Ringo at home

 

Conversations with John

 

Bank Street early 1973

 

Here is a room in the Lennons' Bank Street Apartment we rare see in photos.  

Having Friends and Admirers in High Places (1976)

 

Having Friends and Admirers in High Places

By Peter Jones

The Bolton News

April 20, 1976

    One way to get on in the music world is to have friends and admirers in high places, as Ravi Shankar has underlined. His particular mate and mentor is ex-Beatle George Harrison, and the partnership has proved potent. 

    Without Harrison's encouragement, the 55-year-old Indian would probably be unknown in the Western world. Instead, he's now internationally accepted as a great sitar player, has his records produced by Harrison, and is signed to Harrison's own Dark Horse label.

     Referring to his eldest brother, Uday, a brilliant musician, Shankar recalls, "When I was just four years old, I'd stay alone and play with his musical instruments and lose myself in thrilling stories. I'd act out plays in front of the mirror, playing hero, lover, and villain in turn.  

    

    "Even when I went to school at the age of seven, I carried a whole world of imaginative fantasies around in my head. My invented universe grew ever larger as I read more and more books. Later, my fantasy world, my loneliness, my efforts to grasp something unreachable, all found expression in my mystic."

    

     At the age of 10, Shankar, with two brothers and his mother, accompanied Uday to Paris with a small group of Indian dancers and musicians. Into that touring group came Ustad Allaudin Khan Sahib, who was to have a tremendous influence on Shankar. Says Shankar, "I became his guide, interpreter, and helper. He'd often say to me that he felt I had much talent and would love to teach me, providing I gave up the sparkle and easy fame of my life in Europe and spend many years with him in his own little town of Maibar."

     Shankar did just that. He became Khan Sahib's disciple, living in isolation, submitting himself to years of discipline and devotion, and he finally emerged to become a phenomenon in both Eastern and Western music worlds.

     As a young man, he recalls, "I heard the disdain and misunderstandings felt by some Western musicians for the Indian music form. I realized that I had to go out into the big, wide world and explain what our art and culture was all about. Those teaching experiences are among the happiest and most inspirational of my whole life. I truly value the empathy and respect of young Americans trying to understand in depth Indian music."

      Shankar met and talked with George Harrison, and he asked the ex-Beatle to give help to the millions of displaced refugees of Bangladesh. And that led to the still remembered Concert for Bangladesh with East musical meeting West. But then Shankar also made a big impact at the Monterey Pop Festival, at Woodstock, and at the biggest concert venues all around the world. 

    If Shankar is deeply immersed in Indian culture, he is also happy to try daring new ideas. One of the most widely acclaimed was his concert for Sitar, an orchestra premiered by the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Andre Previn.

    His long standing friendship with Yehudi Mennhin has resulted in a couple of innovative albums. For George Harrison, he did an album called Shankar Family and Friends, which featured just about every possible type of music.

    Shankar works with Indian instruments like sarod, madal, tabla, terang, manjira, and his own sitar, but also includes saxophones, acoustic and electric guitars (usually played by G. Harrison) and classical musicians. 

    Shankar remains surprisingly young at heart. His association with George Harrison has no doubt helped. When the Beatles started dabbling in Indian traditions and transcendental meditation, they opened up a whole new area of music. The result is that Ravi Shankar is now idolized by many young people, along with the Bay City Rollers, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd!

Back when Ringo still signed

 

Beatles Discovery (1969)

This photo from 1968 accompanied the article

 Beatles Discovery

No author listed

Courier Express

March 8, 1969

    If you want something that hasn't been invented ye,t ask Magic Alex. He is the inventor inrResidence of Apple Corp., the company founded by The Beatles. The company is now in financial trouble but that doesn't worry Magic Alex. He works in a laboratory that cost $250,000 to equip, where he turns out  ingenius and low cost items.

     It took him 16 days, for example, to devise a tape recorder without tapes or moving parts. It's the size of a cigarette pack and uses an electron beam and a plastic card to function.

     Alex has also invented a composing typewriter that automatically types the musical notation for any song that is played or sung to it.

     For the Beatles' new recording studio, he has created the machine of 10,000  echos, which makes any music sound as if it is echoing from any given place: a church, beach, mountains.

     Alex is also working on plans for a robot housewife, a machine shaped  like two tennis balls on top of each other and program to do all the housework.

     Magic Alex-- real name John Alexis Martas, came to London two years ago. His father is a former General of the Greek army.

     Alex says that American and Japanese companies have offered him huge sums to work for them, but he prefers Apple Corps., taking from the Beatles only a fraction of what he is worth.    

