Alfie After Party

 March 24, 1966

Just looking at these photos, I always thought that Paul was intoxicated and trying to still keep things together.  But he has a bottle of wine in front of him and is actively drinking it.  His tie looks a little askew, and just the look on his face is that of someone who has had too much alcohol.  But he still is trying be polite and act sober in front of the press and well wishers.  

Paul UnPlugged (1991)

 Paul Unplugged

By Deborah Wilker

South Florida Sun Sentinel

March 28, 1991

    Among the things that MTV does well is the stellar Unplugged, a stripped-down acoustic showcase, focusing on the music, not on lights, effects, and the numbing arena sameness that has become the hallmark of pop success. Presenting big stars out of their element, MTV kills the amps and squawk boxes for an hour each week. We learn who can sing, who can play, and who should stay plugged in. We also learn a lot about the music industry, since many people don't have the guts to show up for this kind of test; others have been clamoring for a shot, if only to prove they really have the goods. For that reason, some of the most intolerable metal bands have been given many of Unplugged's most revealing moments.

    But above all, the telling musical portraits that MTV Unplugged has brought us over the past year, Paul McCartney's upcoming spin is the best. Sure, we've seen him with an acoustic guitar before. Just about any fan can envision him sitting center stage singing "Yesterday". 

    What's different about this one-hour installment, bowing Wednesday, April 3, and repeating April 7, is the rare intimacy. McCartney isn't exactly a road warrior. The few tours he has taken during his 30-year career have been carefully orchestrated stadium and arena events. Fans may have seen him, but few have really seen him up close. This show is the perfect counterpoint to the arena experience on a simple sound stage, flanked by members of his latest backup band, including wife Linda, and a small audience of friends, fans, and industry people. 

    McCartney guides us through what seems to be a casual day in the studio. He never has been a slick showman, and his likable awkwardness shows as he handles his emcee chores with just a hint of nervousness. He habitually rakes his graying hair, chatters in half sentences, teeters side to side while playing with the mic stand, and even restarts "We Can Work It Out" when he realizes he has muffed the lyrics. "I know I just got the words wrong," he said half to himself, half to the band. "It's so informal here. We can start again. Wait a minute. What are the words anyway?"

     These are insignificant imperfections, but, as magnified by the up-close-and-personal camera approach, they go a long way toward humanizing this pop legend. And that's what Unplugged does better than anything. It's a showcase for the person and the music, a private glimpse of a performer on stage at his most delightfully unguarded. 

    McCartney avoids the predictable singing of " Blackbird," "She's a Woman", and one of his best compositions, " Here, There and Everywhere". He opens with the 1956 bebop classic "Bebop a Lula," a song he says inspired his early writing efforts. He also includes his first composition, "I Lost My Little Girl," written when he was 14.

     On his recent tour, McCartney's voice is occasionally ragged, depending on what key he's in. Since he's not battling the rock overload, there's nothing to scream above, so that's a help. Yet there are still enough quavers and obvious straining on certain notes to remind us that none of us is getting any younger.

     Convinced that at least one person in the small audience of friends and fans has smuggled in a tape recorder, McCartney has decided to release the set as an album in limited quantities, initially to be called Unplugged the Official Bootleg. The album's title may change before it hits stores in May. Just 250,000 copies will be available in the United States, 500,000 worldwide.

     Also noteworthy is that this particular installment of Unplugged runs one hour. Most shows are 30 minutes. Because the show is a product of MTV, It benefits from the network's flexible scheduling. That means creative priorities can dictate show length. There is no jamming a McCartney into a half hour when an hour is called for, no stretching out the mediocre to an hour simply to conform to a rigid timetable.

     "If an artist gets going and wants to keep playing, we keep going," MTV's Carole Robinson says. "It's a flexible format."

     The show also has flexible airtimes. Most editions of Unplugged debut on Sunday night. But in special cases, such as this one, when MTV knows it has a winner, they go for the Wednesday night premiere followed by a Sunday repeat. "We put it in prime time where it belongs," Robinson says.

