ASTRID KIRCHHERR

All my friends in art school used to run around with this sort of what you call Beatles haircut. And my boyfriend then, Klaus Voormann, had this hairstyle, and Stuart liked it very, very much. He was the first one who really got the nerve to get the Brylcreem out of his hair and asking me to cut his hair for him.

We knew of Sartre and we dressed like the French existentialists. Our philosophy then, and remember we were only little kids, was more in following their looks than their thoughts. We were going around looking moody.

I love Liverpool and it is great to be back in the city.

They are my friends. If they are the Beatles or the kings of China, it doesn't matter lo me.

And I was very, very much influenced by the films of Jean Cocteau and by Sartre and everything that came out of France because it was closer than America or England.

I'm a very, very silly girl.

I always thought Stuart deserved a little bit of fame. He was a gifted artist and a very wonderful person.

It is a serious job being a portrait photographer, which is how I saw myself.

After Stu, I liked John and George. Then I like Pete Best. Paul I found hard to get close to.

I was initially attracted to John when I first went to see them play. Then I got to know Stuart because he was John's best friend. Our hearts took over from there.

When Stuart passed away, I was so young and so selfish about living and having fun.

You couldn't buy any English authors or anything that came from America, like jeans. It was impossible. So we had to do our own clothes if we had weird ideas like wearing long scarves like the French people did. You had to knit them yourself.

For me, they are still my dear friends, not the Beatles.

I like to choose the people I take photographs of, but when you make your living off it, you've got to take everybody.

The most important thing I gave the Beatles was my friendship. They trusted me: there was no fear in being photographed.

I've hardly taken a photograph since 1967.

Our post-war generation were struggling to escape the past and the burden of guilt we carried and to find a new way.

When I met the Beatles, they were wearing these funny little leather jackets, which inspired me. I had a suit made for myself out of fine, good black leather. It looked different. I was using leather but putting a different fashion angle on how it looked.

John's legacy? His bravery. When he had the power, he used it. He really wanted peace on Earth, and John's lyrics, well, that's the brave poetry of the '60s. If he had stayed with us, he could have done so much more.

I was always introduced as the Beatles photographer and I gave it up in the end. I was so unsure of myself. Am I good or am I just the Beatles photographer? People were not interested in what I did before. I could not stand it any more.

For me, the music of the Beatles then was serious and very, very serious art. So I couldn't take a picture of John laughing his head off or pulling funny faces because he was a serious artist, even when he was only 20.

I'm not a businesswoman... I never looked after my negatives and you need that to prove you took the photographs.

I have never met a man who I could still say, 'That is the love of my life.' Stuart is. I never met anybody as full of love and giving as this young man.

Black and white means photography to me. It's much easier to take a good color photograph, but you can get more drama into a black and white one.

Well, the first time I met The Beatles was through my former boyfriend, Klaus Voormann, who saw them one night when he was wandering around Hamburg and then he heard this beautiful sound of rock 'n' roll music.