The New Ringo (1971)

 

The New Ringo

By:  Adrania Grassi

Express & News

July 18, 1971

    If you want an interview with Ringo Starr, you have to play it his way. The former Beatles drummer won't talk about his past. He wants to build up a new image. 

    Now Ringo's in Rome shooting The Blind Man directed by Tony Anthony. Before the meeting on the set, the PR girl prepares you for Ringo. "He's extremely natural and unpretentious." That's what the PR girl says.

     The set is a Western town. At 1o'clock sharp, everyone breaks for lunch. There's a noisy little restaurant on the set for movie and production crew.  Ringo finally sits down at a table after washing his hands. He's taken off his heavy wool vest and the many little rings he wears for the part. First, he sends off his manager Mae to the bakery for his daily bread. He likes whole wheat, but the bakery's all out and sends a substitute. He lavishly butters it, then tops it with a great slab of Grier's cheese, and washes the whole thing down with white wine.

     But even with an empty mouth, Ringo doesn't have much to say. "I've been a vegetarian for 18 months, and my wife's been one for four years. I haven't noticed any change in my health," he says about the diet. 

    Then he answers a few questions about his career. "It's a challenge. I really have not acted before because I was never allowed to. I think playing a cowboy is every man's dream because it's a personality he thinks about in his childhood. At this point, I don't have to worry about being a hero in my hometown, but starting out as an actor, like trying anything for the first time, is difficult."

     For the role, Ringo has to learn to ride a horse and twirl a pistol. In fact, he still practices with the pistol, but he found the riding most difficult, especially with a big western saddle. He compares it to being on a rough sea. 

    "The whole role is a challenge for me," says Ringo. "I know how to make a funny face, but in this role, humor is out. I really feel hate and madness throughout my body. I'm deeply, deeply involved in the part."

     Ringo says he always wears a black opal ring, which is known to carry bad luck with it. He does it, he claims just to show how independent he is. 

    Definite future plans are unknown, but after The Blind Man is finished, he'll head back to London to cut a new album. About it, he says, "Obviously, you understand. They are all my compositions."

     There is no future movie plans either. "I am flooded with film scripts, but I haven't decided anything. First, I want to see if Blind Man is a success." The short lunch break is over, and Ringo is off to the set.

Young Blood at the Cavern

 July 13, 1961 

Oh Ringo you're so fine....

 July 13, 1976

In the summer of 1976, Toni Basil was quite popular in Los Angeles, many years before she sang "Hey Mickey"   She sold out show at the Roxy.  Everything I read says these performances were in June of 1976 and this photo was labeled in a newspaper as from July 13, but maybe the photo was labeled wrong and this shot is from June.   But either way -- Ringo saw this popular performer and someone captured him there on film. 

An Interview With Ringo (1975)

 

Ringo at the Tommy premiere

An Interview With Ringo

New Musical Express

April 12, 1975

    Ringo was wearing a full-length fur coat. His hair distinguished by greying at the temples. He sits down with brandy and bitter lemon. The matter in hand is the new David Hentschel album from Ring O Records. Startling music turns out to be a freeish representation of Ringo's own Ringo album, from individual tracks to cover.

     "I was thinking of starting a label, and we thought it would be good if he did something for the label, and we thought it would be good if he copied the Ringo album. I mean, he really wanted to do a symphony, but I forced him into it. 

    "Oh yeah, it's gonna be a good company. We're talking to several people at the moment. I mean, lots of people have sent in tapes. Now, George has these really crazy freaks coming in for his label. 'Hey, man, I've just written this new mantra,' but we just get the rock-and-roll people.

     "I don't know whether I'll put myself on the label right now. I can't cause I'm with EMI, but that finishes next year. After that, we'll see if it's a good idea."

 But what of Apple?

     "Well, we still have a couple of buildings. We don't have any artists or anything, cause we are trying to split ourselves up. Apple can't end as such because it will have all the Beatle product. 

    "It's very hard. You sign a piece of paper in two minutes, and it takes you seven years to get out of it. We've got 27 lawyers in L.A. at the moment trying to dissolve our partnership. I'd like the world to be on a shake of the hand.

     "Certainly, if any artists get pissed off, they'll be able to leave my company. With Brian, it was fine. I'd have signed a toilet roll for him."

     Ringo's career is remarkably buoyant at the moment. He admits that after the initial dissolution of the Beatles, he spent a year sitting in his garden wondering what to do.

    But now he has a number one in the U.S. with the "No No Song", which may not be released over here. "We don't think they'll play it over here. I asked at Capital, and they said 'no', and I don't think the BBC would play it. I've never heard it on the radio, and it's on the album, so they could have played it if they wanted to. It's interesting because last year in America we checked out all the stations, and they said they wouldn't play it there either. So we put out "Snookeroo" as the A side, but everyone played the "No No song", which freaked us all out. I mean, there's been no problem at all. Anyway, it's an anti-drug song. You know me. I'm so nice."

     Which is absolutely correct. Meanwhile, his next project is putting together his next album, which he'll regard as his third. (on the basis that Ringo was his first, and both Sentimental Journey and Beaucoups of  Blues were special assignments, effectively prenatal as far as his solo career is concerned.)

