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Tuesday, October 13, 2026
Ringo is Life of the Portman Party (1986)
Ringo is Life of the Portman Party
By Martha Woodham
The Atlanta Journal
October 12, 1986
He's known as "Richie" to his friends, and Ringo Starr was just playing "Richie" Monday night at a party at Jack and Mary Portman's house, accompanied by his wife, actress Barbara Bach, and assorted business partners along for a lark.
The former Beatle was in town to announce the opening of the Brasserie, a restaurant in John Portman's Peachtree Center. Starr's primary role in the venture is to promote the restaurant, although he did say, "There'd be lots of pictures of me hanging about."
The ex-Beatle, who had a quiet Sunday night at the Marriott Marquis, graciously posed for photographs and chit-chatted with many of the 300 guests at the party. Earlier, he and his mates had lunched with the Portman clan in John Portman's office dining room, where he and his wife often held hands. They held hands at the party that night as well.
"What's his wife's name," one woman whispered. "I should have read Rolling Stone before I came."
That evening, she wore a long print top that fit over a pleated skirt in another pattern. Starr wore a white coat, a black shirt, and a thin black tie with white squiggles. John Portman wore a business suit, though he had joked earlier about resurrecting a flower power shirt to wear.
"I wouldn't trust any guys whose shirts are darker than their jackets," one guest quipped.
New Orleans Wings Fans
Paul signing autographs and meeting with fans outside of Sea Saint Studio in New Orleans, along with the autograph he is signing in the bottom photo.
Wearing the famed Shea jackets
...only no one was calling them the "Shea jackets" when they appeared at the NME Awards concert in 1965.
Monday, October 12, 2026
The party's over
October 12, 1971
Maureen and Ringo return to Heathrow after celebrating John's birthday in Syracuse.
Lennon's Birthday (1971)
Lennon's Birthday
No Writer Listed
Democrat and Chronicle
October 11, 1971
It was John Lennon's birthday Saturday, and the songwriter and former Beatles celebrated number 31 in Syracuse amidst a box of salt on a four-foot-high plexiglass pillar, a bed, a bathtub, and a rusting automobile in an art museum.
The backdrops for the birthday party come from the British musician's wife's first solo art exhibit. This is Not Here, which was open to the public Sunday at the Everson Museum of Art. Visitors to the exhibition are fitted with rubber gas masks, the eyepieces of which are made of distortion-producing glass, and enter the display room through a telephone booth that has two sides removed.
Yoko Ono Lennon, husband John, and Everson director James Hartitus took the press on a preview tour. John Lennon said, "Everyone who is desperate enough can communicate. We're all artists, and when you walk through this show, you'll find you're involved in it. Anyone who has gone through the museums today would have communicated with us."
In the basement of the museum, direct communication is encouraged through blank canvases provided for visitors who want to leave messages or paint designs of their own. For tenderness, viewers are invited to wrap with gauze a cylinder labeled "Yoko's tears."
"I think Jim Hartitus is very, very courageous in taking a chance on me." The Japanese-born Yoko said. "People elsewhere probably didn't want to take any risks," she added.
Once through the telephone booth entrance to the display, the viewer finds himself in a large room with a bed, a kitchen table with canned goods on top of a refrigerator, a steel I-beam, and a soccer ball. In the next room are the rusting automobile, a bathtub, a box of salt, and on an identical plexiglass pillar, a hypodermic syringe.
Attending the Sunday birthday party and opening dedication to Lennon were Ringo Starr, drummer of the former Beatles, his wife Maureen, bassist Klaus Voormann, drummer Jim Keltner and pianist Mickey Hopkins.[sic]
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