Boston Backseat

September 17, 1976  

A Couple of Starrs (1981)

 A Couple of Starrs

By Fred Robbins

Thursdays Woman

September 17, 1981

    Soon after the Beatles' cyclonic arrival in the United States in 1964, Ringo Starr made it clear, indeed, that he wasn't enchanted by American women. "They have too much to say here," he declared. "They boss a man around. I'll have no woman bossing me around."

     He was 24 then. He's 41 now, and he's both mellower and wiser. Now he knows that American women, like women everywhere, defy stereotyping. Ringo also knows that a guy can't stop lightning. That's the title song he wrote for his latest album, and it refers directly to the love that struck with such dazzling force when movie actress Barbara Bach, who grew up in Queens, New York, came into his life.

     On April 27, 1980, Ringo and beautiful Barbara stopped finding it fate, that is. That was the day he recalls when he told her he loved her for the first time. On April 27, 1981, they became Mr. and Mrs. Richard Starkey. They pledged their vows in London at the Marlebone Registry Office in the presence of family and friends, including ex-Beatles Paul McCartney and George Harrison. As hundreds of fans screamed outside, their wedding party at an exclusive London club was enlivened by a spontaneous jam session, bringing the three surviving Beatles together musically for the first time in a decade. Their impromptu reunion found them playing many of their great hits of the past, including, of course, "All You Need Is Love."

     Love, says Ringo, is the last thing he expected to find when he agreed to having Barbara Bach be signed as his leading lady in the comedy movie Caveman. Nor was he particularly anxious to marry again after his divorce from Maureen Cox, his hometown sweetheart in Liverpool, and the mother of his three children, the eldest of whom is 15. "I was married for 10 years before," he said, "and I had a good marriage for eight years, and then it fell apart. And you don't really know why, because it doesn't come apart in one day. You don't wake up in the morning and say 'that's it.' It takes a couple of years for it to finally drag itself out."

     For several years after his divorce, Ringo opted for a live-in relationship with actress-photographer Nancy Andrews, who was still with him when Caveman went into production in Porta Va'arta, Mexico. And just before his recent marriage, she filed a still-unsettled $7.5 million palimony suit against him.

     When Barbara Bach was first suggested as his co-star, Ringo says, "I had never seen her on the screen, not even in the James Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me. I kept asking, 'What does she look like?' And everyone said, 'Oh, she's a beautiful girl.' They finally showed me some photographs, and they were right."

     But Ringo was no stranger to Barbara Bach. As a teenager, the now 34-year-old beauty would have considered herself lucky just to meet or touch Ringo Starr. But the thought of someday knowing and loving him was too much to imagine. "I was one of the early Beatles fan," she told me. "When they first arrived in America. I was living on Long Island, close enough to go to Kennedy Airport, where they landed. I was right there with my Beatle wig on, in the midst of that mob, with my little sister Marjorie, screaming and yelling."

     Offered the role in Caveman, Barbara jumped at it because it was a comedy, and because at long last she'd meet Ringo. "From the beginning, I was happy to discover that Richie (her name for Ringo) is one of the warmest, kindest, most loving human beings I'd ever met. Even though I didn't fall in love with him immediately," she says. Like Ringo, the former cover girl had also experienced a 10-year marriage that ended in divorce.  Modeling and acted in Italy, starring in dreadful movies like The Humanoid and The Island of the Fish Men. Barbara married a handsome Italian businessman and became the mother of two, Francesca, 12, and Johnny, 8. 

    Love slipped up quietly on Barbara and Ringo. "I was looking for Prince Charming," the hazel-eyed Barbara admits, "but quite honestly, I never thought I would find him. I never thought I'd get married again. Secretly, though, I was waiting and hoping for Prince Charming, and he came along, but I didn't recognize it at first.

     "I'm usually attracted to people who can laugh," Barbara continues, "So I was naturally attracted to Richie. We both agree that the best thing in life is laughter and having a good time. Also, I like sensitive people, and despite his great gifts as a performer and what many people may think, Richie is basically shy, compassionate, and understanding of others. Each new thing that I learned about him made me love him more."

     Both Ringo and Barbara wear star-shaped gold pins encasing a sliver of windshield glass; the pins, which he designed, signify an event that changed their lives. After the completion of their movie, the two went together to England, where they miraculously survived a devastating automobile crash. One rainy day, when they were on an outing in Ringo's Mercedes 350 SL. A skidding truck came hurling toward them. Trying to avoid a collision, Ringo spun the wheel sharply, and the car, going into a skid, toppled three lamp posts. He was thrown clear as the car rolled over twice, finally coming to a stop on the grassy island between highways, completely demolished, with its roof caved in, trapping Barbara inside. Incredibly, they escaped injury and suffered only severe shock. 

    "The accident happened on the 21st of April last year," Ringo relates.  "It brought us even closer together than we'd been because we realized that any day we could be separated; since that day, we have not been separated. Six days after it happened, it was like I was struck by lightning. I said 'I love you,' and we began making plans to marry."

