Late Astrid won heart of Lost Beatle Stuart to change musical history
As it turned out, Astrid and Stuart’s romance was cut tragically short just two years later when Stuart died of a sudden brain haemorrhage aged 21.
A grief-stricken John confessed to Astrid his inner conflict – both his initial envy of her attraction to Stuart over him, and his own, confusing, love for his friend.
Paying tribute to Astrid this week, film director Iain Softley revealed her moving words from his interviews with her when he made 1994 movie Backbeat about her and Stuart’s romance.
They hint at a complex relationship between her, Stuart and John. She said it was only after Stuart died that she and John “took a load of pills” and talked for 12 hours about “all the things on our minds about Stuart”. “He was jealous when Klaus and I fancied Stuart more, and took him home and left John out,” she told Iain.
“He told me he really loved Stuart, but was afraid of the feeling.”
Iain adds: “I think she thought he meant as a friend, I don’t think there was any suggestion they were in a relationship. But Stuart had always been John’s best friend, they shared a flat in
Liverpool. John would write to Stuart as ‘Jesus Christ to John the Baptist’, in the sense Stuart was showing him the way. He looked up to him.
“There was a sense John didn’t want Stuart taken away from him, he didn’t want Stuart to stay in Hamburg.
“At the same time he was very fond of Astrid, but I think there was a there.” It was only after Stuart had died, that a normally chipper John revealed his vulnerable side.
“Astrid said John was very sweet and thoughtful after Stuart died,” Iain says and reads from his extracts: “So soft and sweet and holding my hand. It was love for a friend he knew was in pain.” Astrid told him: “I was afraid to cry or show emotion when John was there, but at one point he said, ‘Come on cry, we’ll cry together’. The pain we both had over Stuart’s death just gave our relationship an enormous kind of freedom, suddenly we felt like we had known each other for years.”
Iain built a friendship with Astrid after tracking her down in Hamburg, to ask for her help in making Backbeat. By then, she was managing a bar.
He wanted to celebrate the strong woman and accomplished photograconflict pher, but also explore her pivotal role in Beatles’ history. He says she was the band’s “muse” for their 1960s’ style.
But her whirlwind relationship with Stuart also altered the original line-up of the then Fab Five who were green to the trendy European arts scene.
George Harrison was only just 17 and was later deported from Germany for being underage. The Beatles’ rough and ready gigs led to a first recording and their signing by Brian Epstein.
It was Klaus who first saw them at