The Saturday Interview: Ringo Starr (from 1977)

A Day In the Life: "I'm said to have good legs," says Nancy Andrews, Ringo's love of the past two years.

 

The Saturday Interview:  Ringo Starr

By Jim Jerome

Evening Herald

January 29, 1977

    "My six-year-old daughter asked me once, 'Daddy, you used to play in Paul McCartney's backup band, didn't you?'"  Little Lee Starr may simply have heard it wrong. Back then, Daddy was into rings, not Wings.  Of course, Lee is not the first generation of Beatles maniacs to patronize pop. 

    Ringo Starr, 36, was often considered a journeyman among geniuses. He recalls being expected to do his funny fills on the tom-toms while Lennon and McCartney caught their breath between those infallible wizard cadenzas.

     Even if Ringo was the most vulnerable, cuddly, and righteously deadpan Beatle to his fans, he was to critics a fab fourth and a musician whose musicianship was always underrated. 

    He grumbles today, but admits that "I was embarrassed by my little songs. I'd write tunes that were already written and just change the lyrics, and the other three would have hysterics telling me what I'd rewrite."

     Ringo inadvertently summed up the post-parting depression of his early solo career in the title of his own 1971 hit, "It Don't Come Easy". Of late, things are getting better with a little help from his friends like Eric Clapton, Peter Frampton, and old partners George Harrison and John Lennon, who all joined Ringo in the studio for his latest and most accomplished solo LP. Ringo Rotogravure .

    For the first time, Ringo is also considering a personal tour this year. "I'm lazy, but I'd like to try it three days a week for a month." Simultaneously, he'll awaken his dormant film career with a cameo role in May West's Sextette. 

    The other departure in Starr's life is to leave England forever, fleeing an 83% tax stranglehold by shuttling between two sunny tax shelters. As a resident of income tax free Monte Carlo, he lives in a 30th floor two bedroom apartment high over the Mediterranean and as a legal non resident in the US, he can spend as much as half a year in his rented cottage nestled in the Hollywood Hills, without obligation to the IRS for his international earnings.

     Ringo's self-exile was complicated by his 1975 divorce from Maureen, his ex-hairdresser, wife of 10 years, and mother of their three children, sons Zak, 11, and Jason, nine, plus Lee, who all stayed in England. The anguish of the breakup has been greatly soothed by Ringo's love of the past two years. Nancy Andrews, 29, a striking Alabama-born former Vogue, Mademoiselle, and TV commercial model. "She flashed her eyes once", he says, recalling their first date when he invited her to a studio session, "and I've been in love with her ever since."

     There was a time, Ringo remembers, when he and the boys joked that you couldn't rock after 30, "but then you get there and you stop laughing."

     For now, he and Nancy stay young by indulging Ringo's fancy at the blackjack tables in Monte Carlo. "Am I living a leisurely flow of days into nights and back into days in California? LA shuts down at 2am," he says, "and this place opens up."  It's like an open house at Ringo's on any given night. Clapton and his lady, Harrison's estranged wife, Pattie, might show up, and the men will sing pub ditties until 9am.

     Most nights, Starr stays at home with Nancy as the cook of the house. "I'm easy to please," Ringo explains, "fish, meat, nothing fancy. I don't need your curries and chop sueys."

     Their LA home and most furnishings are rented, except for the stereo and video gear and two Gene Autry posters. Ringo laughs off reports that he's broke and therefore pumping for the overhyped, $50 million Beatles resurrection. "I'm no billionaire. Rockefeller--he's really loaded, but if you think the Beatles didn't save any money, you're insane. Broke is relative. I'm just the biggest spender. I'm 30 companies, you know, multinational. We're in everything from dentist chairs to vending machines, but I don't talk about it."

     His business managers confiscated all his credit cards, but one, "because I use them like water, I used to spend them on jewelry, cars and my toys."

"And me,!" Nancy added.

     "My divorce has been happening for years," he says. "It can break your brain. I overreacted to the responsibility of marriage and kids for a long time, but now I've adjusted. I'd like to have children with Nancy."

     As to Ringo's appeal, she exclaims, "I'm so attracted to his mind. He's fast, sharp, physically, that he just takes my heart. The most aware man I've ever met."  Nancy, who had herself been married for four years, says when they first met, "he'd just sit in his hotel room with the remote control TV. Even now", she adds, "he's moody and super sensitive, like last July, when feeling vaguely insane and drinking some new drink, he shaved his head bald."

     Ringo grew up a lonely, sickly only child. He has always had a deep personal stake in successful fathering. "My father, a house painter, left when I was three. My mom, a barmaid, worked, and my grandma looked after me. I've always had that 'I'll be the father' thing, and the main brain damage of divorce has been the kids. He frets. They freaked out at first." He goes on, "but they got over it quicker than I did. Maureen and I are still friendly, and I see the kids whenever I want."

     Ringo bought them all a home minutes away from his 80-acre Tittenhurst Park mansion, picks them up from school, and has them over the weekends. Now they can visit on weekends only when he's in Monte Carlo. All three children spent last summer in LA with Ringo and Nancy, and they returned for the Christmas holidays in Lake Tahoe.

     "Nancy is great with them", says Ringo, "and they think the world of her. Maureen", he cheerfully reports, "is involved with someone."

     On parenting, Ringo sounds like Rock's Dr. Spock, dispensing theories but no advice. Like Paul McCartney, he's firm about discipline. "I've beaten my kids and made them learn to say, 'Excuse me, '" he says.

     Ringo scrupulously avoids dictating musical tastes at home. As a result, eldest son, Zak, likes some Beatles tracks he's heard," sighs his father, "but he prefers Alice Cooper and Kiss instead."

     Daddy resists any temptation to reminisce about the Beatles and be engulfed by the memories of his glorious, prolific younger days, even when the McCartneys visited last June during the Wings tour and when Harrison and The Lennons were in town for the Rotogravure recording session. Says Ringo, "only 2% of our time was spent in nostalgia. We don't back off from it, but it's not like those were the only days of our lives."

     He does have a Ringo-esque theory of it, "although I always thought we were five, us four, and we weren't the greatest players, something else:  magic!"

     As for a second coming. "We did talk about it," Ringo levels, "but there's no interest now. If anything, we'll do an album first, then prepare for a tour for six months. And we don't have that kind of time, and we wouldn't do it for the money. We were never into that."

     What were they into? "We never wanted to be dictators, presidents, or kings, " Ringo said, "but we did what we wanted to do, we revolutionized the world of music."