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IN AUSTRALIA. Ringo Starr arriving for the Beatles' tour of Australia in June, 1964. |
DADDY RINGO - the domesticated Beatle
Ringo Starr, the drummer Beatle who grew up poor, has one regret - he didn't give his son the benefit of a working-class home!
By ROBERT DEARDORFF | RINGO AND MAUREEN first met in a club where he was playing. He offered her a lift home, had to drive her girlfriend, too. Ringo drove the friend home for about a month - then he put his foot down. |
Ringo Starr's marriage and the birth of his baby son have, surprisingly, increased his popularity. Today he is a world-famous family man, a teenage idol, and a movie star who has an enormous appeal for adult audiences.
Long before his appearance in "A Hard Days Night," the Beatles' first film, he was nicknamed the "Miserable Beatle." He doesn't agree. "The thing is, I've got one of those faces that doesn't smile very much. I'm feeling good inside, having a great time, but it just never shows.
People who know all four men well sometimes give him another name. "He's the 'Apart Beatle,' " Walter Shenson, the producer of their pictures, explained. "He is the most introspective and the gentlest, too."
He is also the last one who joined the Beatles, he has had the least schooling, and he is the only one who comes from a poor family. He is completely without pretentions. In the entertainment world, when people become famous they often begin retouching the past. Not Ringo. He makes no effort to cover up the fact that his family was poor, and he is equally matter-of-fact about the hardships of former years and the enormous success that has come to him now.
Although he makes mistakes in grammar, he has an unusual flair for language; he thought of the title for "A Hard Day's Night."
I first met Ringo just before his baby was born.
He was on the movie set of the second Beatle film, "Help!"
He shook hands politely, the disappeared in front of the camera. From then until mid-afternoon he was busy playing the same scene.
As soon as the scene was finished, he came over immediately, apologising for having wasted so much of my time. That evening, instead of rushing home as he had intended, he changed his mind, and after phoning his wife said we could begin.
He told me that he was born on July 7, 1940, in Dingle, near he Liverpool docks. Like dock areas everywhere, "It's not pretty, but I liked it. I was happy there."
He is an only child; his real name is Richard Starkey. "It's still Starkey," he pointed out earnestly, in spite of the fact that his parents were divorced when he was a baby and his mother later remarried.
One of his earliest recollections is of being sick when he was six and a half. "I had appendicitis. I remember being carried downstairs to the ambulance. I saw all my aunties and uncles sitting around in the kitchen as I passed. At the hospital was this doctor. He may not have done it - this is just how it felt - but he was sort of bashing me in the stomach, or so I thought. And I remember" - he exploded into laughter - "I remember thinking, He shouldn't do that! I'm not well!"
In the operating room his appendix burst, and later he developed peritonitis. This, plus a fall from his cot, kept him in hospital for a year.
"I was eight and a half or nine when I went back to school, and I was put in a class with big boys my own age. There's a big difference between the work of six-and-a-half-year-olds and nine-year-olds, and I don't think I ever made up the schooling I missed.
"I wouldn't say I was thick, but I'm not very good at spelling. And arithmatic isn't my greatest subject, either."
He sat up abruptly in his chair and, face beaming, cried in a triumphant voice, "But I can work a few things out, folks!"
"We're working-class people," he said. "My mother worked all her life - as long as I can remember. She was a barmaid first. Then she worked in a shop, selling fruit. But we had a nice home - for what we had, you know. We didn't ever live in squalor."
He remembered, to, that he always had "the best my mother could give me. She'd go without herself just so I could have a good suit and a good pair of shoes.
"If I wanted something expensive, she'd say, 'Well, I'll try, but don't build your hopes up.' And I knew if she could possibly manage I'd get it. When she did promise something, she never failed me. Never!
"So now when I think of my own baby . . . Never lie to a child!" he exclaimed. "That's the worst thing!"
