When They Were Boys (50 page)

No doubt the tonsil surgery was a grim reminder of the earlier challenges faced by young Richard Starkey. And there were so many of them that his mother, Elsie, was always scared about what would happen next. When you look at the history, you can't blame her.

The scene at 9 Madryn Street was narrow, quite bare, and missing an important piece of life: his parents divorced when he was a toddler. In the ensuing years, Elsie and Richie moved to 10 Admiral Grove so Elsie could be closer to her work at a pub. The primary reason for the move was an attempt to cut monthly costs.

Richie's early years in school were not productive, and were especially impacted by health. At six years old, he fell into a coma for two months. The diagnosis was peritonitis, a severe abdominal condition. After he emerged from the coma, he never caught up with his schoolwork. By the time he was twelve, truancy and a lack of interest had caused his educational options to degenerate. And then illness struck again, just as his mother remarried to Harry Graves, a man who would become a dedicated stepfather. This time it was a lung illness, pleurisy, and it cost him more time and less education.

By the time he was seventeen, Richie was ill prepared for the work life ahead, but he was engaged in a period of active self-education. Although invested in alcohol and smoking, young Richie developed a love for American westerns and anything closely resembling country music. His British favorite was Lonnie Donegan.

In daytime he worked at a number of jobs, and at night he drank a lot and
listened to music wherever he could find it. But trouble was looming. In one of his jobs, waiter and bartender on the ferry across the river Mersey, he extended his love for alcohol by getting free and illegal access to the trove of liquor. Shockingly and candidly, he confessed and moved on.

Despite his comments about Liverpool, there is an aspect of Ringo Starr's existence that has stayed true over the years. As he got older, he became less loyal to his cadre of supporters, but in his youth he was an extreme loyalist. His life was also marked by a candor that is something to respect. For example, his remarks to me and others about the impatient nature of fans was always refreshing. “All I ask for is a little bit of respect and privacy,” he would say. “People come up to you like you are not a person, not a human being.”

When I would ask him a question about the earlier tours, in 1989 and again in 2000, he was not afraid to admit he didn't remember a lot about those days. “You tell me, Larry. You have it all written down, don't you? You tell me about what I've forgotten.”

About one thing in Ringo's life, almost everyone who knew him, and knows him, concurs: he was always likeable and friendly and funny, and in the early years of 1964 and 1965, a man with great insights to the world around him. In fact, in the era of escalation of the war in Vietnam, he was the most outspoken Beatle. His intellectual curiosity was as deep as John Lennon's. But unlike John, he was gullible, hilariously gullible, back in the beginning.

One night a long time ago, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas were on the bill with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, when Billy J.'s band members decided to hide Ringo's polo sweater. Ringo looked and looked, while the band members looked on trying desperately to cover their smiles. Finally, when he started crawling around the room, the Dakotas gave it back. He laughed, they laughed. They loved him.

Ron Ellis, a young fan in those early years and a future music researcher, remembers, “They really loved him. Back in the early times, everybody loved him. He was very honest, extremely hardworking, and always giving.”

In the year that John and Paul got together, Richie was searching for a musical identity, and he looked to his workmates at Hunt and Sons, where he worked successfully as an apprentice to a carpenter. He found a few who
toiled alongside him at the company, a successful creator of equipment for playgrounds. He formed a skiffle group—one that lasted all of one concert. The reader should remember, with deep respect, that hundreds of boy bands were started up every week, and hundreds quit very quickly. While Ringo's attempts to organize a band were limited in scope, there was no limit to his enduring love of music. The early Ringo band was denied, but Ringo's efforts to find the right band would not be.

And the journey was a hard one. On a typical concert day, Ringo would have to carry his washboard and tea-chest bass to a roundabout where he would board one bus, transfer to another, and hope beyond hope that one of his friends would pick him up from the second bus and give him a lift. He was, along with his friends, handler, mover, setup man, and finally, player. So getting into a group with genuine promise was a real priority.

