Goofs

Regarding the death of Stuart Sutcliffe:

It seems they followed the lead taken in Backbeat, having John get off the plane and being suprised by Astrid. n I seem to remember an interview with either Astrid or Stuart's sister, in which it is stated that John received news of Stuart's death before even leaving for Hamburg, in fact, the article (I think it was in Beatlefan magazine) states that John was quite upset on the flight over to Germany.


"I wish my lawn were Emo--it would cut itself"

Yup. And then it was the Silver Beetles, The Silver Beatles, and finally just The Beatles.
I think that's the order. I know they went through all those names.

First, there are two stories about the death of Stu. The first, and probably the most accurate, is that it was caused by the group who didn't like him and attacked him after the show. (The problem with this scene in the movie was that Stu wasn't hitting on their girl, Stu stood with his back to the audience because he was embarrassed of his guitar playing, and the guys liked it because it gave him an air of mystery.) According to Stu's sister though, Stu told her on a trip to Liverpool shortly before his death that one night while him, John, and Paul were drunk walking back hom one night, John just starting beating him up from no where out of the blue and kicked him in the head several times. Paul doesn't remember the story, and since she didn't say anything until around '93 John couldn't deny or corroborate the fact.

Second, John had been in Hamburg for a while prior to finding out about Stu's death. No one told him prior to leaving Liverpool, and no one was there to meet him when he arrived in Hamburg. After a few days he was on his way to see Stu and the Kirchher house when Astrid met up with him first and finally told him the news.

Thirdly, the name went through several different changes. They were The Quarrymen, but then they started leaning more toward rock and away from skiffle so they changed it to John and the Moondogs to fit the scheme of the way other bands were naming themselves at that time. Then they changed to to The Beatals, first as a reference to Buddy Holly and The Crickets, and also with the spelling changed to avoid references to creepy crawly creatures. They kept getting made fun of with the name and it was suggested that they go by Long John and the Silver Beetles, but John didn't like the allusion to Long John Silver so they just went by Silver Beetles when touring Scotland. The idea of going with just The Beatles was actually a suggestion from a famous poet they hung out with at the time and it stuck from there. Using the name The Beatles though had nothing to do with The Wild One, as suggested in the film, which none of them had seen at the time they initially decided to go with Beatals.

Fourth, the mop top haircuts actually had two different starts. First it started when Stu started having Astrid do his hair, at that point everyone else (except Pete Best) went to Astrid to have their hair done, but didn't want to be considered fags so John, Paul, and George redid their hair back in the old Elvis style. Later on, John and Paul took a trip to Paris and saw the hair style there and decided to style their hair like that at that point. (On another interesting note, they also bought bell bottoms in Paris, but ended up getting them hemmed to match the drainies they wore at the time because they didn't want to look faggy.) What Astrid did though wasn't quite the mop top as it would become.

Fifthly, as Mimi survived John (she passed away in 1992), and has been able to tell her story longer, the accepted story is that she bought John his first guitar, but since he played shows on a guitar prior to the guitar she bought him (which she paid the down payment, but John paid the installments) he had to have a guitar prior to that point. John had stated that his mother did buy him his first guitar, Mimi wasn't happy about it, and sometime later she bought him a new guitar when he said he really wanted a different guitar just to keep him off her back.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist.-Verbal Kint