Rocket Man

 

Grey Hair Hasn't Stopped Him (1986)

 

Meet The Beatles Who Has Put Out His 15th Solo Album

By Kurt Loder

Viva Magazine

September 28, 1986

    It is Monday in London, two days before the royal wedding, and Soho Square is filled with flowers, sunshine, and fresh-faced young tourists. Some loll on the grass, sharing joints; others peer up expectantly at the etched glass windows of an Art Deco-style townhouse across the street, where, in an airy third-floor office, Paul McCartney presides over the bustling affairs of MPL Communications, the company that manages the professional projects of the singer and his wife Linda. 

    McCartney is in from his country home in Sussex, where he has a brand-new state-of-the-art recording studio to promote his latest LP, Press to Play. It is the 15th solo album he has released since he announced the breakup of the Beatles back in 1970, and the years are beginning to tell. His hair is mostly gray these days, but he's as buoyant as ever, bubbling with enthusiasm. 

    After eight years of largely lackadaisical releases on Columbia, he is back with Capital, the Beatles' old label, and he seems serious about rehabilitating the somewhat tattered artistic reputation. Although he has ambitious plans for the future, McCartney cannot ignore his celebrated past and the persistent tug of his emotional undertow. Will he ever again be seen as the sweet light that illuminated the Beatles 20 years ago? The subject seems open for discussion. 

Q:  On your new album, there's an almost punkish song called "Angry." It's not an attitude usually associated with Paul McCartney. What are you angry about? 

A. Well, the same things a lot of us are angry about.

 Q: Traffic jams, stuff like that? 

A: Well, there's that-- the day-to-day p____ offs. But I was thinking more about British trade unions withdrawing coal when there's old ladies dying, and we kind of just go, "Yeah. Well, the union's got a right," and Britain's attitude toward apartheid at the moment, which is just so crazy. I mean, still after all these years of Martin Luther King and everything, they're still buggering around with black and white? It's so insane. Couldn't they just wise up? But there's Maggie saying "We don't need to do sanctions." while everybody else, all the civil rights groups, are saying, "But you do"

 Q: What about sensationalism in rock and roll, the alleged surfeit of sex and violence that many of the music critics seem to find these days? Do you worry that your children are being influenced by this sort of thing? 

A:  No, I think they're into pretty good music, actually.  Simple Minds, Dire Straits, Tears for Fears, stuff like that. I've never tried to favor anything because I figured I wouldn't have liked my dad to sort of tell me to like Elvis, you know. It would have put me off a bit. 

Q: Are you familiar with the PMRC in the States, the group of Washington wives who want ratings for pop records?

 A:  Oh, the lyrics thing?  Uh, I kind of see their point. You know, I think there is a point. Like with newspapers, researchers want to censor stuff. I don't really think you ought to, but let's say a really great group emerges, and you tend to think they'll be heavy metal. Although that's probably heavy metalists to say (laughs,) and say they were advocating, I don't know, ----killing ----Satanism, and they came out with a really great album and turned a lot of people onto Satanism. There's got to be a point where you're going to say, "Look, guys, we're all for artistic freedom, but maybe we don't want to be the devil trampling along America at the moment." I mean, what would you do? I don't know.

     I think censorship's very dangerous. I think, in a way, that it doesn't really hurt to have someone keeping an eye on all this stuff-it's not a bad thing to have watchdog groups. You just mustn't let them get too much power.

     Q: In a more positive vein, you've actively supported other causes you believe in, such as Live Aid.

     A: I'm not a great joiner, but I do support a lot of things. I supported Amnesty International for a while, and of course Live Aid obviously was a great thing. 

Q: Critics may be pleased by the harder pop sounds oppressed to play. Some of the tracks have an almost experimental tilt to them.

A: The funny thing is, there was a time when I was the avant-garde one in the Beatles around the time of Sgt. Pepper's, 'cause that album was largely my influence. I thought of the idea, the concept of pretending we were another group. I was trying to get everyone in the group to be sort of farther out and do this far-out album. John was living out in Weybridge with his wife and child at the time, and I was being a bachelor in London, living on my own, going to the theater, checking out International Times, Allen Ginsberg. It was a pretty rich period. 

    I used to make 8mm home movies and show them one frame at a time. Flick, flick, flick, which made them last about an hour when they should only have been 10 minutes. You know, I remember showing them to Antonioni. I think he was in town filming Blow Up, and Keith Richards. We had some nice evenings, quite stoned evenings, I must admit. Just watching these movies, I still have them, and I was into Stockhausen, and I used to make a lot of home tape loops and just send them to friends for like a buzz. I remember saying to John once, "I'm gonna do an album of this and call it 'Paul McCartney Goes Too Far,' and he said, 'Yeah, you got to do it, man.' So I was the one who introduced John originally to a lot of that stuff. In fact, not many people know this, but Yoko came to my house before she met John. There was a charity thing. It was rather avant-garde, something to do with John Cage or something, and she wanted lyrics, manuscripts. I hate to tell you, but I really didn't want to give her any of my lyrics, you know, selfish or whatever, but I just didn't want to do it. So I said, "But there's a friend of mine who might want to help, my mate John."

     Q. So you were the catalyst for John and Yoko's relationship? 

    A. Well, I don't know that, but I kind of put her on to John, and then they really hit it off. It was like a wildfire, you know. John was certainly in love, um, a little insecurely in love because he warned me off Yoko. Sort of said, "Look, no, no," because he knew I was a bit of a ladies' man; I like the girls, no doubt about that. And I said, "Yeah, okay." I mean, I wasn't about to anyway, but he didn't know that.

 Q. You became involved with Linda Eastman instead. Has it been difficult to sustain such a controversial union over the last 16 years?

 A:  Well, we've been up, we've been down, we've been in love, we've been out of love, we've been every which way, you know. It's certainly not been as idyllic as it looks on the surface. It's a real marriage, believe me, as real as any other marriage. The bottom line is that we love each other, and what's more, we like each other. It sounds corny, but what else can I say? 

