Beatles (32 page)

Rory’s was by then Liverpool’s leading group, but the offer of 13 weeks at Butlins was their biggest break. ‘We were going to make our names, so we thought we’d better have good ones. Rory Storm had already changed his name twice. He’s really Alan Caldwell, then he became Jet Storme then Rory Storm.’

It was at Butlins that Richard Starkey finally became Ringo. Up until then he’d been occasionally called Rings. He’d got his first ring on his 16th birthday from his mother. When his
Grandfather Starkey died, he got another, a broad gold ring, which he still wears. By the age of 20 he was wearing up to four rings. His surname was abbreviated to Starr at Butlins so they could announce his solo drumming spot as Star Time. Rings naturally became Ringo, as it sounded better with a one-syllable surname.

Back in Liverpool, Ringo had his 21st birthday party at his home in Admiral Grove. All the leading groups were there, including Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Big Three and Cilla Black. The Beatles didn’t come. Ringo didn’t know them. They were from another part of Liverpool and just another struggling group.

The living room at Admiral Grove is tiny, just ten feet by twelve feet, but somehow they got 60 people in for the party. They know the number because Ringo lined them up afterwards for a picture on the brick rubble heap opposite the house.

Elsie, Ringo’s mum, had known Cilla Black for a long time, as a local lass called Cilla White. For almost a year she’d been coming to Mrs Starkey’s, with a friend, every Wednesday after work. Cilla had her tea and then did Elsie’s hair for her.

The success of their 13-week season at Butlins led to other engagements. They did a tour of United States air bases in France, but Ringo says this was terrible. ‘The French don’t like the British, at least I didn’t like them.’

Rory’s group was doing so well that when the first offer came to go to Hamburg they turned it down. But they went later, joining the Beatles at the Kaiserkeller, which was where they met for the first time. Ringo has a slight memory of catching sight of them once before that in Liverpool. He looked into the Jackaranda Club one day and saw them teaching Stu how to play the bass.

In Hamburg Ringo used to sit around with them between sessions and request numbers when they were playing. He came back to Liverpool with Rory, then returned to Hamburg on his own, accompanying Tony Sheridan. During this spell in Hamburg, he seriously considered staying on for good. He was
offered his own flat, a car and £30 a week to stay for a year. But he decided to come back to Liverpool and Rory Storm again for another season at Butlins. This was when he was asked to join the Beatles. John told him on the phone that he would have to brush his hair down, but he could keep his sidies.

Ringo had to put up with a lot of shouts and threatening letters from Pete Best fans. ‘The birds loved Pete. Me, I was just a skinny, bearded scruff. Brian didn’t really want me either. He thought I didn’t have the personality. And why get a bad-looking cat when you can get a good-looking one?’

It was the money that made Ringo decide. ‘I got another offer at the same time, from King Size Taylor and the Dominoes. He offered £20 a week. The Beatles offered £25, so I took them.’

As with all of them, and as with everyone in life, their paths might not have crossed. Much earlier, Ringo was on the point of emigrating to the United States. He and a friend were looking through some records one day and read that ‘Lightning Hopkins comes from Houston, Texas.’ They went to see the US consul in Liverpool and said they wanted to go to Houston, Texas. He said they had to have a job first. Ringo picked one in a factory. ‘Then the really big forms arrived, all about was your grandfather’s Great Dane a Commy. I couldn’t understand them. If I had done, I would definitely have gone.’

With Ringo fitting in, as a personality and as a drummer, the Beatles were now the indisputable top group in Liverpool. They had a gentleman-manager and had at last made contact with London. But their success, however local, was beginning to split up some of the old loyalties that Ringo, particularly, had been very fond of.

‘There were so many groups in Liverpool at one time that we often used to play just for each other. It was a community on its own, made up of groups. All going to the same places, playing for each other. It was all nice. Then when the record companies came up and started signing groups, it wasn’t so friendly. Some made it and others didn’t.

‘You’d meet someone you’d known and he’d say “Fine, man, just crazy. Just did a recording, but they’re not releasing it. They said I’m too much like Ray Charles.”