     "I don't know whether the third album will be with Richard Perry. Maybe he's busy. Maybe I'm busy. We haven't talked about it. I'm just going back to L.A. next week to try to get some things together for it. Also, Bobby Keyes-he's an old friend of everybody's-and I are going into the studio when I get back to see if we can get anything from it. If it comes off, he'll be on my label. I keep promising myself to do another country album, but I don't seem to have the time.  By the time I've done a pop album, it's the end of the year and time to start again. I'm supposed to be doing a TV show. Graham Chapman has just written me a script. Originally, it was intended to push the Goodnight Vienna album, but it's a bit late for that, so it will now be a different show based on the cover of the album and featuring tracks from it. It's a Python-ish type thing, and go and see Holy Grail. It's really great."

     Ringo also confirms that there are plans for him to make a film with Burt Reynolds, although a shooting schedule has not yet been arranged. He will play the part of Reynolds' dumb servant, and he's still designing furniture with Robin Cruikshank. "We do mirrors as well, and we have the franchise on the Disney characters. That all goes tumbling along. It goes on without me. We design things together, and then Robin runs all the business side."

     "Then Keith Moon and I are trying to get a movie together. Have you heard Moon's album? Some of it's very good, especially the bits I'm on. That never looks very good in print. Anyway, it was a disaster at first, and he knows it, and I know it. But then he got it together. There's a couple of really good tracks. "Solid Gold" should be the single, and he does that old one of ours. "There are places I remember.." 'In My Life." That's it. He's like the new Rex Harrison on that because he semi-talks it."

     Mention of Moon leads to inevitable discussion about Ringo's most recent public appearance, which was at the premiere of Tommy. Me, I'm just waiting for a member of the public to summon Ken Russell for audio/visual assault and battery. But what did our Ringo think of it? "I thought it was amazing. I was stunned, shattered. It was so good. It just blew my brains out. What little I have left. The only thing is, it's ironic because you see it and then you go to a party and get pissed. My reading of the film is that it's about getting yourself together, and lying on the floor in some hotel isn't getting yourself together. The point is that cinema's only just catching up on sound, and it's through rock movies. They had quadraphonic, and now we've got fumfaphonic or whatever. I keep trying to find the fifth speaker. Is it in the ceiling? (In fact, it's placed behind the screen.) It really heightens the movie if you have great sound. But of course, when it gets to Bradford, they're still going to show it just the same. But they'll put it through a teeny speaker."

     Ringo explains that he lives seven months in England, during which time he can see his kids, and five months in L.A. where most of the friends are, as well as the people he likes working and recording with. Yes, he says he is getting divorced, "Just like everyone else, but because it's me, it's some big scene."

     What sort of music is Ringo himself listening to? "Well, there's Harry Nilsson's new album, of course, and Eric's new album has a few fine tracks on it. I listen to a lot of country music and a lot of rock/ pop music. I like Mud. I think they're really a tight little band. Rock and Roll, I think, is a great album, but I'm prejudiced with John anyway, 'cause I like most things he does. The only one I didn't like was Sometime in New York City. I really do think that Walls and Bridges is the finest album in the last five years by anyone.

     Ask what he feels about the contemporary pop scene, Ringo replies that "It's waffling, with no sense of direction. Who knows what could be next? It might be an Italian tenor or something."

Interview with Ringo

Sounds Magazine

April 12, 1975

     "It's not called Ringo Records. It's called Ring O'Records. I thought we'd get a bit Irish, you see, but we had the Dubliners do an ad, and none of them sounded Irish. Five drunken Irishmen, and none of them sounded Irish. I was going to say "It's Ringo Records, and they were going to say, 'Oh no, sorry, 'tis Ring O'Records', and they just sound like they're from Cornwall, so we couldn't use it. It's so silly.

     Someone tells him that the "O" part means "son of", a fact of which he is apparently unaware. "Oh well, I didn't know that. Well, this is son of Ringo. You learn something every day. Did you know that it takes a man two and a half minutes to jump off the Eiffel Tower?" This last is a very accurate Michael Caine impersonation, which is entirely missed by the fact-finding reporter, who knows what "O" means. 'Have you tried it?' She asked. Ah well, try again, Ringo.

     A determined lady from a German pop magazine who wants to know where the record was made. "In my studio." "Yes, but where?" "It's in Ascot." "I know, but whereabouts?" She seemed to be expecting a route map of the district. "It's next to the kitchen," Ringo offers. Eventually, she gives up.

     "And Apple lives?"  "Oh yeah, the four of us. It's still ours. We're all directors of certain companies: I'm Apple Films, George's Apple Records, John is publishing. Paul resigned because he didn't agree at that time with what we were doing."

     You might also be wondering how Ringo, who's played everything from a Mexican gardener to a vicious rapist, everyone from Frank Zappa to Ringo Starr, came to be the Pope. "I finished that last week. It was only a week's work, but it was worth it to work with Ken Russell. I was dressed up, but I had no makeup, and he says, 'Well, you may be playing the Pope, but you look more like Rasputin.' I had this big mitre hat and this cloak and things, and I waxed me mustache. The Loony Pope. Pope Looney."

     Ringo clearly has eyes for Russell's job. "I produced a couple of films, and I don't want to do that again, but in the end, I'd like to direct, which everybody says, but it is the greatest gig. I was mainly in charge of the film about Mark Bolan, and that's why I loved it. But I was in it as well, and at the same time, I was doing Son of Dracula with Harry, which I was producing and was in. That was one of the heaviest years of my life. I'm very lucky because I'm allowed to do a lot of things. I've tried producing movies. I don't want to do that again."

