The Beatles, Hamburg, 1961
Long before they decided All You Need Is Love, even the Fab Four were subject to an onstage bust-up. During their pivotal spell in Hamburg, something Paul McCartney said to bandmate Stuart Sutcliffe about his new engagement to local, Astrid Kirchherr, led Sutcliffe to punch his now very famous bandmate. Years later, Macca explained: “I thought I’d beat him hands down because he was littler than me. But he was strong and we got locked in a sort of death-grip on stage during the set. It was terrible. Then we were locked and neither of us wanted to go any further and all the others were shouting, ‘Stop it, you two!’ – ‘I’ll stop it if he will.’” Sutcliffe left the band to pursue an art career soon afterwards and cruelly died in 1962 of a brain haemorrhage before the couple had got married. Their story inspired the hit 1994 film, Backbeat.