Q. Thinking about you and Linda and John and Yoko inevitably recalls the end of the Beatles. After all this time, the cause of the group's breakup still seems murky. What really happened?

 A. The actual story in my mind is that it was all getting a bit sticky during the White Album, and Let It Be was very sticky. George left the group then, and so did Ringo, but we managed to patch that back up. The dates are all purple haze to me, but at some point after Let It Be was finished, and about the time I was wanting to put the McCartney album out, we had a meeting at the Apple offices, and it was like, "Look, something's wrong. We've got to sort it out." I had my suggestion. I said, "What I think we ought to do is get back as a band. We get as the little unit we always were. I think we ought to hit small clubs and do a little tour." I just wanted to learn to be a band together again, cause we'd become a business group. We'd become businessmen, so that was my big suggestion. And John looked me in the eye and said, "I think you're daft. In fact, I wasn't going to tell you, but I'm leaving the group." To my recollection, those were his exact words, and our jaws dropped. And then he went on to explain that it was rather a good feeling to get that off his chest.  A bit like when he told his wife about a divorce, that he'd had a sort of feeling of relief, which was very nice for him, but we didn't get much of a good feeling.

     At first, we agreed not to announce it, but after three or four months, I got more and more guilty about people saying, "How's the group going?" When we sort of knew it was probably going to split up, so I did a kind of dumb move in the end. And when I look back on it, it really was. It looks very hard and cold, but I was releasing the McCartney album, and I didn't really want much press for it. So I told a guy from the office to do me a list of questions, and I'll write the answers, and we'll print it up as a pamphlet, and just stick it in with the press copies of the album. The questions were quite pointed, and it ended up sounding like I was announcing that the Beatles had broken up. John got quite mad about that. Apparently, this is one of the things he said really hurt him and cut him to the quick. Personally, I don't think it was such a bad thing to announce to the world after four months that we'd broken up. It had to come out sometime. I think maybe the manner of doing it I regret now. I wish I had been a little kinder with the other's approval, but I felt it was time. 

Q: Did it sadden you to see Lennon subsequently drift off into heroin addiction? 

A: Yeah, I really didn't like that. Unfortunately, he was drifting away from us by then, so none of us really knew. He never told us. We heard rumors, and we were very sad. But he embarked on a new course, which really involved anything and everything, because John was that kind of guy. He wanted to live his life to the full as he saw it. He would often say things like, "If you find yourself at the edge of a cliff and you wonder whether you should jump off or not, try jumping." And I'm afraid I would always say, "No, man, I'm not going to jump off a cliff. I don't care how good it is".

Q: But you eventually did try LSD?

 A: Yeah, finally. In actual fact, it was because John had done it by mistake one evening. We turned up for a session at Abbey Road, and he thought he'd taken a pep pill, speed or whatever, to sort of wake him up for the evening. But it turned out to be acid. He had a little pill box, and he had taken the wrong pill. This was around the time of Sergeant Pepper, but we didn't get a lot done that night. John came over and said, "Geez, I'm tripping," and we all went, "Ah, okay, keep cool, lad. Now, is this a good place to be tripping?"He said, "No, not really." So I took him home, and that was my first trip that night because I figured, you know, I can't leave this guy on his own. He was all aumummum. 

Q: Your apparent preference for marijuana has made many headlines over the years. Do you still indulge?

 A. I don't talk about stuff like that no more. It's too crazy. Where I was lucky was with my avoidance of heroin. I went through most of the other stuff, and I had a friend in the '60s who was getting into heroin. He said to me, "Man, the thing about heroin is that it's okay as long as you've got the money to support the habit.  There's no problem as long as you can pay, and you're not likely to have a problem with that, so it's cool."But something in my brain went ding. A little light went on, and I said, "No, this is wrong." So I was very lucky. 

Q: After John Lennon conquered his drug problem, did the two of you finally patch up your personal relationship? 

A.We were submerged in business troubles at the time. There was incredible bitterness. At one point, to get some peace in the camp, I told my lawyers I wanted to give John an indemnity he had been seeking against a certain clause in one of the Apple contracts. I said, "Somebody's got to make the first move. I'd love to be the voice of reason here." I happened to be on my way to the Caribbean, so passing through New York, I rang John up. But there was so much suspicion, even though I came bearing the olive branch. I said, "Hey, I'd like to see you," and he said, "What for? What do you really want?" It was very difficult. That was about the strength of our relationship then, very very bitter, and we didn't get over that for a long time. But thank God, at the very end, we suddenly realized that all we had to do was not mention Apple if we phoned each other. We could talk about the kids, talk about his cats, talk about writing songs. The one paramount thing was not to mention Apple. So then the last couple of phone calls we had were getting very nice. I remember once he said to me, "Do they play me against you like they play you against me?" Because there were always people in the background pitting us against each other, and I said, "Yeah, they do. They sure do." That was a couple of months before he.... It's still weird even to say before he died. I still can't come to terms with that. I still don't believe it. It's like you know those dreams you have where he's still alive, and then you wake up and go, "Oh," it isn't pleasant

    . A lot of the accusations John made in public were slightly wild. I mean, maybe we should have taken to Yoko a little better. I often do feel not too clever about not taking to her because we didn't get on too well. She was very different from anything we encountered. A lot of people still find her a little difficult to take. I figure, well, he loved her, so it's nothing to do with me. I should respect her through him, and I felt that I tried to do that, but we were being so set against each other that his unreasonably bitterness was almost inevitable. I think it's such a pity he felt that way, but the bottom line is we loved each other, and I'm glad to be getting back to some semblance of sanity with George and Ringo now. We can meet and hug and say we love each other, you know. 

Q. Might the three of you ever record together again? 

A. I don't know. I'd like to, but it's a touchy affair. I think all of us, rather than get the world's press on our backs, would rather just play that aspect down for now. But I'd like to.