     His recent lack of success seems to surprise Ringo less than it does me. Maybe he could have been a smash if he's done. 'I Can Help,' but I don't know how 'Only You' could miss with nostalgia, a lovely arrangement and a good choice of song, all going for it. I was surprised. "I thought it was such a good track. With the other one, it didn't sell because they wouldn't play it on the radio because it mentions naughty substances. But here, I couldn't sell newspapers. "Back off", and "It Don't Come Easy" did better, but I mean, America is my market. Really, it seems more open in America. It's anybody's game there. Here, they're stuck in their way with five or six groups that can do anything. Right now, it's young Scottish groups or soud music. That's the market. British loyalty lasts for as long as it lasts, there's no discrimination between a good track and a bad track, really."

     Despite its comparative failure here and success in the U.S. of late, Ringo seems determined to keep living here in the house at Ascot, where he was a Lennon's house guest for 18 months before buying it, even though he says he has to keep working to live in this country.

Turn Around for Photo

 

Ringo at the Greek Theater -- the teleprompter says "Turn Around for Photo" and tht makes me laugh. 

On the Trail of Duff Lowe (1981)

 Paul tells the story about the recording of "In Spite of All the Danger" in concert these days and mentions Duff Lowe and how he bought the record from him many years later.  Well here is when it all started, in 1981.  Back when fans only heard that there was a song with this title and the fact that the record was still around was a shock to everyone.   It is wild how the record was saved and was eventually released on Anthology 1, and now if you see Paul in concert, you are invited to sing along with them to this well-known song. 

On the Trail of Duff Lowe

No Writer Listed

Sunday Mercury

July 12, 1981

    Since the existence of the first Beatles record was revealed, the hunt has been on for the mysterious Midland stockbroker said to own the only copy. The record has been put up for sale at Sotheby's in November by a Mr. Duff Lowe, who seems to be lying very low at the moment.

     Mr. Lowe is reported to have turned down an offer of £5000 from Paul McCartney for the disc, which includes McCartney's first recorded composition, "In Spite of All the Danger." Sotheby's have predicted a sale price in five figures.

     But now Mr. Lowe is not taking calls from anybody, and I'm told he has had legal consultation over the problem of the copyright to the record. Tracking Mr. Lowe down proved difficult. Sotheby's wouldn't say where he was, nor would Paul McCartney's publicist and the stock exchange in Birmingham said they had never heard of a stockbroker called Duff Lowe. The only stockbroker Mr. Lowe in the Midlands, has been diled by calls from everyone, including ATV and BBC. He's Mr. William Lowe of Stock on Trent, and he would like me to tell you he is not the right one. 

    So where is the mysterious Mr. Lowe? I managed to find an actor called Arthur Kelly, who has the best possible qualifications for verifying the story. He was there when the record was made. 

    Arthur is best known to TV fans as Detective Sargent Chegwin, the sidekick of the hero in the Chinese Detective, and he has just finished making three episodes of Angels in Birmingham. But back in his youth, he was one of the Liverpool lads in the Beatles' early days. He went to the same school and was a great friend of George Harrison. In fact, Arthur had a chance to play with the Beatles when they were the Quarrymen, but he turned it down because he couldn't afford to buy his own bass guitar. 

    "It was hardly a recording studio where they made the record; more like a back room in an old house, like a corner sweet shop," Arthur told me. "They ran off this one single on the same sort of machine they'd have in a fairground for do-it-yourself records. It cost a couple of pounds. It got passed around, everyone in the group and their friends, and I remember having it for a week or so."

     Arthur remembered Mr. Lowe, who was there to play piano on the record. "He was in the same class as Paul. Duff was just a school nickname, and I can't even remember his first name. 

    "He was in the cathedral choir, and he seemed to be a bit posh. He could play classical music, so we used to think 'he's not really a rocker.'"

     Anyway, the record certainly does exist, and so does Mr. Lowe somewhere in the Midlands.

Rocky Horror Outtakes

 John and May (and Mal Evans) go to see Rocky Horror at the Roxy in Los Angeles in 1974. 

McCartney Inteview with Jamming Part 2 (1984)

 

Photos taken by Lawrence Blampied 
(The photos in the original article were tinted blue and washed out.  I used AI to turn them into black and white and specified NOT to change anything else.  If you would like me to send you the original photos that are blue -- please ask.)

McCartney Interview Part 2

By Tony Fletcher

Jamming Magazine

No 14  March 1984

Q:  Did you succeed in education?

 A:  No, not really. I think none of us put enough time in, really. We weren't that thick, but we always got reports saying "Could do well if only he'd apply himself ." The year of my GCEs, we were touring in Scotland with Johnny Gentle, which was one of the first big things we were offered. I had to miss my geography exam, but I just thought, "Sorry!"  We thought it was such a big opportunity, as it turned out it wasn't. Doing lots of dates with this guy, and if Johnny Gentle suddenly got famous, so did we. 

    I got some O levels; I think I got one the first year, then maybe a couple more the next. I stayed on into the sixth form because I didn't want to leave school; I didn't want to have to get a job. I wasn't having too bad a time at school. It was a bit of a hassle having to go there, but I didn't hate it too much. Also, I knew this fella who was 24 and at the art college, and I was about 17. The way I looked at it was that there was still seven years where I could lig around in the sixth form and go to art college. I thought I could put off the decision of having to choose what to do with my life.