     Of the crash, Barbara says, "It went by so quickly that we only realized how tragic it could have been once we lived through it and saw the condition of the car; we admitted to one another. Then we survived this, so we are meant to survive a lot of other things too. The little windshield pins that we wear are a constant reminder that everything that's happened between us was faded."

     Both say they do not expect marriage to change anything in their relationship. "Getting married is really just saying to the world we are together, and we plan to stay together forever," said Barbara. "And by having the same name, we believe that perhaps it will make it a bit easier on the children."

     Says Ringo, "Getting married will not alter our lives in any way. While I have no guarantee, I'm planning to spend the rest of my life with Barbara. This is forever for me."

     Speaking of Barbara, Ringo waxes lyrical. "Of course, her obvious qualities attracted me first, but that's just the surface. She's a very gentle woman, very giving, very loving, and she likes to play like I do. There's a whole woman there. Inside the lady is just as much beauty as outside. That's the difference. There are a lot of good-looking women, but very few beautiful women. And the beauty, I think, comes from within the soul. I'm a romantic, and I love being in love with Barbara."

     Since their marriage, Ringo and Barbara live just like they did before in a house in the Hollywood Hills with her children, and they vacation at the villa he has in Monte Carlo; Barbara adds that she remains friendly with her ex-husband, who is frequently around. "He comes to L.A., stays at the house with us, and visits the kids," she says. 

    While he's been more active in movies than any of the other Beatles, Ringo doesn't want anyone to get the mistaken notion that he is forsaking music. "I am a musician," he says empathetically. "Though there may be long periods between albums, there will always be a new one, but what's the hurry? I've got another 40 years. The music scene is in a state of transition now," he observes. "As the Beatles, we were lucky," Ringo says. "We were able to stay together as a group longer than most. Everything seems to be going at a faster pace now, and the turnover today is frightening. You can have a group up there as number one, the biggest thing in the world, and two months later, nobody wants to know them. Somebody new has come up."

     Then Ringo talks of his musician son and smiles as he relates. "He's 15 now and already in a band, a heavy metal band. I've got records of his, and they'll wipe you out. But he's not into Beatles music at all, no way. And he has a great line.   He says,  'You know those records you made, Dad? Some of the tracks weren't bad.'"

     Even for Ringo, the Beatles are yesterday, and he realistically says "You can't live in the past." Speaking of the Beatles, inevitably brings up the subject of the tragic death of John Lennon. "Barbara and I were on holiday in the Bahamas when her daughter called and told us what had happened," he says. "The shock, of course, was just a mind blower. John was more than a good friend to me. I looked at him as a brother, like I do the other two, Paul and George, being that I was an only child. So his death just blew me away. When something like that happens, you react in one of two ways: you either go hide somewhere with your grief, or you go and visit. Our decision was to get on a plane to New York just so we could say to Yoko Ono, 'We're here if there's anything we can do,' and there really wasn't. I said to Yoko, 'I know how you feel.' She looked at me very honestly and said, 'No, you don't,' and she was right. I was close to John, but nowhere near as close as she was, they were like one soul within two people."

     Barbara admits she was unprepared for the mob scene she and Ringo encountered outside the Dakota in New York after paying their condolences to Yoko Ono. Her face clouds as she recalls it. "When we walked out of the Dakota, I was really frightened. Such a crush of people! They kept yelling, 'We love you, Ringo,' and they were all grabbing at him. And I am obviously not used to that, as Richie is. So I was yelling back, 'You're hurting him. If you love him, have some respect for the man. He's making a condolence call.'

      "Since it was not a concert or public appearance, I did think it was very disrespectful of the crowd not to leave him alone, not to let us even get to the car. All the running, pushing, shoving, and screaming was terrifying. It was sheer madness. In a crowd like that, one person can tick something off, and that is what we're always afraid of."

     And that is why Ringo never ventures out now without being accompanied by two bodyguards. "Suddenly, you're made to realize that it can be dangerous out there,"  he says. "Once it starts, it's like a forest fire. A lot of people get ideas, so until it cools off, you've got to protect yourself against that. But you must not allow yourself to become bitter. You cannot blame the whole human race for one man, you know, you can't blame New York where it happened. There were some really nice people in that town, in every town."

     Ringo readily admits he's still not fully reconciled to John Lennon's death. "I was upset and pretty low for a long time," he said. "It does get easier because we all have to carry on living, but then again, it gets brought up all the time, so it still knocks me down. Then you start remembering the good times, which is what you should do. It also helps that I strongly believe in reincarnation. It's pointless if you think there's no life after life. Why would you try to do or create anything if you thought that's the end of it? Everyone comes back as another human being. I believe I'm going to come back, and I believe that John will too."

     Ringo hopes that no one believed the widely reported story that he, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison had reunited to do a memorial album to John Lennon. "It was just a rumor," he insists. "We have no intentions. We are still close, all three of us, but we have our separate lives, even though we help each other. Paul produced three tracks on my recent album. He also wrote two tracks for me, and on one of the tracks he plays drums and I play guitar. Also on Paul's new album, I'm on two tracks playing drums by myself on one, and on another with Steve Gatt, a very good New York drummer. Meanwhile, George made a new album on his own. We're all doing our albums, you know. We're all carrying on, and we will always be friends, though we will never again be the Beatles."

