And the other side of the coin was, I called her in '66 to say: 'We've stopped touring now. And she did love me every second of my life. What, I ask, was it like for his mum when her son's band went through the roof so quickly? Was she worried about what Beatlemania would do to her darling boy? “No, no, she loved it. The woman loved every second of my life, and remembered every second of my life. Little wonder that here his accompanying text is unashamed: “Me and my Mum.
Ringo was an only child, abandoned by his father in infancy, although later raised by a loving stepfather. He alights on a picture of him, as a primary-age schoolboy, with his mother.
YOUNG RINGO STARR FULL
“The money was great, and I'd take a suitcase full of shoes – winklepickers we called 'em – and I made more money selling the shoes than I made on stage! The Germans loved those shoes.” “I kept going to Germany,” he says, not a little wistfully.
He talks further about the Beatles' early history, when Liverpool musicians by the boatload were shuttling back and forth to Hamburg. “It was always good to be in a band,” Ringo beams. Again the vibes are set to “party”, and there is a pretty girl involved. It's Ringo with McCartney, Harrison and “Faron from Faron's Flamingos”. “I love this stuff,” he hoots, alighting on a pre-Beatles picture that captures the bustling Liverpool music scene at the dawn of the Sixties. Well, that was the least… Are they in here?” he says curiously, leafing quickly through the book balanced on our knees. That might explain why Photograph doesn't feature too many images from the Seventies and Eighties. And that's because my using went uphill.” And you can actually see my career go downhill. Was this mainly after the band split, in 1970? “Well, there were some days even in the band when none of us could work, ha ha! But it really got worse, and it just went worse and worse and worse for me, where it was more important to have a drink than do anything.
And other things came into our lifestyle,” he says pointedly. And all through the Beatle days we all would have a drink. “I was drinking at 17, going to pubs, pretending I was 18. He says that if you visit his childhood home in Liverpool you'll see that “the living room was ten by eight, and the kitchen was ten by eight, and that was the house. And all these people were in my house,” he says, gazing at a teeming shot that features, front and centre and up close to Ringo, a young Cilla Black. Indeed, Photograph features snaps of quite a few boozy gatherings, one of them taken at Ringo's 21st. Even before the Beatles, the family I come from, they loved to party, and I loved to party.” “Well, that's how it was,” he shoots back matter-of-factly. Jog – I don't run any more – and lift some weights. On the road, usually, every morning I'm in the gym by nine. “In LA I have a trainer three times a week,” he continues, “and I go in the gym two to three times myself. Now all their residences are in the UK (Chelsea in west London) and the US (Los Angeles and Colorado). He and Bach no longer have a home in Monte Carlo, and last year he sold his Surrey estate for £13m. I have a trainer in three countries – well, now two countries,” he clarifies. But this, he insists, is how he always is. He talks fast and friskily, and to emphasise his points he repeatedly dunts me in the thigh with the back of his hand. All of which is serving to engage a thoroughly jovial Ringo this morning. Plus, he's proud of his photography, and receiving the National Portrait Gallery's imprimatur is clearly a thrill.
And how tiring must it be to be asked, again and again and again, about history's greatest pop group? But Photograph provides a logical and sound reason to trip once more through his past. In interviews Ringo can often appear prickly, the legacy of, in his semi-jokey estimation, “a billion” interviews. “So I don't drink a lot of milk because of the molecule size.” As a kid, have a glass of milk, son!” he hoots, suddenly sounding very Liverpudlian. “Because if you ever drink a glass of milk, you are full! Because the molecules are huge for your body to break down. If he wasn't wearing the shades I'd fancy he was tipping me a conspiratorial wink. It's the molecules,” he says with a sagacious nod. And if you look at a baby, and what it gives to the little goats is small. “But I don't eat a lot of dairy because it was pointed out to me a long time ago that if you look at a cow, and the milk is giving to its babies, is huge. I have some dairy, but mainly goat's milk, goat's cheese, rice milk… But every night I'm playing on stage I have a baked potato with olive oil and brewer's yeast. “Well, I'm a vegetarian, so meat is not good and fish is not good.
YOUNG RINGO STARR TRIAL
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