 A:  A lot of the people who've made it big thought like that, "Anything but a job."

 A:  And the joke is you get a job, like the job I've got now, and it's a J-O-B. It's a real job, and I'm always trying to get out of it, but you know, I put in quite a lot of hours, it is a job. 

Q: What's the story about being chucked out of Germany? 

A.  Well, like I was saying before, we lived at the back of the cinema by the bog. It was like a broom cupboard with a push bar exit to get out, I think. So, anyway, this was 20 years ago. I'm trying to remember what the door looked like, you know. I never realized it was 20 years ago. I'm still talking about it as if it were yesterday. 

    Anyway, we were moving from this club, the Kaiserkeller, to a better engagement, the Top 10, and Pete Best and myself were getting all our gear together, and one of us had a contraceptive ---whatever you want to call it. So, just for a laugh, we pinned it up on the wall as a goodbye gesture. It was just a cement wall without paint or wallpaper, and I think I set fire to it, and it left a little black mark. But the fellow screamed, "Police!" He didn't want us to go to this new club, which would take his business away. So he thought "This is a good excuse." It was really just a harmless thing, but he managed to get us a nick. We were just going along the road, and the police pulled us over. "Hey, come visit us."

Q:   Was that the first time you were nicked over there? 

A:  Actually it was the only time until Japan a few years ago when I had a longer stay in there and more fun, put anyway. But anyway, the police dragged us to an official building where we hung around for hours, and eventually a fella came up and said, "Come with us, we're taking you back to the club," and no sooner said than done, we were on the plane back to England. 

Q: How much was Brian Epstein responsible for your success? Was he special, or could another manager have done it?

 A: Because he turned out to be special, I'd say he was special. You can't tell if another man would have done it. He wasn't a very good businessman. He used to undersell us, but we never wanted to be overpriced either. But I thought he was great. He was very keen, very showbiz. He was like we were saying earlier, just that generation before us. He may only have been a few years older, but there was a big difference. He studied at RADA, but he hadn't done too well there, so he had this great longing to be an actor. He was living through us a bit, but he would see to it that we had a strong stage act, or that the lighting was good. So, I think he was a big influence. We used to slag him off a lot, as you do with managers, but I liked him. I thought he was great

Q:  What was it like being one of the four most wanted men in the world by virtually the entire teenage female population in existence?

 A: Terrific, you can't deny it. We were four normal fellows.

 Q:  Did you take advantage of it?

 A:  Oh yeah, definitely. We had a great time. That's half of being in a group, or it was then. I remember my dad saying, "I wish I had such experience as you, son." We used to talk about that. He'd say that in his day VD was the big scare, but by the time I was older, they had a jab for it. It was definitely the biggest perk of touring. I can't deny that it was only later I started thinking, "Shit, I probably broke somebody's heart there." You don't think about that at first, but a little later you realize they're real people. But yeah, there were a lot of ladies about.

  Q:  What about drugs? Because even from the first stage, you must have been offered everything under the sun. 

A:  Well, it was cigarettes to start with, then scotch and Coke, and when we went to Hamburg, it was pills, speed. And then later we went to America, and it was marijuana, and that was about the size of it, except for a little bit of coke, for me, anyway. John, I think, later got a little bit heavier, but it came off being available everywhere. All the gangsters in Hamburg used to have pills to stay up all night, so used to give them to us. Predledin, they were called. "Zu vant, some prellies boys, yay ya schnatz und prellies?" They were just getting off on us silly Englishmen.

 Q:  Later on, though, after Beatlemania, when you were a studio group, did you not go through heavier stuff?

 A:  No, nobody got into heroin.

 Q:  But Sergeant Pepper was meant to be connected with LSD, is that true? 

A:  Yeah, there was a lot of LSD around at the time. It definitely got into the music; it was the fashion; it became what everybody was doing. You'd go down to clubs and people would come to you and say "You want some acid? You want to go back to our flat?" which you'd end up doing.

 Q:  In those cases you must have had heroin forced on you a lot.

 A: No, heroin was the one thing you drew the line at. 

Q:  And I've thought with you having experienced everything imaginable, you'd have said that there, What is there left  that we haven't tried?

 A: The thing is, we were like anyone who plays around with drugs; you play around with them. Actually, I'm not saying like anyone, because there are a lot of people who are very different, but our approach was: as long as it's not really dangerous, we'll do it. I think a lot of people overdid acid. Some of the people who took more trips still get flashes. They suddenly buzz without meaning to. I think we were very lucky with it, really. It didn't get to us.

 Q:  Did you see much of what went on around you? Because I imagine you had to be pretty well shielded; you couldn't just walk the streets on your own. 

A: Well, you could; that's a myth actually. I used to go around a lot, and I still do. If I want to, from here to over there, I won't do anything special. I won't panic. I'll just go out the front door. You'll be surprised. People may notice you, but what are they going to do? They're not going to jump on you. It's never happened. Even then, when we got to the gig, there would always be a gang of girls outside waiting for us. You expect that, but I've always felt that was just normal living.

 I've always seen pretty much how people are like now. I wouldn't know what goes on down at the 100 Club or anything. I see all the kids outside as I go past, but I don't know what goes on; half the people who walk down Oxford Street don't know either. So I don't know all the cult things, but what goes on generally, I've always been up with. I'm a little bit out of touch with certain things, like I sent a fella out to buy some scotch, and I didn't give him enough money, but generally I think I'm more in touch than some people. For instance, I was always against the Common Market, right from the off. People were saying, "Oh, you're so out of touch," but they were wrong. I was pretty in touch. Nobody that I know really digs the Common Market, not ordinary people like the milkman or someone. 