In those days he "went out with the lads" a lot. "I was only lonely when it rained and I had to stay in alone. That's why I always say I'll never have just one kid.
It's fine if you can go out and play with your mates, but when it's bad weather you have to fetch kids in. Sometimes I think my mother got fed up a bit. Sometimes when it rained I'd bring 200 in to play. I think that's the only drag about being an only child."
Ringo was 13 when his mother married again. "What is funny," he went on, his voice filled with incredulity, "is that she asked me, you know: 'Do you mind if we get married?' No! No! Because I loved him, anyway. He'd been coming round for four or five years, and he was like a dad to me. You know, there was none of that 'Look here, we're getting married!' It was nice to know that you counted even at that age.
"So now my mother is Mrs. Graves - which the papers will never print. They still call her Mrs. Starkey. I'm sure she's not ashamed that she was a divorcee. I'm sure I'm not."
Ringo is still fond of his stepfather.
"When I was 18 or 19 we used to go to a couple of clubs - working-men's clubs, you know - and they used to ask him to sing. We had a little double act, both of us singing. Just for laughs."
From the time he was a small boy, Ringo had liked singing, but his first interest was drums, and he never got over that.
"I made drums out of little cans, and put bits of metal on them to make them sizzle."
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Ringo on the drums. He made his frst set of drums himself, out of cans, and his own sticks too. |
After brief employment as a messenger boy and in the merchant navy he became an apprentice engineer.
Now that he was a working-man, Ringo felt he could afford to buy a drum at last. He bought a 30/- bass drum. "I used to bang it with a coubple of sticks and annoy everybody. It made just one big boom sound. Then my parents bought me a drum kit. I used to carry my drums down to my mates because they had a guitar and we could play together."
Soon Ringo was playing with a group in local clubs.
His group, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, went on to tour Germany, where he became friendly with the Beatles, also on tour. Back in Liverpool, Ringo was still playing with the Hurricanes when the Beatles' drummer, Pete Best, became ill, and Ringo was asked to fill in. He became a permanent member of the Beatles group.
At that time nobody, least of all the Beatles, foresaw the fantastic success they were going to have. Liverpool was the whole world for them. They didn't even think of going to London.
Their first record, "Love Me, Do," was released in October, 1962, and came in 47th or 48th on the top-50 list in Britain. When their second and third records made the top of the list they were on their way.
Ringo bought a car, and one night when the Beatles were playing in a Liverpool club he spotted a young girl in the audience, and later offered her a lift home. The young lady told him, "I've got a girlfriend with me."
"Well, I couldn't back out then," said Ringo, "so I said 'OK,' and I took her friend home and then I took her home. Her name was Maureen Cox.
"After that, whenever I saw her I'd say, 'Take you home?' and she'd say 'I've got a friend with me.' This went on for a month or so, and then I said, 'Look, I'll take you out, but I'm not taking two of you out. That's a bit much'." He grinned. :See, she always had this friend. It used to drive me mad!
"We just sort of started going steady. More or less. How can you go steady in my job? I kept leaving and going on tour. Then when I came back last December from the U.S. tour and went into the hospital here in London to have my tonsils out, Maureen stayed with my mother in my London flat. It was then I said, 'Do you want to get married?' and she said, 'Yes . . .' "
When Ringo left the hospital, he and Maureen drove to Liverpool one night to ask her parents' consent. "They said yes" - Ringo's parents had already approved - "so we got married. I don't remember the date! February or March." He paused, frowning, then burst out, "That's grand! Dates I'll never remember! I hope my wife doesn't read this!" (A phone call later to his manager revealed that the date was February 11.)
Ringo's double-ring marriage ceremony took place at 8 a.m. in Caxton Hall, the registry office in London.
When the Starrs returned from their honeymoon in Brighton they moved into a new duplex apartment in London. Maureen looks after it with the help of the wife of Ringo's chauffeur. According to people who know Ringo well, he rushes home impatiently every evening. he is devoted to Maureen.
