Stuart Sutcliffe

Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe (23 June 1940 – 10 April 1962) was a British painter and musician from Edinburgh, Scotland, best known as the original bass guitarist of the Beatles. Sutcliffe left the band to pursue his career as a painter, having previously attended the Liverpool College of Art. Sutcliffe and John Lennon are credited with inventing the name "Beetles" [sic], as they both liked Buddy Holly's band, the Crickets. They also had a fascination with group names with double meanings (as Crickets, for example, the word referring to both an insect and a sport), so Lennon then came up with "The Beatles", from the word beat (though Lennon's original spelling was "Beatals"). As a member of the group when it was a five-piece band, Sutcliffe is one of several who are sometimes referred to as the "Fifth Beatle".

When he performed with the Beatles in Hamburg, he met photographer Astrid Kirchherr, to whom he was later engaged to marry. After leaving the Beatles, he enrolled in the Hamburg College of Art, studying under future pop artist Eduardo Paolozzi, who later wrote a report stating that Sutcliffe was one of his best students. Sutcliffe earned other praise for his paintings, which mostly explored a style related to abstract expressionism.