 We were talking about doing a Beatles movie a couple of years ago, slinging in home movies and old outtakes, adding narration, the definitive Beatles story. We are going to call it the Long and Winding Road. We asked Dick Lester to direct it, but he said: "No one would be interested." Two months later, the Complete Beatles came out on video, and it's still in the video charts. So Dick was wrong. There's quite a big market, and we have all the Let It Be outtakes, and I have a beautiful piece of footage from that Dezo Hoffman photo session with the Beatles on the beach in old-fashioned bathing suits. It's fabulous because John is doing this beautiful Charleston, which his mother taught him how to do. I'd still like to do that movie.

 Q: Whatever may happen, will you be leaving the gray in your hair? It looks very distinguished

. A: Yeah, I'm leaving that. When you're past 40, the game is up. You know, my wife actually likes it. Ringo told me off about it, though. He reckoned I have to color it. I think he's kind of gaging himself by how old I look. Like I make him feel old if I look a bit old, but what the hell, you know? This is life. We're all getting older every second. My main thing is just to try and enjoy it, and I'm very surprised to find that more often than not, I really do.

Use of A.I. in Beatles photos

Photo fixed by A.I. 

 

Original photo from Beatles fanzine 

Photo take at the same time for reference 

I have very, very mixed feelings about A.I.   I have to use it for my job, and I see the benefits of it.  It does save me time to get work accomplished.  But when it comes to using it for Beatles photos, I have mixed feelings.  I do not like people using A.I. to make "new" Beatles photos or to show the "whole picture" of a Beatles photo.  Those types of photos really trick people. 

I was playing around with A.I. and used the one photo that I have always wanted a good version of.  This photo of Paul and a fan in the Autumn of 1968 was photocopied in a fanzine, and it did not turn out.  I have never been able to locate the original photo, so I think this A.I. rendering isn't too bad.  Paul's hair is wrong, but not by much, and the pattern in his jacket isn't the same.  But overall, I think it looks good enough to give us an idea of what the real photo looked like. 

Keep in mind that Beatle fans have been manipulating photographs since the early days, when they used to cut off the heads of the Beatles' wife/girlfriend and paste their own on top of it. 

I will say that I don't plan on using A.I. on this site but if I do to illustrate something, I will always disclose its use and have the original available if anyone is interested.  

New fashion

 

She is touching the red velvet jacket

 

A True to Life Adventure (1968)

 A True-to-Life Adventure

By Sher Miller

Published in the George Harrison Birthday Issue Special from the Harrison Alliance 

1973

    This particular George adventure began on a cloudy, drizzly Sunday, the first day of September 1968. My three friends, Joyce, Carol, and Margaret, and I met at Paul's house on Cavendish. Before long, we boarded a train for Weybridge, Surrey. We went there first to try and see Ringo and John. 

    Ringo wasn't home, but we met Maureen's housekeeper. She was holding Jason, who was only a year old at the time. Then we proceeded up the steep hill to John's home. We suddenly remembered he was living in London with Yoko, but we decided to ring the bell anyway. It turns out that Cyn was using the house, and her mother answered the door with Julian by her side. I remember thinking how much he looked like John, and how sad he seemed. We gave him some chocolate and left to go to Esher. 

    Luckily for Joyce and me, the other two girls, both English, had been to George's before, so we had no trouble finding the right bus. Before long, we were in the middle of the little town of Esher. Margaret led the way up the road towards Claremont Drive. I have no doubts that on my own I'd never have found it. We walked nervously down the gravel road, and finally arrived at George's driveway itself. 

    I noticed Mr. Harrison Senior standing by the garage of his son's home, curiously watching us. I thought for sure then we wouldn't get any farther; for sure, we'd find ourselves told to leave with a polite but firm lecture on why George needs his privacy. But as we got closer, Mr. Harrison smiled. I had the feeling he loved the idea of us coming to see his son. 

    The four of us stood on the step by the front door, debating about who would be the lucky one to ring the bell. Finally, Margaret rang, and after a minute, Pattie appeared at the door. I couldn't believe I was really seeing her after staring at her picture in magazines for so many years. She had no makeup on, was barefoot, and wore a beige minidress. She still was beautiful. Margaret asked if we could see George, and for a second Patty hesitated. Then said, "Just a minute." I thought this was really going to be it, and our good luck would end right then. It was a fairly well-known fact that George displays a fiery temper if his privacy is disturbed.

     I bent my head down to put in a film cartridge. When I looked up, there was George standing in the doorway with a little blonde boy by his side. He proceeded to tell me, "I can't stay out long, as I'm sort of busy." I thought perhaps he was writing a song or something, but it turned out he had a house full of relatives. I told him I had a gift for him, and gave him the psychedelic tie I'd bought for him in New York. His face broke into that huge, lopsided grin of his, and he promptly put it around his neck and tied a bow. He said, "Thank you", and was about to take it off when I said, "Leave it on," for a joke; he did!

     Then Margaret said, "Can we take a picture with you?" And he said, "Sure." Carol and Joyce each had their picture taken with George, with Margaret taking the photos. As he stood with each of them and turned, he suddenly looked at me and said, "Wow, where did you get that umbrella?" I told him I'd gotten it in London. It was just a plastic, see-through one, but he got so excited over it. He called Pattie out of the house to see it. She just sort of nodded and went back inside, carrying one of their many cats. Every once in a while during our chat with George, she would pass by in the hallway of the house, just to see what was going on with us. Guess it was more interesting than what the relatives were talking about!

     Then I asked him who the little boy was, and he said it was his nephew, Paul. It was my turn to pose with him, but before I stepped up next to him, I said, "Is it all right?" He smiled that smile again and said, "Of course."   As I stood next to him, he asked me if I was on holiday, and when I said "yes", he asked if I was having a good time. He was so nice and friendly, as if we'd known each other for years. 

    It wouldn't have been strange to tell him the truth, that I'd come to England only to see him and his three friends. I'm sure he guessed that, though, when two days later he waved to me from his car at EMI. But that's another story. 