    The Beatles say they hope to make enough from his inventions to subsidize the handicapped and underprivileged.

John and Yoko visit Spain

John and Yoko autographed this matchbook on this date.

 

April 20, 1971 

Ringo Starr Doubly Sells Self to Actress (1981)

 

Ringo Starr Doubly Sells Self to Actress

By Robert Hilburn

LA Times - Washington Post

April 19, 1981

    The Hollywood actress Barbara Bach's dismay was understandable when she learned that Ringo Starr would be her co-star in the film comedy Caveman. Like most screen beauties, Bach considered herself restricted by her sex symbol image. She hoped a key role in a hit comedy would change that.

     Bach had high hopes for Up the Academy, the comedy she did a while back with director Robert Downey, but the film was far from a smash, so the actress, best known as James Bond's sexy colleague in  The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), next turned to Caveman.

     She liked the idea of a prehistoric comedy where the characters had to act out their intentions, aided only by a 15-word language. Besides, producers Lawrence Turman and David Foster promised they would sign a major comedy actor to play her leading man.

     "I was thinking of someone along the lines of Dudley Moore,"  Bach said, sitting in the huge den of a rented Beverly Hills home. "It was a real demanding part, because the actor would have to use so much pantomime. When they phoned and said they had signed Ringo Starr, I thought, 'Oh, boy. What have I got myself into?' It sounded to me like we were in trouble."

     Bach blushed as she told the story because she was seated next to Starr, the bearded ex-Beatle who was now her fiancé. She added quickly that she only knew Ringo by his image when filming began last year on Caveman, and that he soon demonstrated on the set that he was a "real professional."

     Starr smiled. He is used to having people misjudge him. 17 years after "I Want to Hold Your Hand", he is still known as the happy-go-lucky clown.

     About his image, he said, "I've had to deal with it for so long, and I had to either try to understand it or go around depressed because it was always being hurled in my face. I've come to accept the fact that people don't turn loose of the first image you give them. They don't realize that a person changes. To millions of people, I'll always be remembered as the dummy. It's the same reason Paul will always be the charming one, and John was known for his rapier wit, and George was the mystic. 

    "That's why I'm excited about this movie. In the past, I've been guilty of letting people use me for marquee value, and there were scenes in the films you let go because you wanted to get home or whatever, but there's nothing in this film that I'm ashamed of. I'm hoping people will now realize this dummy can also act."

     Each of the Beatles has spoken about the difficult adjustment after the breakup of the most spectacularly successful pop group in history, but Starr faced the stiffest career challenge because he was neither a songwriter nor an experienced vocalist. He had little potential as a record maker. "I sat in the garden at home for a year after the split because it was hard for me to get started on my own," Starr said. "The others had something to fall back on, but I was starting from scratch. I didn't know what to do."

     He eventually recorded an album of pop standards and a country album, but neither sold well. His fortune changed in 1971 when he had a top 10 single with "It Don't Come Easy." Then came Ringo, an album with producer Richard Perry that went to number one. Star's LP sales dipped after the mid-70s, but he demonstrated he could hold his own when given viable material.

     The drummer's film career moved up and down through such movies as Candy, The Magic Christian, and a spaghetti western called Blind Man. Things picked up in 1974 when he landed a small but meaty part in That'll Be the Day, a stark, unsentimental look at a young would-be musician (played by David Essex) in pre-Beatles England. A hit in Britain, the film was a flop commercially in the United States, except with critics, a few of whom suggested that Starr deserved an Oscar nomination for his supporting role. 

    "That was a real important step for me," Starr said, speaking with the ease that always caused interviewers to describe him as the most affable Beatle. "It gave me the most scope. I had a chance to go from one attitude to another. It also gave me confidence." Despite a vow to be more careful about future roles, Star ended up with novelty bits in two films, Litztomania and Sextett, that he never even bothered to see. 

    Caveman was by far his biggest challenge. "What attracted me was the fact there were only 15 words in it," he explained.  "That meant I'd have a lot of opportunity to use mime. I think I'm better at that than going through 25 pages of dialogue. Also, I like the story. I'm this sort of weak thing at the start of the film, and I end up as the hero. It's sort of brain winning out over brawn."

     Besides Bach, Starr is joined in the United Artists release by Dennis Quaid, Shelley Long, Avery Schreiber, and six-foot-eight Oakland Raiders football star John Matuszak. 

    Was it love at first sight? "Oh, no," Starr shrugged. "Everyone in the cast would go out to dinner and spend time together, but nothing went on. It wasn't until just before we left Mexico that Barbara and I really said 'hello', but we've been together ever since."

Fundraising

 April 20, 2001 

Leaving Spain