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."