    When it was Margaret's turn to pose with him, I somehow got the job of taking the picture. Well, needless to say, my nerves were going crazy, and as I was about to take the picture, George politely pointed out to me that my hand was covering the lens opening. "Your finger's on the thing," was what he said, to be exact. I said, "You're right." We both ended up laughing. Picture taking over, Margaret handed him a copy of Beatles Monthly to sign, which he graciously did. Then I suddenly decided I wanted an autograph, and all I had to write on was a picture of Paul (Yes, Paul McCartney) I had taken the week before, so I handed that to him. He looked at me with this devilish expression and made a big motion with the pen towards Paul's face. I panicked for a second, not totally aware that he was joking around. "Not on his face," I warned. He cracked up and signed on the bottom. I still got that picture to this day, and people never can understand why George signed Paul's picture.

     Then I asked him if it was true that the Beatles would be coming to New York for the premiere of Yellow Submarine. He looked up with a smile and said, "Well, no one told me about it." I also mentioned that I had seen Magical Mystery Tour in New York, and it was really great, not the disaster the press had said, to which he replied, "Well, the ones who like us liked it, and the ones who don't didn't," which was a pretty clever answer, if you think about it. 

    He then asked us if we were all Americans, and when he found out that the other two were English, he wanted to know how we'd met. It took us a bit to explain that we'd been pen pals and finally met over here. Then he asked where in America I was from, and I told him New York. After about 20 minutes, George said he really must go in. We thanked him for being so nice and putting up with us, even though he had company. He smiled and said, "Hope the rain stops, so you can enjoy your holiday." We waved goodbye and noticed that George's father had been standing up by the garage and had watched us the entire time we had been there. He waved to us too, and we walked in a daze out of Claremont Drive. It was truly one of the highlights of all my trips to England, and I will always remember how fantastic George was when he really didn't have to be.

Yellow Submarine party

 

He is leaving home

 

A fan and a guitar

 

Will the Real Richard Starkey Please Stand Up? (1968)

 Will the Real Richard Starkey Please Stand Up?

By Alan Walsh

Melody Maker

March 16, 1968

    "Just because the others are in India, I get all the interviews,"  grinned Ringo Starr as we settled into armchairs at NEMS new Mayfair headquarters. Ringo is back in Britain. Chirpy, cheerful, he sipped his sixth cup of coffee of the afternoon and answered questions readily and patiently. 

    Ringo has been regarded as the Beatle in the shadows, but he has his own views on things. He agreed that their new single was based loosely on Humphrey Lyttleton's 1956 hit "Bad Penny Blues," talked of India and the Maharishi, and denied he was losing interest in meditation, and spoke of his schizoid life as both Beatle Ringo Starr and plain private Richard Starkey, two people to him, but overlapping into his private and public lives. There was sadness in his final remarks on his dual existence. "I try and keep them separate, but you can't," he said.

 Q: 'Lady Madonna' has been called almost a return to rock and roll. Is this true? 

Ringo: Yes. That's what it is-- almost a return to rock and roll.

 Q: Can you explain what you were trying to do in this record?

 Ringo:  The thing is, we've been trying to make a rock n roll record for five years now. Because rock n roll has suddenly hit the headlines-the great revival. Because this one is a rocker (a slight one). Anyway, people are saying it's a rock n roll record. 

Q:  When did you start thinking about the record? 

Ringo:  Paul thought of it originally. He did it like Fats Waller first.  I heard it in the studio. Paul plays piano on it. What he's doing on piano is sort of 'Bad Penny Blues.'  We said to George Martin, 'How did they do it on 'Bad Penny Blues?'  And he said they used brushes. So I used brushes, and we did a track with just brushes and the piano, and then we decided we needed an offbeat. So we put an offbeat on it, and then Paul decided to sing it in his sort of Elvis voice.

 Q:  Many people thought it was you singing.

 Ringo: Yes, a lot of people did. It didn't sound like me to me.

 Q: Is this as near as you've got to a rock number in five years? 

Ringo: Ever since rock n roll, rock n roll records have been made, but people forgot to say rock n roll. All through the years, there have been people who have come out with rock n roll records, but now suddenly everyone wants rock ' n ' roll to come back. So they're saying, 'this is a rock record', and 'that's a rock record.'

     They picked out records that have an offbeat or a saxy thing or a Duane Eddie thing. They're calling ours rock n roll, and the Moves 'Fire Brigade', and Elvis's record. I don't think anyone will ever go back to rock n roll as it was years ago. The reissues will be the only ones, because there's so much more musical influence now from all the years that have gone by.

     Rock originally was influenced by country and western and blues, mainly, but now we've had 10 or 15 different types. So all the new rock-and-roll records will have a bit of that in them as well. They'll be technically a bit more advanced and have a lot more musicians in them.  I don't think it's really your old rock n roll. It's just a title. 

Q: This single is very different from the sort of Beatles music on Sgt. Pepper, for example.

 Ringo:  We always try to be different. If people hadn't been saying the great rock n roll revival, we most probably still would have done this record, and it would have been just the new Beatles single. It wouldn't have been rock n roll. Beatles. 

Q: How do you feel about the early days of rock and roll? 

Ringo: They were the greatest days for me. I was just at the right age, but I don't even think the re-releases of the old rock n roll records will sell. It's nostalgia for us -- you and me. The people who went through that -- the 25s and over.

 Q: Would you ever get so nostalgic that you'd want to play again?

 Ringo: No, I don't think I ever would. I don't want to play again on stage, not at the moment anyway.

 Q: Is this record a step in any specific direction for the Beatles?

Ringo: It's not a backward step, as some people have said, because it doesn't freak out. People think you're going backward. It's just another step, and that's what they all are, just because we do certain things on some records. It's called progression. This one is just us doing a record. It's just a record. It's not a step back or a step forward or sideways. It's just another step. It's just another type of song from the Beatles. 

Q: You stayed only 10 days in India. When you got back, were you confused about why you came back?

 Ringo:  I wasn't confused. The newspapers were confused. I came back because I felt like coming back. That's the whole simple thing to it. I just thought, 'Well, I'll go home.' We got there, and it was great, and the sun was shining, nice place.

