EXCLUSIVE: Mystery continues for song linked to former Beatle Sutcliffe (part 2)

While the Stu Sutcliffe family is insisting the former member of the Beatles is singing the song "Love Me Tender," there also is a lot of speculation that it's not him. The analysis of the song has brought out plenty of opinions on both sides.

Read part 1 of this story with the opinion of Tony Sheridan
Klaus Voormann and Bill Harry's opinions

Besides Tony Sheridan, one of our recent contacts was author Spencer Leigh, who has written many books on the Beatles, most recently, "The Beatles in Hamburg: The Stories, the Scene and How It All Began." (also available from Amazon.co.uk.) He told us he also is skeptical about who the singer is.

"It is intriguing. It is a studio recording rather than a live recording and so Stuart, if it is him, had gone to the studio with the purpose of the recording the song. We know that Astrid was very fond of Stuart singing Love Me Tender so it could have been as a present for her. But this is speculation upon speculation. Hopefully a recording engineer will be able to date the recording.

"Oddly enough, I have never come across John, Paul or George talking about Stu's singing voice. On this evidence, it sounds good, rather like Billy Fury on his early singles, Maybe Tomorrow and Margo, but at the moment I'm skeptical.

And though Pete Best hasn't answered the question directly about the singer on the song, the only opinion we're aware of from Pete came in this comment from a board administrator on his official website in a message board thread about the song.

"As far as we know and that includes Pete, it was never recorded."

Meanwhile, Ed Lineberry was the vocalist from the Beatles tribute group Rain who sang "Love Me Tender" in the "Birth of the Beatles" film that's been heavily compared to the Sutcliffe version. He made the comment below on his Original Rain Facebook page on a link of a video of the song "Love Me Tender" from the movie and how the version of the song in there came about. The comment doesn't really answer the question about whether the songs are linked directly, but just gives an indication of what was the film's singer's intentions originally were.

"This is me singing "Ask Me Why" and then "Love Me Tender" for the movie "Birth of the Beatles" starting at 4:24...I had never heard Stu Sutcliffe sing so the producers asked me to try and project what I thought he would sound like...turns out I was pretty close to the original.. Thanks for listening, Ed Lineberry, Original Rain."

The most recent evidence for the recording being authentic are David Bedford's examination, and Liscio's "The Case for Authenticity," printed originally on Daytrippin'.com. Included in the Liscio essay is how the original file was cleaned up:

In time, those responsible for overseeing Stuart’s Estate were curious to know whether the tape could be cleaned up. Help came in the form of Dan Whitelock-Wainwright, Pauline’s techno-expert great-nephew, currently at University and a member of the rock band Groan. Dan’s cousin Alex Whitelock-Wainwright (at University in Liverpool) also possessed a copy of the original tape and he wrote in his blog: “The original I have has a constant hiss throughout; that’s all that has been modified with the released version and the sound levels are higher. Talking to my cousin, who first tried to clean the track up, (he) believes that the noise frequencies have been totally cleaned out which has removed some instruments and they have been overdubbed back onto the track.”

It was the 24/7 division of IODA that finished the mastering, leaving Stuart’s voice unmanipulated, only louder.

There was never any doubt that the voice was Stuart’s. But the Estate has another reason to know the tape is genuine: they know Stuart.

Thorsten Knublauch, author of "Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand - Die Beatles in Deutschland 1960 - 1970" with Axel Korinth and "The Bravo-Beatles-Blitztournee - 5 Days of Beatlemania in Germany, June 1966," compiled a list of a dozen concerns about the song taken from various internet threads and his own thoughts on it:

1. What kind of provenance is the source if it is in question what was the original source (tape, acetate etc) - even unknown to the seller???

2. Klaus Voormann, Astrid Kirchherr, Bill Harry and Pete Best have big question marks about the voice!

3. The backing sounds very modern!

4. The arrangement sounds like a cover from a 1966 Percy Sledge cover!

5. The arrangement is totally different to Elvis` version and you should expect the cover done by Stu in 1961 near the Elvis` version - as shown in Backbeat film!!

6. The voice of the Birth of the Beatles version does sound very simiar to this even it is not the same take.

7. The "raw version" does sound worthend afterwards and not like historical hiss or surface noice!

8. The soundtrack Stu might be working on for his films as written in the letter: do you expect he would SING a long (even like this) on that? I don`t!

9. Why has his recording never been mentioned by anybody way back in 1961/62 - by Astrid, Klaus, Pete, Tony....??

10. If the recording is known since the 80ies - why was it never a question for Anthology - or the various Sutcliffe DVDs?? This would bring much more money for the previous owner!

11. His stint with the Bats was for one week only in February 1962 - it is not known that he made any more musical things after he left the Beatles and he sold his bass to Klaus Voormann.

12. Who were the musicians? No one claimed to be involved? Where was it recorded? There is no studio in Hamburg where you could run into for a joke...!

His conclusion: It's not Stu Sutcliffe.

To sum it up. This recording is NOT authentic. If I would own such recording - I would ask Apple for a nice sum when they were working on Anthology and not giving it to the family. The previous owner knew why he has not approached Apple - there would have been a lot of people (George, Paul, Ringo, Neil etc) who knew Stus voice.

Incidentally, the updated mp3 file is now available for download at Amazon.com as well as at Amazon.co.uk. It was not on Amazon.com originally. A clip of the original file is on the Sutcliffe fan club site.

MORE ON THE STUART SUTCLIFFE SONG:

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