Ringo Sheds Shyness (1975)

 

Ringo Sheds Shyness, Makes it as a Film Star

By Keith Newham

London Express Service

November 14, 1975

        "I was always the quiet one at the back, wasn't I?"  Ringo Starr, 1975 style, talking about Ringo Starr, '60s style.

         Well, no, he wasn't the quiet one. He was the shy Beatle, true. He always had a sense of humor while the others had wit. The other Beatles acted zany. He was the authentic clown.

     With his unglamorous face and less obvious talent, Lennon and McCartney were distinguished songwriters as well as singers. Harrison was a noted instrumentalist. Ringo felt he had no qualifications to start a fresh career.

     "The initial breakup was so emotional for me, not so much for the others," Ringo says. "I sat in my garden for about a year, wondering what on earth was going to happen to me. I was sick.

    " I hadn't got a band or anything. Then one day, I jumped up and thought, 'I can't sit here for the rest of my life'. So I went off and did an album (Sentimental Journey), which was a limp way to get in again, but it was a start."

         It was the start of a career that, for Ringo Starr, as no other ex-Beatle has eclipsed his role as a Beatle. It's not only that his music has improved. Ringo's single "Photograph" beat Paul McCartney's excellent "Helen Wheels" to the top of the charts in 1973, but Ringo has also demonstrated, and enjoyed demonstrating, an impressive array of other talents.

         He is now a successful businessman with his own label, Ring O Records. He is a furniture designer, finally finding a Thames showroom for the design business he started four years ago, displaying expensive 1930s-style furniture.  "I need the bread," he jokes.

     And above and beyond everything else, even his music, he is now a film actor. In the days of Beatlemania, when such self-indulgent romps as A Hard Day's Night and Help! were greeted as masterpieces, it was Ringo who stood out as an acting talent. The other three quipped and played practical jokes, but Ringo, way behind Lennon's quick wittedness, a poor second to McCartney's charm and with none of the mystery of Harrison, was the natural comedian.

     He's made several films since those days, and most of them playing, more or less, himself. His role in the 1950s musical That'll Be the Day, alongside David Essex, was widely praised by critics, but he turned down the chance to play in the sequel. He didn't want to recreate the mood of Beatlemania, even as fiction. "Having lived through the madness once, I couldn't experience it a second time. It's too close to home."

     His first really meaty role was as a sadistic Mexican bandit in the western Blindman. Then he played the Pope in Ken Russell's Tommy. Now the good parts are rolling in, not for Ringo the ex-Beatle, but for Ringo the actor.

     A private film with Burt Reynolds, a Sam Peckinpath film set in the India of the Raj. This latter is right up Ringo's Street, as he'll be teamed with his buddy, Keith "Looney" Moon, of the Who.

    "I love the movies," enthused Ringo. "When I was a kid, I used to go two or three times a week. I like movies that just take me away from it. All adventurous movies. I'm not interested in heavy stuff."

     Perhaps he needs to be taken away from it all. Despite his enormous post-Beatle success, Ringo's personal life has not been unalloyed joy. His marriage with childhood sweetheart Maureen, broke down after 10 years and three children.  And the unspoiled Liverpool lad who was saying only last year that he desperately wanted to stay in England, ("my native land"), despite crippling taxes, is now thought to be on his way out.

     "I love this country", he said, "but I've got to look after the financial side of things. No matter what I do, the government keeps grabbing me."

     If he does leave then America, where he spent much of last year, will be his obvious choice. It will mean selling Tittenhurst Park, the Ascot home he recently bought from fellow ex-Beatle, John Lennon, for $600,000.

    Like the other three Beatles. Ringo is still a natural individualist in a field where no one strives to be different. When the British Broadcasting Corporation wanted to use two films he had produced about cannibals and the bird of paradise, Ringo first demanded a $20,000 fee.  Then he amended that to a half-hour weekly show to run six months, and finally settled for two pale green cups and saucers bearing the corporation's motif from the BBC canteen.

     He runs his record company on the basis that no one is tied. "Anyone who wants to leave can-- contract or no contract. The lawyers disagree with me, but I don't care. I'd like the world to be run on a handshake, but it's impossible."

     "When I'm 95, they will still be referring to me as an ex-Beatle. None of us is ever going to lose that association. But it does have its advantages. It's the best way I know to get a good table at a restaurant."