Rory Storm's group was a natural. Storm, aka Alan Caldwell, met Richie in the early spring of 1959, and soon afterward he invited Richie to join his band, originally known as the Ravin' Texans. Ringo felt right at home with Storm, guitarist “Johnny Guitar” Byrne, Ty O'Brien on bass guitar and vocals, and Lu Walters on guitar and vocals. Ringo began playing drums for Storm and company; he loved the outfits and the Texas theme. Anything to connect him to the American West was an absolute delight.

Eventually Ringo gave up his apprentice job to join Storm's Hurricanes in the band's famed summer job at the Butlin's camp, the one that left an opening for the Beatles to take Allan Williams's invitation to the dirty yet hopeful scene in Hamburg. Before heading to Germany, the Silver Beatles, with John at the helm, left for a rough concert trip in Scotland with Johnny Gentle. The Beatles were envious of Storm's gig at Allan Williams's big stadium concert along with Gene Vincent and others. But they passed up on Butlin's to try Germany. Storm and his boys, including Ringo, would play many dates after the summer in Hamburg. Chemistry was forming between Ringo and John, Paul, George, and Stuart, but there was little interaction between Ringo and the Beatles' first drummer, Pete Best, although Best has claimed they were good friends in the days that Pete was a Beatle and Ringo played for Storm.

It would be three years of hard and devoted work before the Beatles came calling in the summer of 1962. By that time, Ringo Starr had become more self-assured, but not cocky. This lack of cockiness, along with his bouts of stage fright, and his look of vulnerability, made him popular with most of the area bands' members. He was frank about his feelings, but kind and friendly to almost everyone he met. Just as he had developed a real relationship with Storm, the drummer would also create a genuine friendship with John, Paul, and George. His illnesses and setbacks in school had caused tremendous suffering, and with Storm, and with his Beatle friends, he had found an extended family.

In fact, outside of his sparse family, Ringo viewed the bands as his main source of inspiration. Months after his famous tonsil operation, he shared with me the sense of community that he shared with the boys.

“When I was away [for the operation] I felt disconnected. A real band is like a family. When the family is separated, it feels very broken up. I was happy to see the lads again as we met here [in the Bahamas to film
Help!
].”

It was there, in February 1965, with Mal Evans by our side, that Ringo opened up even more.

“It was odd for them to be without me, and me without them. I had heard before what it was like for a band to break up. Even for my operation, I felt somewhat vacant, if you know what I mean, there.”

“But you're already settled as a success with the Beatles,” I added.

“Yes, Larry, but you've never been a band member. You see, the band becomes a permanent . . . sort of . . . extended family. Now we are back together again [in the Bahamas], and I feel good about it. Seems like things are really good now.”

Keep in mind that Ringo's comments on band friendship were made a year and a half after the band became a success.

It is also not unusual that after the band
really
broke up that Ringo suffered the most, becoming awash in drugs and alcohol. During that period, it was the head of the family, John, who reached out to help Ringo even while dealing with his own problems of substance abuse.

There was also a mostly hidden leadership role for Ringo. During 1963, before they came to America, he was a team builder and a jolt of energy.

“He was a lovely boy becoming a lovely man,” recalls fan club secretary Freda Kelly. “He knew there was controversy when he was chosen to replace Pete, but he kept his head up and just played on.”

“Ringo Starr was the brother that everyone wanted back in those days,” adds Billy J. Kramer. “Yes, he was gullible, but it made him just the more loved. I mean, how could you not like him?”

There is no question that Ringo changed as an adult, in some ways. But a man who spent more time in the studio with him than almost any other living person offers a portrait of a man who never forgot his genuine roots.

Marc Hudson, a musician, composer, and world-class arranger, spent ten years producing eight albums for Ringo Starr. As a result of his close proximity to the drummer, Hudson has a vivid account of Ringo's early days.

“There is no question that the young Rory Storm, prior to the Beatles, gave Ringo his biggest break. I mean, he not only loved his work—he loved the man behind the drums. And Ringo, until the Beatles came asking, was loyal to a fault. It was a deep sense of loyalty.”