Q:  Why did it take four solid years before you moved away from simple love songs towards other stuff like "Sergeant Pepper"? Was that just the way lyrics went at the time? 

A:  I don't know, really. I never thought about it. I think the love stuff, you and me, boy and girl, was just the early part of the development to us. It was just the commercial songs, and we got hooked on little things like we always had a "me" or "you" or something personal in the title. "Please, Please ME", "Love ME do,"  "Can't buy ME love," "She Loves YOU," "From ME to YOU."

 Q:  but did you always mean the lyrics? 

A:  No, I didn't. I still don't always mean the lyrics. It's just not the kind of writing I do. They're not always personal, but sometimes they're just made up.

 Q:  So, what you were trying to do is just write a good song and say the words of the song, like "She Loves You" are going to mean something to someone?

 A:  Yeah, not all the songs were that, but that was the idea of it, writing something that people would want. 

Q:  Because I would say, though, that with that you were saying earlier about the amount of girls available, you couldn't have been in love much. 

A: No, you're right, but you don't have to be in love to write a love song.

 Q:  What records by the Beatles are you the most pleased with?

 A:  Being sensible? As a record, I probably like "Yesterday" that  and  "Here, There, and Everywhere", "Strawberry Fields", "Hey Jude", and some of the other big ones, but if you said "You can only take one," I wouldn't take "Hey Jude", because I've heard it so many times! There's a crazy B-side I like, "You Know, My Name, Look Up the Number." The B side of "Let It Be". I love that one. It's just an insane track. What I remember from the session, and all the laughs, we were just in pleats making that record, so that to me is one of my favorites. 

    Another is "She Said, She Said." I just like those more off-the-beaten-track tracks. That's how you used to choose material. We never do the big hits by the Shirelles; we'd do "Soldier Boy", even though they were girls singing to a soldier boy. We changed the words a little bit.

 Q: What about LPs? Does any one in particular stand out? 

A:   I like Rubber Soul, Sergeant Pepper, and Abbey Road. I listened to Abbey Road recently and thought, "Wow, that's good!"  I like the White Album as well. 

Q:  I know the official reason for why you stopped playing.

A:  What is the official reason? I don't even know that.

 Q:  I'm talking about why you stopped playing live. 

A:  That just happened. We did this one concert in America when it was raining with water coming in the amps, and we hated it. We did the show, but hated every minute of it. And then at the end of it, we were put inside this metal little van, and we're sort of clattering around in there, I think. As we were sitting in there, John and George just said, 'Sod this. ' But they'd been saying all this touring, we were just shattering ourselves, and I think that was when I said, "Sod it. I agree with you", that made three of us.

So we went into recording, we decided to just keep recording, and if anybody said, "When are you going to tour next?"We would say, "We're not sure." We weren't going to announce that we'd stop touring. We just decided to quietly pull out of it and get into recording more. Nobody knews that for a couple of months because we finished our live commitments. We were doing some recording and it looked fine. After a few months, people said, "Hey, wait a minute, when are you going to tour again?" Here, people said, "It looks like you've given up touring," and we said, "Well, sort of, maybe."

 Q:  The story goes that it was a pretty big thing when you stopped touring. Your next single, "Penny Lane / Strawberry Fields Forever", failed to go to number one for the first time since you started, and that was meant to be a direct reaction to your not touring.

 A:  I can't remember, really. It may have been that we were doing this quiet thing I was telling you about, and one of the newspapers said, "Are you giving up touring?" And we said, "Yeah," and that hit the papers, making it look like we've done it officially.

 Q:  Apple, widely regarded as your downfall, came about partially because of Brian Epstein's death, didn't it? Do you have.. do you reckon if Brian had been about, he'd have made things go more the way you wanted to?

 A:  I don't know. Someone else asked me that recently. The thing is, his influence had stopped a couple of years before he died anyway. His influence, like George Martin's, had mainly been in the earlier days. As we grew up into men rather than little boys, we started to want to make our own decisions a lot. So it might have been okay if Brian had been alive still, but you can't really tell. It might even have been more disastrous because he was changing as well. I don't think it'd been done any different from the way it was done. It was just like a tree growing. If it's going to grow right through this wall, it will. We did it all naturally, you know. You can only guess at what might have happened if we'd done it all another way.

 Q: Apple did go drastically wrong, though, didn't it? 

A: The thing is that with a company that's gone "drastically wrong", it still got over a million in the bank, so it couldn't have gone that wrong. Yeah, it went wrong, but not as much as you'd expect it to be bankrupt. It still got a lot of money in the bank, being the Beatles company, having the Beatles records, and having a lot of it. It's hard to explain, but there's all sorts of company laws. You can't dissolve a company. Don't ask me why, I don't know. 10 years and we still haven't sorted it out. You wouldn't believe the stories on Apple, that's the new Beatles story. Sometime, if anyone can get it together, but it didn't actually wrong. It didn't go as right as we wanted it to, like we wanted it to go smooth, never break up, make a lot of money, and be terrific, be good for people, be good for us, and everything, but it was during the time we were breaking up anyway, so it wasn't actually the company's fault, it was us breaking up within the company. There's still endless negotiations, still meetings in New York to try and decide the fate. 

