beatles with Preludin, which, when taken with beer, made them feel euphoric and helped to keep them awake until the early hours of the morning. The Beatles had taken Preludin before, but it was possible at that time to get Preludin only with a doctor's prescription note, so Kirchherr's mother got them from a local chemist, who supplied them without asking questions.
Stu's condition worsened after he moved in with Astrid and her mother, Nielsa. In the most common story, Stu and Nielsa were the only people home when, we're told, Stu had his final collapse. In Astrid's NPR interview, she claims he collapsed at school again (you know, the school he dropped out of three months previously?) and was sent home. Variously, we're told that Nielsa called Astrid at work, either simply to inform her that Stu was ill again or instead of an ambulance, after finding Stu incapacitated. That he'd become a pill-head under their watch, doesn't make the scenario any less suspicious. Even if Kirchherr and her mother were not responsible for Stu's condition and death (personally, I lean more towards Lennon's boot to Stu's skull having made more of an impact than a needle-free speed habit), waiting to obtain readily available help for someone in obvious medical distress is certainly suspect, if not criminal. Neither Astrid nor John, respectively, Stu's fiancée and best friend, bothered to attend his funeral.
One More Curiosity:
Astrid Kirchherr enrolled in art school, right out of high school. She was convinced by the head of the photography department, Reinhard Wolf, to switch her major from fashion to photography. After graduating, she worked as the assistant to Wolf for four years ('59-'63). She took some of the best known (and best) photographs of Stu and the Hamburg Beatles. In '64, she embarked on a career as a freelance photographer.
And, then, in 1967, she quit taking pictures. She didn't just stop working as a professional photographer. She completely quit making art. Forever. Her wiki claims: "She then worked as a barmaid, as an interior designer, and then for a music publishing firm." Additionally, over the last 30 or so years, she's worked as an advisor on a variety of Beatle and Stu-related projects and she co-owns a shop that sells her early prints. Even the latter, hasn't apparently inspired her to click a shutter again. In the NPR interview, she 'explains' that she began to doubt she had any talent because people only wanted to buy her Beatles photos. Clearly, that's not an explanation at all. To cease making work does not answer her question of "am I any good or valuable only by association?" and it, also, contradicts what we have been told about Wolf going out of his way to mentor her. And, then, there's the problem with the fact that people don't buy shitty pictures, even or especially of their favorite bands. No one lines up to buy Dezo Hoffman prints of 'The Beatles' because his pictures are somehow always creepy and they suck.
If you're an artist, you know and, if you're not, I can tell you that artists don't just stop being artists. They may change mediums a thousand times over, they may have long dry spells, they may even actively try to disown their artistic inclinations and frustratingly find themselves sketching in the margins of expense reports or sculpting a cocktail napkin into a figurine. An actor may turn into a con-man, a writer may turn into a fabulist. But the instinct to conjure something out of nothing never goes away and cannot be suppressed. So, again, something just doesn't add up.
I'm not going to venture down the "But is photography really art?" path; the woman surrounded herself with artists and eccentric thinkers of all stripes from the moment she had the agency to do so and her talent was recognized and encouraged by professionals. Either she is an artist or…she was recruited to be an infiltrator. Are the pictures credited to her really her photos? Is the Astrid Kirchherr of today the same human being as the Astrid of 1961? Was she taking pictures of the Hamburg Beatles for some reason other than artistic inclination, i.e. intelligence assignment? Dunno.
Other Beatle-related things that ended in 1967: Dezo Hoffman stopped being 'The Beatles' official photographer. Brian Epstein's father died. Brian Epstein died. Joe Orton and his partner Kenneth Halliwell died. Joe Meek died. The (possibly) deceased Tara Browne's 'Dandie Fashions' became the 'Apple Boutique'.
I apologize for treating Wikipedia as though it should be considered a reliable source in this post; however, given that it is increasingly considered the word of record on so many matters, it seems important to take notice when that official word fails to adhere to logic, common sense, the laws of nations & material reality, etc.