‘It broke all the community up. People started hating each other. I stopped going to the old places. But it was one of the great times of my life, those early days in Liverpool. Like at my 21st birthday party, they were all there.’

The Beatles, complete with Ringo, were waiting now to hear a definite date from George Martin for their recording debut. In the meantime, other things in Liverpool fell into place. Brian at last decided that running two record stores and a beat group was too much, which is what his father had been saying for a long time. He decided to give up day-to-day work at the Whitechapel record store and moved Peter Brown across from Charlotte Street as manager. He concentrated on NEMS Enterprises, popping down from his upstairs office now and again to see how Peter was getting on. This led to rows, as Brian couldn’t bear to see his lovely arrangements being changed. Peter was fired, after a furious row, but was reinstated.

But Brian never had rows with any of the Beatles. The nearest was an incident with Paul. They all came round to pick him up one night, but Paul was in the bath and refused to come out. ‘I shouted to them to wait, I’d just be a few minutes. But when I got out, they’d all driven off with Brian. So I said, fuck them, temperamental fool that I was. If they can’t be arsed waiting for me, I can’t be arsed going after them. So I sat down and watched telly.’

The real reason was that Paul had got it into his head that he should revolt. ‘I’d always been the keeny, the one who was always eager, chatting up managements and making announcements. Perhaps I was being bigheaded at first, or perhaps I was better at doing it than the others. Anyway, it always seemed to be me.’

It led to an argument between Paul and Brian, but nothing serious. Paul was soon back to being the keeny. ‘I realized that I was being more false by
not
making the effort.’

He and John were as keen as ever on writing songs, turning out ‘another Lennon-McCartney original’ all the time. But Mimi
still thought it wasn’t serious. ‘I always expected John to come home one day and say he wasn’t doing the group any more. “It bores me to death.”

‘I was the last to realize they were doing well. Little girls started to come to the door and ask if John was in. I’d say, why? They’d say they just wanted to see John. I couldn’t understand it. They were such little girls. I knew his only serious girlfriend had been Cyn.’

In the summer of 1962, Cyn found that she was pregnant. ‘I didn’t know if John would want to get married. I didn’t want to tie him down.’

‘I was a bit shocked when she told me,’ says John. ‘But I said yes. We’ll have to get married. I didn’t fight it.’

They were married on 23 August 1962, at Mount Pleasant Register Office in Liverpool. ‘I went in the day before to tell Mimi. I said Cyn was having a baby, we were getting married tomorrow, did she want to come? She just let out a groan.’

No parents were at the wedding. From all accounts, it was conducted in the same spirit as his own parents’ wedding, held in the same register office 24 years previously. John, Paul and George all wore black. ‘There was a drill going on all the time outside,’ says John. I couldn’t hear a word the bloke was saying. Then we went across the road and had a chicken dinner. I can’t remember any presents. We never went in for them. It was all a laugh.’

They tried to keep the marriage secret from Beatle fans, but one of the tea ladies from the Cavern saw them coming out of the register office and the news leaked out, though they denied it. ‘I thought it would be goodbye to the group, getting married, because everybody said it would be. None of us ever took any girls to the Cavern, as we thought we would lose fans, which turned out to be a farce in the end. But I did feel embarrassed being married. Walking about, married. It was like walking about with odd socks on or your flies open.’

Cynthia was all for keeping their marriage quiet. ‘It was bad enough John being recognized and chased everywhere. I didn’t want that to happen to me.’

The girl fans had grown to enormous proportions by this time, fanatically following them everywhere and screaming at the slightest excuse. Yet no one outside Liverpool had heard of the Beatles. They were still waiting for George Martin, the great A and R man in London, to tell them when he was going to record them.

Even in Liverpool, it had all happened with no publicity and promotion. The fans had discovered the Beatles by themselves.

Maureen Cox was one of these fans. She and a friend ran after Ringo in the street one day, just after he’d joined the Beatles. He was getting out of his car. His little grey streak at the front of his hair gave him away. She got his autograph and wrote down his car number on her exercise book. She was on her way to night class as a hairdresser at the time, having just left school. ‘I can remember his car number to this day – NWM 466.’