Q: Do you know why you did split in the end?

A:  No, not really. The only thing I always reckon is you get teams of people, like a football team or something, and they go and do the big thing, but there's an inevitability they're not going to stay together. There's an inevitable breakup of a team, but the very nature that you're holding on. I think we kind of did everything, achieved all our ambition, cracked America, cracked the world, did everything we wanted to, and then somehow we just wanted to start to split it up. Someone would want to do a solo thing, and then in the end John started to get very strong with Yoko, and we started to get our own family things. We just kind of drifted apart, then it got to be bitchy.  

We were drifting apart, and therefore the business had to be sorted out. "That's mine. What do you mean?" That got very difficult, because Allen Klein came in and screwed us silly. 

Q:  You're the one who said from the start that Allen Klein's dodgy

A:  (In quite  sad acknowledgment) um

 Q: You were proved right by that.

 A:  Yeah, at first the word was that we were going to go along with him, because maybe he was bad, maybe he was good, but we should give him a try. So we started to negotiate this deal, and I said, well, the Beatles are a big act; they're not chicken feed involved. We can get a really good deal with this fellow; he's lucky if he can get 15%, but everyone was so keen for him that they said "No, give him 20%." So I agreed.  The idea being that we'd give him a trial, but during the trial run he said one thing to me, then I'd see another thing in the papers. So I started to suspect him, and at that point I tried to get out of it all, but everyone said "No, we're going to sign with him." It was the first time in my life I felt I'd been done the dirt with the other guys. I said to them, "This is very weird. This is the first time. We've been mates till now." But it was three to one. They agreed to go with him, and I said, "No, no way." So I started boycotting the whole thing, not going in, being on strike, and having go-slows, you know, anything I could to hold him off, and in the end it was proved. 

The worst thing I had to do, worst thing was sue the Beatles. I said, "No. I went to sue Allen Klein. I don't want to sue the Beatles, I haven't got anything against them."  They said, "But all these companies are in the Beatles' name. You can't sue Allen Klein without suing the Beatles." It was just the way it was legally set up. I had to, so that was a very tough decision. I spent a few months making my mind up whether to do it or not, but the result was that I either stayed with Allen Klein or did the suing. It was out of it. So I sued them in the High Court, and they looked at all the evidence, and there in it we proved that he'd been screwing us. Our side won, and the judge said something like, "This man, Klein, has the patter of a second-class salesman", so that blew him out a bit. All the other Beatles realized what he'd been doing, and they tried to get out of it. Then later they came back and said, "Thanks, we're glad you really held it all up." But at the time, when they didn't think he was wrong, I took some stick. 

Q:  Has he now got away with having ripped you off? 

A:  Well, this shows you how small-minded he was. He actually got $5,000,000 for managing us for a year. There's me trying to get him 15% and all that. Somehow he actually got paid $5. 000, 000 for one year's work, to which I said, "Come on, look at that. You're kidding. You mean this guy is straight?" Why wasn't it $4,700, 000?  How come it's such a round figure, and then he wasn't content to just take the 5 million and do something honest with it. What he eventually did was... He's just been in nick in America. What they did him for was selling sample records. He had loads of people peel the little white things off and sold them. He must have made a little profit on that, but that was the only thing they nicked him on in the end.

 Q: Do you believe any of those stories that Brian was murdered?

 A: No. I don't think he even committed suicide. It was just accidental. I mean, I don't know. Noday knows, not even the man who says he was murdered, Norma Phillips. It's Phillip Norman, really. I think it was just accidental, because he used to booze a lot, and he used to take pills a lot. I think the two caught up with him one night. He probably forgot he had taken them; he had so many drinks, started taking some pills, and if they were tranquilizers, he probably forgot how many he had. "I can't sleep. I'll have another." I don't think he particularly wanted to die, but we were a little bit removed from it anyway. None of us saw him, none of us found him. We just had to believe whatever we were told by the people in his house. I don't think he committed suicide, and I don't think he was murdered, that just fits in more neatly with recent sensationalism about the Beatles.

Q: The thing to sell that book, Shout, basically.

 A:  Yeah, this Albert Goldman, who wrote that book about Elvis, is supposed to be warming up to John, but seeing where he's at, you know what to expect. He's going to dredge up all sorts of things that he's going to tell us about John, some of which I don't even know. Generally, I think it will be pretty much bullshit. John's got a little heavier toward the end of his life. No, actually he cooled out totally towards the end of his life. Five years before he died, he wasn't on any drugs or anything; he was just totally together. But when he and Yoko first met, they were pretty crazy, so there may be little secrets from those days, but you always get those things. 

    "Beatles pissed on nuns" is one story, which wasn't true at all. All it was was we were staying in this place where you had to go down about five flights of stairs to go to the toilet, so sometimes we pissed out the window. Good old English medieval habit. And of course, what happened was one day, right down the road from where we were pissing, there happened to be some nuns. They didn't see us, but somebody did. The papers picked it up, and it went from being a joke to being a fact. All that hell-raising stuff wasn't half as bad as it was made out to be. 

John saying we were bigger than Jesus. It was just a small little quote out of a whole big interview.

 Q:  Wasn't it just a small quote in the Evening Standard, but The New York Times or something picked up on it and made it into a massive issue?