On the move in Amsterdam

 

March 24, 1976 

Meeting Ringo in Brussels

 March 23, 1986 

Ringo Closes Book on Dark Page in the Past (1981)

Ringo Starr Closes Book on Dark Page in the Past

By Lynn Van Matre 

Chicago Tribune

March 25, 1981

    "We always knew that there were nuts out there," said Ringo Starr, reluctantly reflecting one more time on the topic of former Beatle John Lennon's death at the hands of a "fan" last December. "But it never crossed our minds that we were potential targets. I'm still sort of brain-damaged thinking about it, and I don't really like talking about it all the time. It doesn't help anybody, and it helps me even less. It puts everything back in people's minds. And once something like that happens, you got other crazoids that think it's a good idea. Certainly, entertainers are more security conscious these days, especially me and Paul and George."

     Starr and actress/fiance, Barbara Bach, accompanied by a couple of recently acquired bodyguards, stopped off in Chicago the other day to promote their new film, Caveman, the prehistoric comedy, as United Arts describes it features singer, actor, drummer and ex Beatle star in the role of a cave dweller who wants to drag  Bach off to his digs for a bit of zug zug. Zug zug, an expression of lust, is one of 15 words  (others include Bobo, caca, and gwee) that make up the entire dialog of the film. 

    Bach, a veteran of 22 films, including The Spy Who Loved Me, saw the film as an opportunity to try her hand at comedy again  (Up the Academy, her last effort, didn't go so well.) Starr, whose last acting role was that of Mae West's husband in the ill-fated flop Sextet, cottoned to the fact that Caveman didn't necessitate learning pages and pages of dialogue, and it was a load of laughs. "If you like to laugh and you want to smile, Caveman, just go down your aisle," Aasomewhat prejudiced Starr poetically appraised the project, which he and Bach described as a "family film."

     "It's PG," he adds, "and that's only because of a couple of scenes."

     "Actually, I can't imagine why it's PG instead of G," said Bach, a friendly, down-to-earth woman whose first glimpse of Ringo Starr in person occurred in the mid-60s when the Beatles played Shea Stadium, and Bach took her younger sister to see them.

     "Dinosaur dung," explained Starr succulently, "there are two scenes involving dinosaur dung. You can't show shit in a movie," he adds, bemused, "but it's okay to show stabbings and killings."

    Like many celebrities, Starr does interviews only when he has something to sell. "You only go on the road," he says, "When you have something to promote. This is the first film we've done together, and we wanted to promote it."

     But Starr figured from the beginning that most of the questions put to him along the route would have less to do with Caveman than with a killing. He was, of course, right. "I've answered the same questions about John's death over and over again," says Starr, politely resigning to the inevitable. "After this tour is over, that will be the end of it. I don't want to talk about it anymore. But now it's still fresh in people's minds. I can understand that a lot of people feel like they've lost a friend."

     Starr's last conversation with Lennon took place the day after Thanksgiving. "He was very upbeat," recalls Starr. "He was excited that his new album was selling, and he had some songs he thought I should do on my new album. He was going to play on the album and produce a couple of tracks, and we had made plans to start recording in January." Three weeks later, Starr and Bach were vacationing in the Bahamas when Bach's daughter called from Los Angeles to tell them Lennon had been shot. 

    "We thought it must be a mistake at first", said Starr, "Then we got three more calls from friends confirming the news."  Of the three surviving former Beatles, only Starr showed up at the Dakota Hotel where Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, mourned.

    "Well, I was out of my own area anyway," says Starr, a legal resident of Monte Carlo who lives in Los Angeles with Bach and her children by a previous marriage. "George and Paul were at home, so it was no big deal for us to leave the Bahamas. We hardly felt like having a holiday after that, so we decided to fly to New York and say hello to Yoko. Our friend was gone. Her husband was gone. All we wanted to do was say hello and see if there was anything we could do."

