SOMETIMES your friendly neighbourhood interviewer is allowed to conduct his interview in a small room with only the interviewee and a tape, recorder for company.
Sometimes when you're interviewing Ringo (for it is he), you find yourself dealing with an involved and increasingly ludicrous charade of a kind which, for thine host, has no doubt become de rigeur over the years. It seems that a Beatle is a Beatle is a Beatle, and nothing from here to eternity is going to change that.
Hardly surprising then that none of the ex-Beatles enjoy giving interviews.
Ringo only agreed to give interviews in London – his first for several years – because he's launching his own record company (Ring O' Records; he's never been one to tax the old imagination unnecessarily) with an album of synthesiser stuff by one David Hentschel called Startling Music.
Ring O' Records will be distributed throughout Europe by Polydor. Hence it is at their plush Oxford Street offices that the interviews are held.
David Hughes, Polydor press officer, has had to fix a rapid conveyor-belt schedule to accommodate everyone. No self-respecting English newspaper would turn down an audience with Mr. Starr and Hughes has been instructed to offer full facilities to continental journalists too. "The very lovely Ringo will partner David Hentschel in being interviewed by two journalists at a time, at half-hourly interviews throughout the afternoon. The winners will be announced at the end of the evening and champagne prizes distributed. Eyes down, ladies and gentlemen".
PUNCTUALLY at 2.00 p.m. Ringo arrives, accompanied by Barry Anthony, head of Ring O'.
Ringo is wearing a full-length fur coat, his hair distinguished by greying at the temples.
Others present include Hentschel and manager John Gilbert. David Hughes draws up a chair and crosses his legs: yes, he's obviously staying. A couple of photographers hover around and various other minor personages are in seemly attendance.
Ringo sits down with brandy-and-bitter-lemon.
The matter in hand is the Hentschel album.
Startling Music turns out to be a freeish reinterpretation of Ringo's own Ringo album from individual tracks to cover.
Mr. Starr: "John Gilbert brought me a tape of this music, and it was all on an ARP – the best ARP music I'd ever 'eard. I was thinking of starting a label, and we thought it would be good if he did something for the label, and we thought it would be good if he copied the Ringo album.
"I mean, he really wanted to do a symphony, but I forced him into it.
"It took about a year to get together. We started it in June last year. 'Course I didn't know at the time that he was Elton John's engineer and ARP player."
RINGO ARTISTE Insert: Hentschel's Big Break.
Hentschel was educated at Cheltenham college, and left with a university place. Before taking it up, he worked for a year as a teaboy at Trident studios.
His 'comprehensive musical background' soon saw him taking more responsible jobs, working with people like Paul McCartney, before spurning university and persuading the studio to buy a synthesiser. No mean achievement, since they then cost a minimum of £5,000.
("That", says Ringo, "is a lot of money for a lot of plugs.")
He mastered the machine with a drop-kick to the mains and proceeded to play it on Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
Then he played it on material by Carly Simon, Jim Webb, and Blood, Sweat And Tears.
("He's been around a long time," says Ringo in perfect English.)
It has been only a short hop to Ring O' Records and Hentschel's Big Break. The End.
RINGO SAYS he still doesn't recognise half his songs on Hentschel's album.
"At first we were a bit strict, trying to get him to do exact copies of the songs; then he played us one he'd arranged himself, 'Devil Woman' – and it 'worked.' So we sent 'im back to do a few more how he wanted them, rather than following the basic pattern that I'd laid down.
"I think overall they work best. With hindsight, I think we should have given him a free hand from the beginning."
Any chance of a similar project with Goodnight Vienna?
"No, I don't think he could take it. Anyway, he wants to do his own thing now, which is only right.
RINGO CONFIRMS that he intends to make his label a viable proposition. Squire Hentschel ceases to receive plugs.
"Oh yeah, it's gonna be a good company.
"We're talking to several people at the moment.
"I mean, lots of people have sent in tapes.
"Now, George has these really crazy freaks coming in for his label – 'Hey, man, I've just written this new mantra'; but we just get the rock 'n' roll people.
"I don't know whether I'll put myself on the label. Right now I can't, 'cos I'm with EMI, but that finishes next year. After that, we'll see if it's a good idea. Maybe we'll do it how we did Apple, whereby we were only on Apple courtesy of EMI.
"I'd like it to be like United Artists. My aim in the end is to get all the independents together, so that we all can run our own business. As it is, we're all being run by people whose only qualification is as an accountant."
(Historical footnote: United Artists was formed by Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D. W. Griffith in 1921 so that they could protect their interests against marauding production companies).
But What Of Apple? "Well, we still have a couple of buildings. We don't have any artists or anything, 'cos we're, trying to split ourselves up. Apple can't end as such because it will have all the Beatle product.
"It's very hard. You sign a piece of paper in two minutes and it takes you 7 years to get out of it. We've got 27 lawyers at the moment in LA trying to dissolve our partnership. I'd like the world to be on a shake of the hand.
"Certainly, if any artists get pissed off, they'll be able to leave my company. With Brian it was f...
https://www.beatles.ru/books/paper.asp?id=2400