 Q:  Was there an element of disappointment or disenchantment in your decision to come back?

 Ringo:  No, it was just that we felt like coming back; we still meditate. The whole point of going there was because we were away from everything. And Maharishi would like you to graduate to as many hours as you can do. And while you're there, you can, but it's impossible at home to do 10 or 12 hours, really, because you have a lot to do. But you can do it there because everything's provided, and you've got your room, you don't have any worries about all the work you have to do. We weren't disenchanted. It was just a feeling. I think everyone must get it sometimes, wherever you go. 

Q:  Was it homesickness?

 Ringo: Yes, it can be described as a lot of things. I think Maureen was missing the kids. That was only one thing. I mean, we didn't say suddenly, 'oh, we've got to go see the kids.' It was 100 reasons which formed into one thing -- feel like coming home. So we came home. 

Q: It was reported that the Maharishi was disappointed when you left 

Ringo:  We went to see him, and he wanted us to stay because he was helping us. If you're going to learn something, you might as well learn it from the boss man, and he's the gov'ner.

 Q:  Were John, Paul, and George disappointed?

 Ringo:  No. We just said, 'We're going home.'  And they said, 'All right, see you when we get back.' Not one of us holds the other

 Q: What have you been doing since you got back?

 Ringo: This is the first day of work. Apart from that, I've been at home doing whatever you do at home. I've just taken up enlarging and developing films. I've been doing them for the past two days. That's all, really 

Q: You said in Melody Maker in December that the Maharishi looked like answering a lot of questions for you. Is this still true?

 Ringo:  He still does. Somebody said that I looked at him and said, 'there I am', but he's a long way ahead from where I am. He's so great. There's something about him. I can't tell you what it is really, you just know there's a great man. 

Q: Do you think he'll ultimately lead you to what you're striving for?

 Ringo:  He's put me on the road. Now it's up to me whether I follow or get off.

 Q: Do you intend to carry on? 

Ringo: At the moment, yes, I've never said that 'in five years, I'll still be doing what I'm doing now,' because I don't know. 

Q: Has it helped you up to now?

 Ringo: It's calmed me and made me more relaxed, although I still have the same emotions as anyone else, but I feel more relaxed.

 Q: What's the practical application of meditation when you're at home?

Ringo:  Half an hour meditation in the morning and half an hour at night. The rest of the time, you just do what you normally do. It's meditation because we're 'householders'. That's the word for people who have to get up and do jobs and who can't be monks and sit in the cave and not do anything. So we do the householders meditation --half an hour in the morning and half an hour at night. This eases your mind in the morning before you're out, doing your job, then when you're finished, everyone's minds a bit tight, and meditation relaxes it and relaxes you. You're a better person. All the worries, troubles, and tribulations of the day, if there are any, they build up, and that's when you get all the aggression, because everyone is so tied up that they're not thinking straight, and they're out shooting and fighting before they know what happens. So that way you relax yourself and relax your brain, and no problem seems to be as big as you make it out to be.

Q: The devotion of the Beatles to the Maharishi has given him a lot of publicity. Has it been good or bad publicity? 

Ringo: The publicity we've tried to give has been good publicity, but all the people who think it's something else have just been saying a lot of rubbish, really, this has been bad publicity. But you are going to get this. You get good and bad with everything, and it's just a pity that all the people who have never tried it are giving it a lot of bad publicity, like the press and a few pop stars. 

Q: Has it helped you musically?

 Ringo: I don't think it helped me musically. No, our songs will be influenced by it because of John and Paul. It's another influence, so it will influence our songs. But I don't think it'll be a cause. I won't become a cosmic drummer.

 Q: Have you acquired any ambition to go deeper into music yourself?

 Ringo: No. I have the phases where I want to play guitar, or I want to play piano, or anything I can play a tune on, because I get sick of bang, bang all the time. Though some drummers can make them talk and play tunes on drums, but I haven't done any of that, really.

 Q:  What about writing songs? 

Ringo:  No, I have the odd go, but it's a joke. It's tunes I find the hardest thing to do. I don't think words are very hard. Usually, I write a song, then I sing it to someone, and they say, "Oh, hey, 'Blue Moon'." And the first ones I used to write used to be pinches from Jerry Lee Lewis, all his B-sides. 

Q:  Has the fact that you're away from touring and just work in the studio these days given you any appreciation for other types of music? 

Ringo: Not really. I still appreciate the same music that I used to, which is country, rock n roll, pop, and the odd classics.

 Q: What about jazz? 

Ringo: I've been through it all, you know. I've been through trad jazz and that got boring, and modern jazz, which I still like. I like small combos, Chico Hamilton, Yuset Latleef, people like that, small groups more than big bands, but there's no great urge in any of them. I just play an odd LP and I have to be in that mood to play that sort of record. 

Q: What do you listen to most at home?

 Ringo:  I don't think I listen to anything more than anything else. I stick LPs on from Tamla to country. I put them all on.

 Q: Away from work in the studio and elsewhere, what takes up most of your time?

 Ringo:  Photography, playing with my kids, answering the telephone, just being a normal person who lives in a house.

 Q: Do you ever miss touring in the days of chasing round the country? 

Ringo: No, when we toured, it was such a frenzy and so exciting that I'd had enough at the end of it. Five years of it at the pace we did, it was enough for me. I don't feel at this moment that I want to do a tour.

 Q: Has age had its effect too? 

Ringo: Yes, that is. Well, it's like when I first moved down to London, I used to go out to the clubs every night, and I had great times. But if I go now, I expect it to be like it used to be, but it never is. You blame the club and the people, but it's you yourself as well, because you've gotten older and changed yourself. 

Q: Do you ever become nostalgic for the early days of the Beatles and Beatlemania? 

Ringo: Not yet. Maybe I will in a few more years. We haven't been away from it that long, really. Maybe in 10 years, like I'm still nostalgic for rock n roll now.

 Q: Are you ever nostalgic for the North of England and Liverpool? 