     Initially, Ono, who knew Bach only slightly, asked that Starr come to the Dakota alone. He refused, explaining that he and Bach went everywhere together. Ono understood, and the pair arrived at the apartment building where Lennon had been shot only hours earlier. "It wasn't safe," said Star. There wasn't a good atmosphere. "

    "We went on impulse," added Bach, "And when we got there, we realized it wasn't the safest place to be. We stayed in New York for eight hours, and after the visit, we realized we should get out of there."

     The world's reaction to Lennon's death surprised Starr little. "It did affect the whole world," he said. "John did in life and in death. I wasn't surprised by the amount of publicity. Though, I was surprised at the amount of trash. Every newspaper in the world had it in the headlines, which was their right But then you had everybody's story coming out. Like 'I knew John Lennon 200 years ago,' or some waiter's 53-page account of the day John Lennon said to me, 'More coffee.' Everyone was selling their story, but that's life. You get used to it. And every interview we've talked to on this tour so far has asked about John, and every future one we  will talk to on this tour will too. It's normal, it's natural, it's newsworthy, and now let's go on."

     There will be, incidentally, no Lennon tribute album, as was widely reported and rumored earlier. "I spent a week with Paul doing some work on his new album, and he produced some of my tracks for me," said Starr, whose new album is scheduled for a summer release. "It was just the two of us, but someone decided that, because Paul had asked a lot of people to join in on his new album, it was going to be a John Lennon tribute. I denied it over and over, but nobody took any notice."

     As for rock music in general, Star finds the scene to be a bit monotone. "I keep looking for something that will blow me away, send me home. And I enjoy a lot of new and old groups, but there are very few people around that I would run out and buy their albums. Not that I'm a great writer, but I don't think they're writing that many great songs today. I don't think the playing is that great on a lot of records, either.

     "There are some good tracks on a lot of albums, but it's very rare that I could stand to listen to a whole album by anybody, including myself. The only record I can think of that I can play all of side one and all of side two, and enjoy the whole thing every time, is an old Tim Hardin record, the one with " If I Were a Carpenter " and " Misty Roses " on it. 

    "The new bands", he laments, "don't want to change and explore too much, or else, explore in a very narrow band instead of a wide field. Take Devo," he says, "they're interesting to a very specific portion of the population. They seem to stay that way, rather than trying to cover a lot of bases, which is what someone like Elton John did, and what I tried to do. I'm not aiming just at teenagers or people in their 20s or their 50s or their 90s. I try to hit them all. And the Beatles? We tried to cover everybody, from your daughter to your grandmother. What happens with a lot of bands," Starr says, "is that the first album is dynamite, lots of energy, but then you've got to come up with the second one, and that can be hard. We found it difficult too. I'm not saying that the newer bands are going through anything that we didn't go through. We weren't any less restricted than they are, but we managed to get past that and change constantly. We're exploring all the time. The new bands just want to play it safe."

Young Blood

 

Sily Love Songs at Checkpoint Charlie in 1976

 

March 23, 1976 - Berlin, Germany 

Starr Not Interested in Band Tour (1981)

 

Starr Not Interested in Band Tour

By Aaron Gold

Chicago Tribune

March 28, 1981

    "I'm not interested in touring with a live band ever again," said Ringo Starr during lunch in his Chicago hotel room. Starr and his fiancée, actress Barbara Bach, were to have lunch in the Pump Room, but their security advisor suggested they remain in their hotel during their three-day stay to promote their new film, Caveman.

     Bach was sporting an enormous diamond cut by laser into a five-pointed star. The two plan to be married sometime this year, probably in Europe, with about 50 friends present.

     The witty and charming Starr, who left the hotel only for an appearance on the Phil Donahue show, has been forced to travel with a five-man security detail since the death of John Lennon in December. His new Columbia album, due out in June, tentatively, is titled You Can't Fight Lightning.

Birthday party photos

March 23, 1996 -  David Gilmour birthday party 
 

The Donahue Show

March 23, 1981