When They Were Boys

by Larry Kane

  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 m
an 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.

  THIS WAS [A] SICK CHILD, A REALLY SICK CHILD. FOR A WHILE UNTIL HIS STEPFATHER ARRIVED, THERE WAS ONLY HIS MOM. HIS HOUSE DIDN’T EVEN HAVE PLUMBING. WHAT I LOVE ABOUT RINGO IS HE WAS A MAN WITHOUT PITY, A MAN WHO NEVER COMPLAINED ABOUT HIS CONDITIONS OF LIFE. IT 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. LIVERPOOL WAS HARD ENOUGH TO GROW UP IN. MUSIC 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.

  HE LOVED RORY AND JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING ABOUT HIM. HE HAS THIS UNBELIEVABLE PHOTO HE GAVE ME OF RORY SITTING IN A LIVING ROOM . . . NEXT TO HIM IS A JAMES BROWN ALBUM LEANING AGAINST A FIREPLACE. HE LOVED RORY STORM’S LOOK . . . HIS BURGUNDY COATS . . . THOUGHT IT WAS SO COOL.

  AS FAR AS THE BEATLES, HE WAS SECRETLY IN LOVE WITH THEIR WORK. OF COURSE, HE DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING TO RORY, BUT WHEN THE BAND [THE HURRICANES] WAS FINISHED IN HAMBURG OR MERSEYSIDE, RINGO WOULD SIT DOWN AND WATCH THE BEATLES ALMOST AS A FAN. HE 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.”

  At this he laughed out loud heartily, and with that lovely and engaging smile, the same smile that engrossed passengers on the ferry across the Mersey where he worked as a bartender, the smile that energized Rory and his Hurricanes night after night, and the fearless laugh that he displayed at the Montreal Forum in 1964 when he shrugged off a telephoned death threat from Quebec separatists, and played on with his fellow Beatles, telling me on the airplane a few hours later, “There was so much noise that if there were a real threat, I would, you know, never heard it.”

  In many accounts of his early life, Ringo has been described as a sad-eyed little boy. I asked Ringo repeatedly about that “sad” label. He said, quite pointedly, in a Chicago dressing room, “It’s just the face. I’m quite happy inside.”

  Yet, many writers and musical pundits still insist he was the “sad Beatle.”

  Perhaps it was his sickly nature, or the loneliness of having no siblings. But as life endured, he became a man of many emotions, some of them expressed with a daring bluntness, others with that unforgettable face of joy, which in public almost always lit up the back of the Beatles stage.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  TRIUMPH AT PARLOPHONE

  “There was this huge north–south divide, which still exists in the UK, and you’ve probably heard George quoted occasionally as having been told by people, ‘Oh, you guys from Liverpool, you’re wasting your time down here in London.’ It was wonderful that a group from Liverpool went down to London and knocked them sideways. And not only knocked London sideways but knocked the whole world sideways. What this did for the psychology of northern England was just immense.”

  —Rod Davis

  “Although I told Paul it wasn’t good, I am happy that I was wrong. I hope he didn’t hold it against me.”

  —Horst Fascher, on his critique of the song that made history

  MASTER PROMOTER TONY BRAMWELL ADMITS PROUDLY THAT HE WAS CONNIVING AND DESPERATE FOR NEWS EVEN AS A TEENAGER. Bramwell would hang around the NEMS record store to try to get a bead on what was going on. What he found was that Brian Epstein and Epstein’s just-signed boys, whom he was friendly with, were down after the Decca disaster.

  “I wasn’t that close to Brian at that time,” Bramwell says, “but he liked to use me as a sounding board for new music and all that stuff. By early spring, in late March, the boys were not aware that they had been rejected, but finally Brian pulled out the letter from Decca and nervously told them about the failure at Decca.”

  John, ever the optimist, seemed helpless. But Bramwell, as a future promotion man, was “impressed” when Brian put out a smart press release.

  “It was a good ‘cover,’” Bramwell explains. “It announced a European tour, but it was really a month-and-a-half gig at the Star Club in Hamburg. They would arrive with tragedy facing them, in Stuart’s death. What they didn’t know, as I learned much later, that Brian, still relentless, was running out of options. Facing loss, and back in the grasp of Hamburg, they needed good news. As a fan and friend, I also felt helpless.”

  Once again, the “what-ifs” of life enter the picture. At play here was Epstein’s steely determination, plus a sense by the manager that Tony Barrow from Decca was a good man to stay in touch with. Barrow, for his part, liked the boys and thought Epstein was first-rate. In truth, while working for Decca, Barrow had been quietly doing freelance jobs to promote the Beatles. Coupled with Bill Harry’s efforts, Bob Wooler’s singular promotion in person and in print, and Barrow’s planting of timely reminders of the group’s Merseyside achievements, the fires were still lit in the north of England.

  London was a different story, until a chance visit.

  The fact is that, near the end of spring 1962, despite his happy face and optimism toward the boys, Epstein was running out of options when he arrived in London at the Oxford Street offices of Ardmore and Beechwood, a publishing arm of the big EMI record conglomerate. Epstein was not selling the Beatles that day. He was simply looking for an engineer to make vinyl copies of the Decca recordings. The engineer made the duplicates, and in doing so seemed remarkably impressed by the songs. He urged Epstein to go to another floor of the
building and meet one of the company’s executives. The man’s name was Syd Coleman. One thing led to another. Coleman listened to the recordings, offered to publish them as sheet music, and surprised Epstein with another offer.

  “Now this was a dramatic turning point,” Tony Barrow remembers. “This chance meeting changed everything.”

  Coleman referred Epstein to a young producer at Parlophone, an unusual label, not confined just to music, but owned by EMI. The man’s name was George Martin. Epstein, all excited, phoned his expert pressman Tony Barrow that very day.

  He was thrilled, so thrilled, but thought, “Parlophone?” That was an odd choice, but the door was at least opened.

  At the time, Martin’s stable included men of comedy and satire, with the biggest star being Peter Sellers.

  Liking some of their tunes and finding a good chemistry with the young musicians, he set a test recording for June 6. The place was studio #3 at Abbey Road Studios. In several later interviews, Martin called it “love at first sight.”

  But there was work to be done. Martin, who impressed the boys with his regal bearing, was not speedy, but methodical.

  “One of the untold stories of George Martin was how really detailed he was,” says Tony Bramwell, “all the time he spent getting to know John, Paul, George and Pete. I watched in many later sessions and the man was classy and deep.”

  In 1962, before the Parlophone connection, the Beatles owned only one contract, with Polydor, for backing up Tony Sheridan’s “My Bonnie” in Hamburg in 1961, thanks to the strong support of German songwriter Bert Kaempfert, a huge success in his own right.

  Beatles business and contract expert Bruce Spizer thinks that Epstein made an initial mistake with the Sheridan record.

  “He passed it off to everyone at EMI in the early months of 1962. But it was a backup performance and did not show their songwriting ability.”

  It turns out that the songwriting talent, which in the early days separated John and Paul, and to some extent George, from the other Merseyside groups, was hardly noticed, until George Martin showed up.