Ringo:  No, because now I have my own family and my own life. I still go up there and see them, and I still enjoy going to Liverpool. If this all finished, and I was back to not being Ringo, back to more normal, I suppose I might move up there again, but I don't know, really, 

Q: Back to more normal. That's an intriguing phrase. What do you mean? 

Ringo:  Well, it is, but it's one of the phrases you use. I consider myself as Richard Starkey and Ringo Starr. There are really, like two different people, but they're not. It's just, I think Richie Starkey has got his life to lead, and he doesn't want it in all the papers or the whole world shouting about it. Then there's Ringo, where I'm quite willing to put up with it. This is a Ringo interview. It's no interest if you write Richard Starkey, if I wasn't me. I still make two different scenes altogether. I try and keep them separate, but you can't. 

The Return of the Purple Shirt

 

Ringo shows us that Paul isn't the only Beatle who can still fit into his old clothes when he appeared in a fancy purple button-down shirt that he famously wore in 1968.   Ringo was seen wearing this purple shirt during the recording of "Hey Jude," specifically, but he wore it during the recording sessions of 1968 -- right around the time he quit the Beatles. 

While it looks a little lighter in the modern photographs, it has been made known that it IS the exact same shirt that Ringo hung onto all of these years.  And I have to say that it looks very nice with the black blazer.  Not one of my favorite Ringo clothing items, but still fun to see all of these years later.  

Only Paul and Ringo still wear clothing that other rock stars would have hanging in a museum somewhere. 

"Meditation is Great," Says Beatle Paul (1968)

 "Meditation is Great," Says Beatle Paul

No writer listed

Go Magazine

April 5, 1968

    Paul McCartney returned to London last week from Rishikesh, India, where he was studying with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. John Lennon and George Harrison, the two Beatles left in Rishikesh, will probably return home later in the month. 

    Upon his arrival in London, McCartney told reporters, "Meditation is great. You sit down, relax, and count to yourself. It sounds daft, but it's just a system of relaxation, and there's nothing more to it."

     Describing the activities and the retreat, McCartney said, "We meditated about five hours a day, and the rest of the time, slept, ate, sunbathed, and had fun. I don't know how much it cost, but it was very cheap."

     Although there are reports that the Maharishi charges his students a week's salary. McCartney shrugged off reporters' questions about the guru making a fortune. McCartney pointed out that all religions take money to keep themselves going. He explained, "The Maharishi himself has nothing, only a room, a pair of sandals, a chair, and he eats nuts. He doesn't use money and hasn't a flashy car or anything like that."

     McCartney's departure from the Guru's retreat was not as unexpected as Ringo Starr's. Ringo and his wife, Maureen, left after only 10 days with the Maharishi because they were unhappy with the food and also missed their children. At the time. Ringo compared the retreat to Butlins holiday camps, which are British vacation camps with tightly organized schedules.

     McCartney actually stayed in India longer than he had originally anticipated. Jane Asher flew back with McCartney from the retreat.

     In June, the Beatles have scheduled time in the recording studio to work on their next album. John Lennon's psychedelic-painted Rolls-Royce has been on exhibit as the feature attraction at the International Auto Show, which began at the Coliseum in New York last Saturday. The car, which has been used by Nat Wiese of Nemperor artists in New York, has been in this country, in case any of the Beatles come over here and need to use it. 

Rock and Roll Circus (2005)

 

Rock and Roll Circus

By Chris Nickson

Discoveries 

February 2005

    For many years, until its official release on video in 1996, one of the most elusive and collectible Rolling Stones artifacts was the Rock and Roll Circus show filmed over two days at the end of 1968 that had never been shown, a few pieces had teased out, such as the Who's performance, which turned up in The Kids Are All Right. For the most part, it stayed hidden away for the best part of 30 years, the holy grail of Stones fans. 

    More recently, it has made a belated appearance on DVD, finally coming into the digital age. But the story of the Rock and Roll Circus, both of its making and its resurrection are the stuff of music lore. It was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who, despite his name, isn't English but Irish-American. He'd been in England for a few years, working in television and making some of the earliest promotional music films for The Beatles and The Stones. And he'd go on to direct Let It Be and the epic miniseries Brideshead Revisited, among other things.

     In Britain in 1968, there had been nothing like the idea of the Rock and Roll Circus, which was conceived as a television special. There were weekly shows such as Top of the Pops. The Beatles had unveiled the enigmatic Magical Mystery Tour. And there had been a program showing the Doors and Jefferson Airplane in concert at London's Roundhouse.

 "Ready Steady Go, which I directed, was the closest thing, because we were connected to the bands," Lindsay-Hogg recalls, "and because we were live, unlike Top of the Pops, it gave the bands more leeway to do the plug song and two or three others. It was a very good atmosphere. You could have people playing with each other. So it was a good feeling on that show. "

    He'd come to know the Stones and was approached when Mick first first mooted the idea of a television special The Circus. Lindsay-Hogg said, "Well, it's my concept. But Mick Jagger, then, as now, was very involved in everything. So any ideas I had, I would always run by him. It was a hard thing to come up with a concept that seemed to fit their image and also the image of the kind of show he wanted to put together.

     "I remember being very happy when I was doodling on a pad in their offices on Maddock Street. I doodled a circle, and I thought, 'A circle looks like a ring'. Then the title came to me before anything else, The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus. I thought there was something there. It was as unformed as that. I called Mick, but he was asleep. I eventually got him about three o'clock and told him. And he said, 'Yeah, that's as close as we've got so far. That's good.' He said to go on working on that. And asked, 'What kind of circus should it be?' I said, 'It shouldn't be a big, lavish Barnum and Bailey Circus. It should be a down-at-heel, tatty European circus with acts that are a little too old.' And he said, 'That's it!'