Germany interview

 September 18, 1991 -  Hamburg, Germany 

Hello Vienna

 

September 18, 1976 

Secret Service Ringo

 

September 18, 1976

Ringo is here being interviewed on French television -- but to me -- he looks like he is an undercover secret service agent.  It also amazes me how quickly he hair had grown out 

John and Neil's Side Quest

 September 16, 1966 -- John and Neil take advantage of a break in the filming schedule and go to France for a few days. 

True Confessions From Paul (1991)

 True Confessions From Paul 

CP

September 18, 1991

    Paul McCartney says he was the weirdest member of the Beatles, and it was he who taught John Lennon how to make the group's most progressive music. "I was the far out one," McCartney said Monday in an interview with the Toronto Star and other journalists in London. "I hate kind of having to tell everyone this because I feel really weedy."

     He said the popular assumption that Lennon was the spark behind such avant-garde ideas as the landmark concept album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the sound collage "Revolution Number 9" on the White Album is wrong. Although he acknowledged the White Album was put together by Lennon and Yoko Ono. 

    McCartney also says he was so immersed in drugs and sex during the 1960s, "I narrowly miss some lethal minds." He often wonders why it is that he survived when other big-name music stars didn't, but he says his carousing days are long over.

     "I think sometimes it was like a minefield for me-- the '60s," McCartney said the Beatles back in 1966 would have been content to remain as identical mop tops had he not insisted that the group start experimenting. He said Lennon had been happily leading the life of a golf-loving country manor lord with his first wife Cynthia, while McCartney was busy planning the Sgt. Pepper album. 

    "Then he changed. He met Yoko, and he totally threw over his marriage and all his golf clubs, and he got out of all that and became Mr. Avant-Garde." An image which has stuck.

     McCartney was pegged as the lover of sweet love songs, which he admitted is a big part of his style then and now.  He bristled at a suggestion that the songs Lennon wrote on his own, both as a solo artist and with the Beatles, were better than his. "I know Lennon's music isn't better. I'm not even sure it's as highly rated or more highly rated than mine. I think it's a fantasy in the minds of a few journalists."

     He admitted being puzzled that he made it to 1991, while so many other rockers didn't, including Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison of the Doors.

     "There was a lot of stuff going around. A lot of my contemporaries were indulging in certain things I was trying to steer clear of, particularly heroin."

     But times have changed for McCartney 49, who will release his first extended work of classical music on October 7. His hair is noticeably gray, and he doesn't eat meat or smoke tobacco. "I'm grown up now," he said. "I'm not just primarily concerned with teeny bopper affairs anymore. I'm a father of four," McCartney said.

     He was a virtual stranger to most of classical music, even though he had helped to arrange the music for strings in such Beatles classics as "Eleanor Rigby" and "Yesterday." His new work, "Liverpool Oratorio", is a nostalgic look back on his hometown of Liverpool.

     "You just get bored writing pop songs after so many years of doing it because it's pretty much formula, "he said. 

    McCartney also said he's pleased to see Canadian Bryan Adams doing so well with his latest hit, "Everything I Do, I Do It for You," the theme song from the movie Robin Hood, that has surpassed any Beatles songs for the most weeks at number one on the pop charts. "He's cool, man. Really cool," McCartney said. "I like him. Good luck to him, I say."

Later Music Made 'Under the Influence'

Reuter

September 18, 1991

     Former Beatle Paul McCartney said in a recent interview that much of the rock group's later music was inspired by drugs. "From Rubber Soul in 1965 on, every Beatles album was produced under the influence of drugs, especially marijuana and LSD," McCartney told the German news magazine Der Spiegel.

     "Everything in the 60s was drug-inspired: music, literature, cinema. The Vietnam War was carried out under drugs," he said in the interview conducted in London.  Asked if he had been an alcoholic and drug addict, he said newspaper stories that he was a booze and heroin zombie were exaggerations. "I snorted heroin one single time. It's a wonder I didn't succumb to addiction."   McCartney said he was so involved in alcohol and other drugs that "I nearly perished. Who thinks about eating when there's LSD?"

     After the Beatles broke up in 1969, McCartney formed his own band and is still recording, touring, and writing songs. He said drugs were now a thing of the past. "I'm a very, very lucky person," he said. "Next year I will be 50, and I am constantly discovering new things."

Hey Bulldog

 

Love this photo!

Photo by May Pang 

 May did such a nice job capturing father and son here.  That is such a genuine smile from John looking at Julian.   Please don't tell me that this is A.I.  Why do I have a feeling that it isn't really a May Pang photo and is A.I.?  Maybe because I have never seen a photo where John's hair was wavy like that?  Maybe because John's hand looks weird.  I want this to be a real photo though. 

Ringo demonstrates

 September 16, 1971