The Beatles’ original bass player Stu Sutcliffe died 50 years ago today. Does that make some of you feel old? It does me.

The Compleat Beatles is a very fine documentary on the band that Mr. Sutcliffe quit in order to pursue a life devoted to painting, a life which sadly came to an end when he died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 22.

He wasn’t really a very good musician. In fact, he wasn’t a musician at all until we talked him into buying a bass. We taught him to play twelve-bars, like “Thirty Days” by Chuck Berry. That was the first thing he ever learned. He picked up a few things and he practiced a bit until he could get through a couple of other tunes as well. It was a bit ropey, but it didn’t matter at that time because he looked so cool.” George Harrison.

Narrated by Malcolm McDowell, 1984’s The Compleat Beatles is chock full of fantastic archival footage of the Fab Four (with some early shots of Sutcliffe) and interviews with the band as well as George Martin, Marianne Faithful, Lenny Kaye, Billy Preston and Brian Epstein.

The Compleat Beatles was released on VHS and is out-of-print. It’s never been released on DVD. This is sourced from a laserdisc and looks very good indeed.
 

Stuart Sutcliffe, The Lost Beatle: