Late Night Doods

late night doods

When Paul and Stu had a fight in Hamburg.

[Dot Rhone] must have sensed things were coming to a head, because the next night, while she and Cynthia were "dollying up" at Astrid's house, the phone rang. It was Stuart. convulsed by a white rage, sounding completely irrational. When he learned that Dot was there, "he insisted that Astrid toss me out," Dot recalls. Astrid calmed him down enough to determine what had happened. Paul and Stuart had finally had it out, not in private, but onstage in the middle of a set, in full view of astonished German audience. They had been backing Tony Sheridan for the nine o’ clock set. Paul, at the piano, where he had recently been pounding out guitar chords with innate flair. Was muttering to himself, vexed by the enormity of Stuart’s mistakes. At some point, he let go with an utterly outrageous comment about Astrid that hit a nerve. Stuart dropped the bass into he middle of the stage, lunged at Paul and caught him “with such a wallop that it knocked him off his stool.” The fight, which had been brewing for months, was wild and fierce. Stuart and Paul rolled on the floor, punching and stomping each other, while the other Beatles and Tony Sheridan soldiered on. “They beat the shit out of each other,” says an observer, and thrashed about until the song ended when John, George and Pete finally pried them apart. Nothing was settled by the fight, but as Pete Best interpreted it: “It was the beginning of the end for Stu as a Beatle.” Sutcliffe realized the situation was untenable. There was no place for him on that stage anymore; Paul - and even John, by his neutrality - had made that absolutely clear. Stuart moped around for a few days, disillusioned with the band and with himself. The constant insults, the humiliation - he’d had enough. There were more important things than playing with the Beatles. He had barely touched a paintbrush in months. That alone struck him as absurd. He’d made a horrendous mistake in ignoring his art for so long and needed to reclaim that part of his life. Despite the consequence of Stuart’s decision, there was no formal resignation. Later that week he simply turned up at the Top Ten and told the others he was through with the band. It was all very matter-of-fact, devoid of lingering resentment or even drama. If any of the Beatles were surprised, no one let it show, nor did anyone try to discourage Stuart from leaving. Stuart, for his part, couldn’t have been more accommodating. In a magnanimous gesture, he even handed his bass over to Paul in an acknowledgement of proper succession, but as Paul pointed out “he was only lending it to me, so he didn’t want me to change the strings around.

-The Beatles: The Biography (2005) by Bob Spitz.

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karinchan315

2 years ago