     "He's extremely bright, and he was very, very understanding, especially since Andrew Oldham wasn't there anymore, in broad strokes of what their image was and which way to go," said Lindsay- Hogg. "As soon as we talked about the title and the kind of circus, that's when it started, and it never changed. We'd had occasional meetings with the rest of the band and all of them were there, and we talked about it, they signed off on it. But the person you mostly dealt with in those days was Mick, because he was what you'd call 'the guv'nor'. Mick, Charlie and Keith were the runners of the band, but Mick was the one who wanted to shoulder the responsibilities. Brian had fallen apart, poor boy."

     The ideas came together in late October, and in December, they shot for two days, something unthinkably spontaneous by today's standards. But in that time and place, almost anything was possible, even if some ideas proved impossible. They had hoped to get the Isley Brothers and Johnny Cash, but approaches to both proved fruitless, so most of the acts were English.  "The organizing wasn't difficult, oddly enough, and it was sort of enjoyable. In those days in England, everything was centralized in London. I used to think it was like the Impressionist painters in France. They came from different parts, but they all turned up in Paris. These bands came from all over, but they were all in London. 

    "There used to be a nightclub called the Ad Lib. You go there on a Friday night, look around, and see the banquets around the wall, John Lennon, George Harrison, two Rolling Stones, an Animal, a Kink, a Yardbird, whatever. Managers like Kit Lambert and Andrew Oldham, they were all there. So the organizing of the show, once we decided to go ahead with the Circus, was done in that little community.

     "Early on, we decided on the Who, because they were great. Then, Keith Richards, like Taj Mahal, Maryann Faithful, was going out with Mick. Mick thought it would be great to have this supergroup.  Originally, that was going to be Steve Winwood. He said he'd do it and think of some musicians. Once we got the idea for the Circus, things happened very quickly. Steve got kind of unavailable, too much marijuana, or whatever was going on. He didn't get his band together. Then he called up two or three days before we were supposed to do it, and sweetly said something was bothering his voice and he didn't think he could sing. That left us with the hole. Mick thought he'd call Paul McCartney first, then decided that didn't seem right in this mix; he didn't know what band he'd get together, since Keith wanted to play. 

    Then he thought the best person who'd lead himself to a nutty project was John Lennon. So Mick called John, and we had this extraordinary group of musicians. So the lineup was set with the Stones headlining, the Who, Taj Mahal, Maryann Faithful, the Dirty Mac, who was Lennon, Richards, Eric Clapton, and Mitch Mitchell, along with newcomers Jethro Tull. The only ones I didn't know were Taj and Jethro Tull." Lindsay-Hogg noted, "We got a lot of demos from bands. I'd seen Tull on the late-night BBC show, and I thought Ian Anderson was a really interesting performer with this crazy, insane Doctor performance. It was between them and a guitar-driven band, which Mick didn't want, called Led Zeppelin. 

    "And so the show, the logistics of it, principally and particularly of it being in London,  got together seamlessly, compared to everything else, assembling the talent seemed easy. There was a studio to transform, circus acts to book, and they found some who were suitably down at heel, as well as the technical side, which didn't go as smoothly. "

    The technical side was a little nightmare. "We'd imported these cameras from France," Lindsey-Hogg said. "We wanted to put the thing on film rather than tape. We had a wonderful DP, Tony Richmond, who went on to do Let It Be, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and pictures with Nick Roeg. I'd done "Jumping Jack Flash", but I hadn't had enough control over what the cameras were doing. The French system had film magazines on top of the cameras, but also a monitoring device that went into the control room, and you could orchestrate the shots. This was the first time it had ever been used, and it kept breaking down. We'd been in the middle of a song, and would lose a camera and would finish with the other three cameras. The magazines would have to be reloaded and we would lose another camera, and someone would come out with a screwdriver, inevitably."

     With only two days really set aside for filming, they were asking for trouble. And the first piece of it came with American Taj Mahal, along with his band. He'd been refused the necessary work permit to perform in the show, coming into England instead as a tourist, where they were allowed to stay for 24 hours. The filming was done in strict secrecy the day before the other bands were coming to the set. And then there was the case of Tull. They were starting to enjoy the wave of success that had come with their debut. This was, but in the immediate wake of that, guitarist Mick Abrams had quit the band, and when they were called to appear on Rock and Roll Circus, they hadn't yet found a replacement. Salvation came in the form of a player named Tony Iommi with a Birmingham group called Earth, who, in less than two years, would be finding success under the name Black Sabbath. The only problem, as Tull frontman Anderson explained at the time, was "Our music wasn't really compatible with his playing." With no time to rehearse, Tull became one of two acts to use a pre-recorded backing track (the other was Faithful), with Iommi's guitar not even plugged in. 

    The day was carefully planned, but the technical hitches kept pushing stage times back and back. One highlight for the invited audience was the appearance of Dirty Mac with Lennon on guitar and vocals, Clapton on lead guitar, Richards on bass, and Mitchell from the Jimi Hendrix Experience on drums, representatives from the biggest bands in the UK at the time. After just a day's rehearsal, they produced a searing version of Lennon's "Yer Blues", then just released recently on the White Album. They veered into a 12-bar blues that was supposed to feature violinist Ivry Gitlis, but which was hijacked when Yoko Ono took the stage and began singing. 

    "I didn't even know Yoko was going to do that," said Lindsay-Hogg. Ivry, Gitlis, who was a violinist who had come over from Paris, thought he was going to play, and it would be good for him. He didn't know Yoko was going to do that, because only John and Yoko knew. He kept thinking, 'What is going on?'  She kept going; he got pissed off, then resigned."

     Because of all the delays, it was the wee small hours by the time the Stones finally took the stage. The crew and band were all tired, but there had been problems the night before with Brian Jones; he was barely there physically and hardly there mentally. Lindsay-Hogg recounted, "We lived near each other in Parliament Hill in Hampstead. We'd rehearsed the show and shot Taj Mahal one day, and we're going to do the whole thing the next day. About midnight, after I got in, I had something to eat, and Brian called me from up the road. He asked if he could come over. I asked what the problem was. He was very maudlin and said, 'I don't think I'm going to come tomorrow. They're being so mean to me.' I said he had to come. 'What would the Rolling Stones be without you?' I asked innocently, not knowing that two months later, that would happen. He declined emotionally and physically. Rather than fighting his depression and paranoia, he settled into it. Anyway, I persuaded him to come. He wanted someone to know he was suffering, but he was very hard to talk to. He devolved into his own world. He couldn't play much more. He broke his wrist, I think, when he was in North Africa recording Jajoukas Nomadic Moroccan Musicians.