 A:  Yeah, they mean like John was really boasting about it, which he wasn't. He just happened to say it. It's just a manner of speech, but of course, the Bible Belt Americans weren't going to have that as a manner of speech. Thank you very much. They were going to have that as a major controversy. I remember some young 10-year-old kid banging on the window of our coach, "You blasphemous fiends!!" He was really possessed, like a little Omen kid. We really thought he'd get us.

 Q: What don't you like about Shout?

 A:  Shite as I call it? I couldn't believe some of the facts and the serialization in the Sunday Times, so I read the book. The trouble is, there are some bits of it that I'm not in that suddenly seem very believable, like a really good story. Then I'll see a fact that I know is not true, and I'll think, "Wait a minute, what am I doing believing these other bits about Brian Epstein's youth and John's family background?" I think there are certain facts that are quite fascinating, and certain things that it gets over that aren't too bad, but the crime of it is  for him to call it "The true story of the Beatles", and yet he never interviewed any of the Beatles.

 Q:  I didn't think it was too bad. 

A:  My problem is, to me, I come over as this very together guy, always got his finger on top of everything, the man with no problems, school, a doddle -- got  all the exams. This is the sort of image of me, actually; I had murder getting through exams, like I was saying about being on tour during the GCIs. I was like the kid who was getting the cane, just like John was, but he makes me the very shrewd, always going to succeed guy, and John is a kind of cute working-class hero. An actual fact, though, John was just as shrewd and ambitious as I was.  What does me in, is he adds to this image, I resent that, because I know I'm not that, and I know I've never been that.

 Like in the book, I almost kill Stu Sutcliffe. The way it comes over is that I used to really put Stu down, whereas in actual fact, I had a little bit of a thing against Stu, but that was for one reason: he couldn't play bass. I had a purely musical thing about it: "What are we going to do about a bass player who can't play bass?" The other great legend is Pete Best. Why did they get rid of this poor lad? Because George Martin told us "Your drummer can't drum. Get rid." What were we going to do? Try and pretend he's a wonderful drummer? We knew he wasn't as good as what we wanted in the group, so we got another drummer that we wanted. He was called Ringo. It had got to the stage that Pete was holding us back. You can't help it. There's somebody in the group who doesn't click, like Stu. Stu was a great guy, a lovely guy, and I didn't understand him. It's true. There's a lot of people in my life I haven't understood. I'm not the world's most psychic person. I make a lot of mistakes, and I misread people. I've read a lot of stuff about Stu since that I didn't know about. I was taking him all wrongly, but it certainly wasn't just me who was getting at him. Everyone had their little goat suddenly come out.  I was seen as the go-getter and the ambitious one in the group, and John's portrayed as the kind of nice guy who always falls into the situation. He has George standing there with his pectrum, always waiting for a solo. Now that does George injustice. There's a lot more to George than just this idiot waiting for a solo. 

Q: Paul is dead.

A:  That's right, I am an imposter, but the money's good. This mafia-style operation has been paying me to be Paul McCartney. As you can see, I've learned the history quite well, and I've got the accent just about off. 

No, what happened was a guy from our office, called Peter Brown, rang me up and said, "Paul, there's a rumor in America that you're dead. What do you want me to do about it?" And I said, "Is there Peter? Oh, really? Well, what can I do about it? Tell them it's not true." And that's how I done it. All happened over in America, so I didn't see it. I didn't hear about it at all. People were telling me all the DJs in America are building this rumor that's sweeping the country. They say "You didn't have any shoes on on the cover of Abbey Road, therefore..." But if you look at the photo session from Abbey Road, you see me sitting on the steps with sandals on. It was a hot summer day, so I took my sandals off to walk across the road. Now that's the truth, but the rumor was  it was the sign of a dead man. 

Q:  Did you mind it though? 

A:  Oh no, it was hilarious. There was nothing I could do. I just couldn't take it seriously. 

Q:  One thing that has been proved wrong by my meeting you is I always believed that the image of Paul McCartney these days to be true, the multimillionaire businessman surrounded by bodyguards and aides.

 A:  Well, how do you feel about it? It's incredible, but there's nothing I can do about it. They write in every single article they do that I make £20 million a year. That's the figure they have got hold of. I don't know where they got that from, but what am I gonna do? Write up to everyone and say "It's not true?" When I walk out of here, I walk in the street and on my own, not with millions of people. I've got an office, yeah, but so have you. Okay, mine's pretty ritzy, but I want to do it like that comes out.  But I honestly don't know where half my image comes from. If I tell you some of the true facts about how I live, I mean some of them are just too true, too far out, the true story.

 Q:  You mean down to earth?

A: Yeah, like Harvey Goldsmith came down once, and in his chauffeur-driven car, he saw my house and said, "No, no, keep driving. He couldn't live there; that must be just the little lodge house", because he believes that image too. Well, the thing with me is that you'd expect me to live in a mansion, but what I like about how I do it and how I am. One of my sources of satisfaction is that it isn't like that at all. Would you believe that I've got four kids and we live in a two-bedroom house? That freaks me out, whether it freaks you out or not. Okay, we're building a new house, and the kids are getting a bedroom each, which is what you'd expect. I mean, it's not going to be a mansion, because I'm not like that. You see, I've tried all that big lifestyle. I've had chauffeurs, and I hate being driven; I'm the driver, and I like to drive myself. I've had live-in couples, which I've hated, because they take over. It's like living with your bloody auntie or something. When I had that, I thought, "Bloody hell, this is worse than living with your parents." So I'm off all of that stuff. I don't do anything. 