Ringo phrased it another way. "She's my anchor. It's back to reality. Everything's normal once I get home.
"I'll say, 'I did this to-day. What did you do?' Or, 'That's great meat!' And she'll say, 'I bought this to-day,' and, 'Do you like it?' "
Ringo believes a new husband needs a lot of patience, "especially at the beginning. Because you may go with a girl for years, but as soon as you're married - well, married life is different.
"The thing is, you have to be adaptable," he continued. "If Maureen wants something for the flat and I don't like it - well, things can look nice, but you don't have to have them - still, I say, 'Get it.' because she's in the house more than I am, you see, and it would make her happy.
"When we're going out she'll say, you know, the usual: 'I've got nothing to wear!' You open the closte and fifty thousand dresses fly out! Then she'll say, 'Well, you tell me what to wear,' and I'll say, 'Oh, I like this one, or that'."
When he is home, he said, "I just sort of lie around and give orders. Only on some days, though. One day I'll be jumping up, getting a drink or making the tea, and the next couple of days Maureen will do it. I don't mind helping out, but when I'm tired, Maureen just doesn't ask me, becauseshe understands. When I'm working, she gives me everything."
Asked what he thought was the most important requirement for a happy marriage, Ringo replied, "Understanding. Trying to see both points of view. It doesn't matter who your wife is, she's a different person, with different likes and dislikes. You can't always agree on everything."
Asked to describe Maureen, Ringo smiled shyly. "She's pretty," he said. "She has brown hair and brown eyes, small features. She's smaller than I am - except now, she's flaring a bit.
"I look at her and I think, "She's going to turn into two people!' It's a funny feeling, it's marvellous!
"We both want a boy. He and I will be able towrestle together. I hope in time to have one or two of each." He shifted in his chair. "You know," he said, "I'd like to be a bit of a prentender - like more like an ordinary working-man. When you have a kid you'd like to have it grow up in that atmosphere. Then when he's older, maybe 21, I could let him know I'm not working for £10 a week. The trouble is, you can't do it . . ."
Ringo's most fervent hope is that he'll never fail his child. "I just may do something wrong, like not teaching him something I should. But love is the most important thing - that and understanding. You've got to try to get close to a child by fetching your intelligence down to his level."
Ringo and Maureen planned together how to handle the first few months of the baby's life. "Where we both come from you just have the baby in your bedroom and you look after it. But I was thinking, well, I can afford it, so we might as well get a nurse for the first months. It will be easier on Maureen, though she doesn't like the idea, really."
One thing he won't do, however - "send my child to boarding school. And I'll never push him. If he passes tests and gets diplomas and everything, and well and good, but I'll never say, 'You won't get this bike unless you go to college!" And I'll let him decide., as he grows up, what he want to be.
Ringo and Maureen both have considered the possibility that the Beatles may "go out of style." Whether they do or not, Ringo would like to stop going on tour at the age of 30 "because my family will need me."
As for future income, he cited a friend's example. "A few years ago this man was selling potatoes door to door. Then he borrowed money and built one house. With the profit from that he built a couple more, and sold those at a profit as well. I respected him, and I liked what he was doing, sp we formed a firm. Now we're building 12 houses together."
The only immediate change that Ringo plans is to buy a house in the country. "Then when I'm not working, I'm just going to sit in the garden and watch me kid grow up."
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After the wedding at Caxton Hall, London,
in February. From left are Cynthia Lennon (John Lennon's wife), Mrs. Cox (Maureen's mother), John Lennon, Ringo and his bride, with George Harrison immediately behind them, Brian Epstein (the Beatles' manager), Mr Graves (Ringo's stepfather) and Mrs. Graves (Ringo's mother). |
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HONEYMOON AT BRIGHTON was
supposed to be a secret, but the news soon leaked out and Ringo and Maureen were mobbed. In Brighton they were given a tiny poodle, which they named Tiger. Later they found that Tiger should have been called Tigress. |