     "Because of the state he was in, he never did the exercises needed to get it strong again. He really couldn't play anymore, and that was a symptom of where he was psychologically." He did remain for the whole thing, although he was related to a very much secondary role, with Richards taking all the solos and Jones contributing minimal rhythm guitar, a little slide, and some maracas, looking plainly uncomfortable and out of it. 

    Finally, though, the Stones began to play. "Everyone was there by noon, and we did the player's entrance. Mick and the Stones were acting as hosts until they got on stage at two in the morning. The Stones had done a full day's work at the time they got on stage. Well, with various takes, Mick wasn't satisfied, so we did five takes of "You Can't Always Get What You Want," or whatever. 

    "By the time we got to the song we'd been looking forward to, which was "Sympathy for the Devil", it was four in the morning. They hadn't only been drinking tea and taking aspirin, and were all not at their best. We did one or two takes, and it was all going downhill. We weren't together musically. The camera crew was exhausted. We had a meeting me, Mick, Jimmy Miller and Sandy Lieberson, who was the producer. We thought about going home and coming the next night around nine, but by then the overages would have cost as much as rental charges, as we'd already spent. We decided to do it one more time. The Mick did this extraordinary performance. He made them. One of his gifts is his willpower. He told the band they were going to do it, and they did."

     Eventually as December 8, 1968 had become 5am December 9, it was all done. Audiences and musicians went home to their beds and kept the show as a memory. But Lindsay-Hogg went to work on editing. "Even though there was no immediate BBC interest, I was an advocate for finishing it, editing it and putting it out," said Lindsay-Hogg, "but in January, I'd gone off to do Let it Be but we had a rough cut screening with Mick and Keith and Alan Klein and me. 

    "While they professed to like it in general, they weren't happy with themselves. I can't remember if they'd got rid of Brian by then, or about to, also, they did think the Who were very good, but they were very critical about themselves and very tough-minded about what they do. They just thought they could maybe do better. So the idea was to regroup in the spring with Mick Taylor and do the Stones somewhere. The idea was we'd go to Rome and shoot in the Coliseum and edit it onto the other footage. I was against it because it seemed like a very big stylistic goof. They just released "Honky Tonk Woman", and they wanted to put that in the show. Then, overnight, the permit to shoot in the Coliseum fell through. The papers had got wind of it and complained, and there was some worry about the amount of amplification making the Coliseum fall down. So then there was no Coliseum. Mick went off to do Ned Kelly.

     "Then a year went by, and they went off to do another tour. One of the things that happened was that there were lots of rock and roll projects in those days, and everyone had lots of ideas. So if a project lost momentum, it could end up in a drawer for a while.  It looked as if Let it Be would lose momentum because Allen [Klein] was using it to negotiate a better movie or record deal. So a year had gone by, and it was still in a very good rough cut stage. It was all in the cutting room. Then the Stones decided we should close the cutting room and bring all the cans of street footage to Maddox Street. My feeling was that not much was going to happen then. For tax reasons, the Stones went to France for a year. They didn't need these really nice offices, and they got a much smaller office. They couldn't fit the 35 cans of film in the new office, so Ian Stewart thought maybe someone might want it. And he took the cans of film to his house in the country and put them in his barn for safekeeping. He didn't tell anybody he'd done it. He was smart enough to know that one day someone would want everything to do with the Rolling Stones.

     "Over the years, because I did some videos with the Stones, I would say, 'What happened to the Circus?' And they would say, 'I don't know,' and life had moved. Then Stu died in the late 80s, when Cynthia, his widow, went around the property. She found the cans of film in the barn. She got in touch with someone. Eventually, Allen Klein heard about it. He had a contractual thing with the Stones that he owns, or co-owns, all the pre-1970 stuff. He thought it should be reconstructed, and he got all the footage, which was hard because a lot of it had gone missing. When Jeff Stein made The Kids Are All Right, he'd taken the Who's bit. So that wasn't there. It had ended up in a vault in Teddington. So it took a lot of sleuthing work by Allen and Robin Klein to even get it in a semblance of what it was. 

    "The reason it's out isn't that Allen thought it would be good, but because of their hard work. It was released at the New York Film Festival in 1996 and did very well; now it's out on DVD with commentary. I think it would have been great if it had come out at the time, but seeing it so much later, it has a real different kind of value, certainly because what's happened to some of the people, also with music having changed so much. Anyone of whatever generation who sees it gets a full jolt of how good the bands all were at their peak. It was the great lost work, and quite obviously still fresh.

     In Lindsay-Hogg's memory, even down to the regret, "I didn't have a documentary camera backstage. I remember when the cameras broke down, and I went back to the dressing room to tell them the delay would end. They're musicians, and they're sitting around the room all playing with kitchen utensils, guitars or singing Doo Wop songs. They were rivals, but they were all very close. Each one wanted to be the best, but they were very close to each other. They all had similar backgrounds. 

    I remember talking to Lennon, and the first song he liked was on radio Luxembourg called "Sha-Boom" by the Chords. None of the bands liked the music of their parents. I wish I had a camera in the dressing room."

     While it was never thought of at the time, it was about the only thing that was missing in one of those strange twists, the show that vanished again returned, even winning a prize at the New York Film Festival. It captures a more innocent time when the music meant more than chart positions and record sales. For Stones fans, it remains one of the prizes, even though it's widely available.

Mike and John

 

John pictured with Mike Malkan in 1968

Won't you let me see you smile?

 

Apple Offices

 

The launch of the Yellow Submarine

 

Make sure you leave milk and cookies out tonight for Santa Lennon

 

Date Night with Yoko

 

I spot a Joker Jacket