Take Pauline Sutcliffe, for instance. In her 2001 book 'The Beatles' Shadow: Stuart Sutcliffe & his Lonely Hearts Club,' she accuses John Lennon of causing Stuart's death, writing: "He and Stuart were talking in the street in Hamburg and suddenly Stuart was lying on the pavement having been punched by John. He had no time to even attempt to protect himself. the brakes weren't working for John and he was taken over by one of his uncontrollable rages: he kicked Stuart again and again and kicked him in the head. There was blood streaming down from Stuart's head when John finally came to his senses. John looked down at Stuart - and fled, disgusted and terrified by his attack.....Stuart said John kicked him in the head, and I'm convinced that kick was what eventually led to Stuart's death."

This piece of nonsense could be printed because both Stuart and John were dead, but it had originated in Albert Goldman's book 'The Lives of John Lennon.' Goldman wrote "John believed he was responsible for Stuart's demise....They were standing in the street and suddenly John was seized by one of his fits of uncontrollable rage. He lashed out with hands and feet. In recounting the incident, he laid special emphasis on the fact that he was wearing cowboy boots with hard, pointy toes. When he came to his senses, he looked down and saw Stu lying on the pavement. He was groaning, and blood was coming down the side of his face. John could see the wound distinctly at the side of the head between the ear and the cheekbone. Horrified by what he had done, he had taken off running."

In the May/June 1994 issue of Beatles Unlimited, Pauline was interviewed by Rene Van Haarlem. Rene asked her, "The book (The Lives of John Lennon by Albert Goldman) stated that John Lennon blames himself for having a fight with Stuart and might have hurt him. He felt very guilty about it, that it might have been the cause of his disease? Is that known to you?"

Pauline: "No."

In the July/August 1994 issue of Beatlefan, Pauline was asked to comment on an article in Q magazine by the script writer of 'Backbeat' in which he suggested that Stuart's death was a homosexual murder and that John Lennon was responsible - a theory from the Albert Goldman book on John. Pauline answered, "I did read (the Q article) and I have to say I read it with the same sense of outrage that I read Goldman's, because Goldman didn't interview any members of my family or anybody related to us in any way, you know, this 'heavily researched' book. So it's worth stating that for the record, the idea that John murdered Stuart which is roughly the Goldman thesis, struck me as so totally absurd. and, to me, the outrage was that neither man was alive to disprove it in any way. And so I thought it was a terrible allegation to levy on John Lennon without apparently any evidence."

Return to main section