Today, Maureen Cox is Ringo’s wife. But it was Paul she first kissed, slightly to her embarrassment now.

She was in the Cavern one evening with a friend, and the friend bet her that she wouldn’t go and kiss Paul. ‘I said to her that it was
she
who was scared to do it. She said I was scared. So just for a bet, I fought my way to the band room and kissed Paul when he came out. My friend was so annoyed and jealous that she started crying. But it was really Ritchie I liked best. I’d just kissed Paul for a dare. So I waited till Ritchie came out and kissed him as well.’

Ringo has no memory of being kissed by Maureen, nor of giving her his autograph. ‘That was the scene at the time, getting kissed. It had progressed from getting a Beatle’s autograph to touching one, then kissing one. You’d be trying to get to the band room and you’d suddenly have some girl’s arms flung round you. I probably thought Maureen was some fly pecking me.’

But three weeks later, at the Cavern, he asked Maureen to dance. He took her home afterwards, but he had to take her friend home as well. This went on for several weeks. Maureen
says she didn’t like to tell her friend she was in the way. ‘I felt a bit scared.’

From then on, Maureen hardly missed a Cavern session, but she soon realized there were fans far more fanatical than even she could be. ‘They used to hang round the Cavern all day long, just on the off chance of seeing them. They’d come out of the lunchtime session and just stand outside all afternoon, queuing up for the evening. Ritchie and the boys once went past at midnight and there were fans already queuing up for the next day. They bought them some pies. They were knocked out.

‘The object was to get as near the front row as possible, so that they could see the Beatles, and be seen by them. I never joined the queue till about two or three hours before the Cavern opened. It frightened me. There would be fights and rows amongst the girls.

‘When the doors opened the first ones would tear in, knocking each other over.

‘They’d keep their rollers in and jeans on for the first groups. Then when it got near the time for the Beatles to come on, if there was a gang of four, say, they would go off in turns to the ladies with their little cases to get changed and made-up. When the Beatles came on they’d all look smashing, as if they’d just arrived.

‘I suppose it was partly sex and partly the music. That was the attraction. They were obviously dying to be noticed and get to know one of them. But no, it was really just everything about being there. It was terrible, the mad screams when they came on. They went potty.’

When Maureen did go out with Ringo, she had to keep completely in the background.

‘I might have been killed otherwise. The other girls were not friendly at all. They wanted to stab me in the back. It was part of their image, that they weren’t married and so each girl thought she might have a chance. None of them were supposed to have steadies.

‘A few eventually found out, of course. They used to come into the hairdresser’s where I was working. I couldn’t do anything
about that. I would have to do their hair. Then they would threaten me – “If you see that Ringo Starr again you’re for it.” When I went outside they’d push me. I used to get threatening phone calls – my brother’s going to get you, they used to say.

‘They were playing at the Locarno once. Just before they’d finished, Ritchie told me to go outside and sit in the car and wait for him, so no one would see me. I was sitting in the car when this girl came up. She must have followed me.

‘She said, “Are you going out with Ringo?” I said no, oh no, not me. He’s just a friend of my brother’s. “Liar,” she said, “I just saw you talking to him.” I’d forgotten to wind the window up. Before I could do anything, she had her hand through the window and scratched me down my face. She started screaming and shouting some very select language at me. I thought this is it. I’m going to get stabbed. But I just got the window up in time. If I hadn’t, she would have opened the door and killed me.’

George Martin always seems light years away from the Beatles in class, tastes and background. He is tall and handsome, in a matinée idol sort of way, with a studied prep schoolmaster manner and a clipped BBC accent. But his early background, at least, was as humble and working-class as the Beatles’.

He was born in 1926, in Holloway, north London, the son of a carpenter. He went first to a Jesuit College in Stamford Hill, then the family moved to Kent and he went to Bromley County School. There was no musical tradition in the family and he had no musical training as a young boy, but he taught himself to play the piano by ear and by the age of 16 he was running his own school dance band.