That loyalty was tested in later life when the former Beatle would walk away in a flash from longtime business associates, a prerogative of any successful person. But Hudson never saw that as a flaw. Rather, he deeply respects Ringo for rarely, if ever, complaining about the harsh living conditions of his growing-up years.

T
HIS WAS
[
A
]
SICK CHILD, A REALLY SICK CHILD
. F
OR A WHILE UNTIL HIS STEPFATHER ARRIVED, THERE WAS ONLY HIS MOM
. H
IS HOUSE DIDN'T EVEN HAVE PLUMBING
. W
HAT
I
LOVE ABOUT
R
INGO IS HE WAS A MAN WITHOUT PITY, A MAN WHO NEVER COMPLAINED ABOUT HIS CONDITIONS OF LIFE
. I
T WAS AS SIMPLE AS “THIS WAS THE WAY IT WAS” AND IT WAS TIME TO GO OUT AND WORK, TIME TO GET ON WITH IT
. L
IVERPOOL WAS HARD ENOUGH TO GROW UP IN
. M
USIC WAS HIS WAY OUT, AND HE USED IT
[
TO GET
]
OUT OF THE MISERABLE CONDITIONS OF HIS CHILDHOOD
.

Ringo, Hudson adds, has always had an obsession with Rory Storm.

H
E LOVED
R
ORY AND JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING ABOUT HIM
. H
E HAS THIS UNBELIEVABLE PHOTO HE GAVE ME OF
R
ORY SITTING IN A LIVING
ROOM . . . NEXT TO HIM IS A
J
AMES
B
ROWN ALBUM LEANING AGAINST A FIREPLACE
. H
E LOVED
R
ORY
S
TORM'S LOOK . . . HIS
B
URGUNDY COATS . . . THOUGHT IT WAS SO COOL
.

A
S FAR AS THE
B
EATLES, HE WAS SECRETLY IN LOVE WITH THEIR WORK
. O
F COURSE, HE DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING TO
R
ORY, BUT WHEN THE BAND
[
THE
H
URRICANES
]
WAS FINISHED IN
H
AMBURG OR
M
ERSEYSIDE
, R
INGO WOULD SIT DOWN AND WATCH THE
B
EATLES ALMOST AS A FAN
. H
E RESPECTED THEM, ADMIRED THEM
.

Ringo may not have excelled in school, but in the observant, working-class “school of Ringo,” he studied overtime. He listened to and tried to mimic country artists, and studied all the Liverpool groups, including the outstanding but volatile Big Three, and its drummer, “Johnny Hutch.”

There are those who would say that Ringo Starr was lucky. But not Marc Hudson.

“Ringo worked at his craft from the beginning. I don't think he was lucky. Nobody I have ever met in forty-two years of arranging [Aerosmith, Ozzy Osborne, Seal, Pete Seeger] has ever done what Ringo has done on the drums. Most drummers can be selfish. Give them an inch and they steal the show. Ringo always plays the song, not just a solo act on the drums.

“Nobody ever plays a song like Ringo plays.”

“Was he, and is he, the greatest?” I ask.

“He's one of the greatest drummers in rock history, if not the greatest, and he just kept getting better,” Hudson says.

As a young reporter in those golden days of 1964–1966, just a few years separated from his days with Rory Storm, his idol, I was truly amazed to watch Ringo perform night after night. I am not and have never been a music expert, but I know a person's joy when I see it. And although John, Paul, and George had their good nights and bad nights, as we all do, Ringo, the man in the back with the nonstop smile, was the most consistent performer night after night.

As with all of them, I often wondered what their backup plans were, just in case they didn't get the breaks that would allow them to show their talents off to the world.

Back in the Bahamas, in 1965, I asked Ringo about a second career. Did he ever think of a backup plan?

“Well, Larry, I would like to be a deejay or newsman like you. But first . . .”

“Yes?”

“But first, Larry, I have to learn how to talk.”