The big thing I'll use my money for is really for jibs and perks. In other words, instead of taking a lousy flight somewhere on Plummet Airlines, I might hire a jet. I'll do that kind of thing just to make it more comfortable, and a bit of flash. Actually, it's not being flash, it's doing the practical thing, getting a really safe plane that'll get me down in half the time. That's the kind of thing I go for, you know. I'm not really into flash stuff. I'm not a jewelry man, or a house man. The kids don't go to private schools. Another reason that I'm quite proud of myself is that the kids, so far, aren't basket kids. They're really good kids. They're kids you can sit down and chat with; you can go out with the older one and find out her interests. They're just very normal kids. There's nothing snobbish about them. It's quite funny. I remember once thinking, "If I have a kid in their teens, there's nothing that would freak me out. Long hair? I wouldn't mind, because I've been through that. Crazy fashions?  I wouldn't mind, because I've been through that. And yet when my kid started going punk, I suddenly realized what my parents had thought about me, which is like, "Is that gonna mean she'll get onto glue or something?" That I'll sit up worrying about if I give her total freedom and say, "Yeah, go with all that fashion", is that going to mean I'm pushing her into heroin? Then I suddenly realized, "Oh God, I thought I'd never do this. I was going to let them do whatever they wanted", but in the end I found myself realizing, so this is how my parents felt, because one thing parents are all the time is worried, you can't help it, but it does mean you care. 

Q:  The kids must get a lot of stick at school, though.

 A:  They get it all. Yeah, but the thing is they've learned to live with it, because there's nothing I can do about it. What can I do? Unmake myself? Turn the video backwards? They are Paul McCartney's kids. All we do is just treat it real normal. I don't open fetes or anything at the school. If I ever go down there, it's just as a real ordinary parent. I buy my coffee for 10p at the school play, natter about school stuff. I don't feel famous. I know I am, and sometimes I'm proud I am, and all that. But day-to-day life, I like to be the way people are, just what I am. That's one of the weird things that does happen. Your fame destroys you. We started off with you saying, "What would you advise people?" You've got to watch that. You might get a bunch of money and think, "Now I've never allowed myself a bloody great car, but I would love a black Cadillac, so I'm going to do it."   A lot of people just do it for fun like that, but then you've got a black Cadillac, and you're a black Caddy man. You don't realize lifestyle, but it is.

 Q:   Are you pleased with all the music you've made since the Beatles split?

 A:  Not all of it. I mean, the obvious thing after you've been in a big group like that is, how do you follow it? I just went back to square one, got a little group together again, and we went back to playing small halls. So some of the music was done under a lot of pressure. Me trying to figure out what I was going to do, so some of it was a bit daff, but on the whole, looking back at how I've hung in there. Every so often, there's a good little record come out.

 Q:  Did you think when you did "Mull of Kintyre" that it would be....

 A:  That's huge? No, no way. I didn't even think it would be a hit. We did it in Scotland, in our barn, and pipers, who played on it, all had their cans of McEwans getting tanked up, and they all said, "Oh, this is a hit." Two year olds up to 50 year olds, they all agreed it was a hit, but we put it out at a time when there was a lot of new wave and punk stuff starting, and I thought that it was just going to get left out. It's funny, there's me in the height of punk putting out a Scottish waltz, but it was one of those records that just appealed to people. You can't tell what it was, but it just did.

 Q: The thing that I would say, the Beatles, while I wasn't there with the music, I can still listen to it and love it, thinking "This is timeless." But what you've done since the Beatles, I've never been able to get into. Do you think maybe as you've got older, you've written stuff, not as good?

A:  What  do you mean?

 Q:  or maybe of somebody who is older?

 A:  Yeah. Well, that would be true. The last thing I want to do is think, "Yeah, well, I did all my best stuff with the Beatles, and there's no way I can do anything good anymore." I'd have to take up gardening full time! But I think the public looks at it like that. "I've heard everything by the Beatles. Now I'm going to check out everything by Wings. It'll be duff in the comparison."  I think the Beatles stuff is better because it's a group, all that stuff we've been talking about, but I think there is stuff I've done since that is good. I mean, I've heard "Mull of Kintyre" myself, and you might not like it, but I thought, "Yeah, that's a good record."  "Band on the Run" as well.

 Q:  Maybe it's a difference that "She Loves You" sold to practically every teenager in Britain, and "Mull of Kintyre" to practically every housewife. 

A:  Yeah, that's what you'd think, but when you look at it, there was a million people who boguht that record. I mean, eight and nine year olds, that's the thing about it, it's a British record, it's got weird appeal, but even not going on sales, I think that one does something. The way I look at it is that I'm hanging in there. I couldn't possibly do the Beatles again. I couldn't keep up that standard. That was the Beatles, that was me riding with John Lennon. I think if you look at it now, you'd think, did the Beatles in a story, nothing, which I don't agree with. I think if you look and search a bit more, you'll find there is some good stuff in there that you might not get into until later in your life. So, really, you know, I've always thought of myself as hanging in there. My motto is "E for effort."

 And so the interview ended, Paul going off to finish some recording, me left marveling at how frank he had been. Whatever you think of Paul McCartney, hopefully this interview will have opened your eyes.

That's Sir Dr. Ringo

 July 7, 2026

On his birthday, Ringo received an honorary doctorate in music from the University of Liverpool.  

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.