Part of the rebuilding at the back, a semicircular wall, brought in a bill for £10,000, to Ringo’s amazement. Like all the Beatles, for years he never asked for estimates, which of course was just leaving themselves wide open. It’s not that people necessarily tried to take them for a ride. They just made sure they provided their most expensive goods and services.
‘When I walk round,’ said Ringo, standing looking at his vast gardens, ‘I often think, what’s a scruff like me doing with this lot? But it soon passes. You get used to it. You get ready to argue with anyone who is trying to get too much of my money.’
In the summer of 1967 he had a large extension built on the house, containing extra living rooms, guests’ rooms, a work room and one very long room, which is used as a cinema or billiard room. The work was done by a building firm that he half owned. This was about the only investment he has made on his own. Unfortunately, it had to close in mid 1967, thanks to the credit squeeze. ‘We built a lot of very good houses, but nobody had the money to buy them. I didn’t lose money when the firm closed, except that I was left with a dozen new flats and houses, which stood empty for a long time.’
Inside, the main drawing room is perhaps the nicest of all the Beatles’ living rooms, though it’s a shade dark on the garden side, as there is a terrace that obscures some light. It is beautifully furnished. It has a deep brown Wilton carpet which covers the whole room. This cost a fortune. It was made especially for him in one piece, which is why it cost so much. He now shudders to think what he paid for it. He doesn’t want the price repeated. It was about double what normal people pay when they’re buying an entire house.
One room is a bar, all very olde-worlde and very corny, though it has genuine bar bits and pieces. He has a cowboy holster hanging up in it, which Elvis gave him.
There are various golden discs and other awards scattered throughout the house, but not too many. In his main room he has a couple of sparse book shelves. They contain mostly wellthumbed paperbacks, some new but used-looking books on Indian religions and some new but highly unused-looking volumes of history and Dickens. Of all the Beatles, John is the only one with proper book shelves.
Ringo has a couple of rooms devoted to his own toys. They’re very expensive ones, mainly film camera equipment. He has made some excellent and ingenious films, though he is very shy about showing them and doesn’t really think they’re all that good. He has one 20-minute film in colour, which consists mainly of close-ups of Maureen’s eye, with a background of electronic music. In it there is a scene filmed while driving down the M1, with shots through a car window into the headlights of approaching cars. There is another excellent sequence he did by sitting on a garden swing with his camera, then shooting at the house and garden as he swung up and down. He did all the shooting, cutting and editing of the film himself. He used expensive equipment, but even so the results were very interesting. One or two shots in Magical Mystery Tour were done by Ringo, using his own cameras.
He also does a bit of painting, but not much. His wife Maureen spends hours doing very intricate patterns and designs. She’s done one based on the Sergeant Pepper symbol, all in sequins, hundreds and hundreds of them. It took her six weeks, on and off, while she was waiting to have Jason.
Zak, their first son, was born in September 1965, and Jason in August 1967. Ringo doesn’t think they’ll have any more for a bit. He wants to give Maureen a rest.
They have a living-in nanny for the children and a daily woman for cleaning, but like John and Cyn, Ringo and his family live their self-contained life in the middle of the house. There is no outward sign of being attended on. Maureen does all the cooking for Ringo. But unlike the Lennons’, the whole house has a lived-in feeling.
They both tend just to potter around, when Ringo’s not working. Like John, they have pop records and the TV going all the time, even in rooms they’re not in. They watch TV a lot. They have six sets. From the main couch in the drawing room Ringo can change channels without getting up, just by operating a knob on the couch.
Ringo will give a smile, or just nod, when a Beatles song comes on the TV or radio, if there is anyone else with him. John and Paul don’t appear to notice. George doesn’t watch telly or play pop records.
‘I don’t play our songs myself. Maureen puts them on sometimes. She’s a Beatles fan and Frank Sinatra. In the old days we used to celebrate like mad every time we were on the radio.
‘I don’t mind if people attack us. We’re so popular it doesn’t matter now, but the critics can kill some records, when a lot of people might have enjoyed them.
‘When you’re coming up, everyone is all for you. When you’ve made it, they want to knock you if they can. If only 30 people turn up at the airport to see you, people say, that wasn’t much of a crowd, you must be finished. They expect things to be the same as when we were touring. They think, ah the Beatles, there must be a million people round them.’
He is as amused as the others by those who try to see hidden meanings in their records, particularly in America. ‘It’s bound to happen there. They have a hundred fellers doing what ten fellers do here. They’re all looking for something different.’
Like all of them, he is trying to lead a private life for a change. He thinks that as they’ve stopped touring and stopped being public property, people should leave them alone. ‘But people just stare at us everywhere, as if we were a circus. I can understand it when I’m Ringo the Beatle. But when I’m Ritchie the person, I should be freer.
‘I suppose you can’t expect it. They’ve heard so much. They want to see you. Fame, that’s what it is. They don’t realize we’ve stopped playing. They still want to gape.’
He and John were coming back from London one night, being driven by John’s chauffeur in John’s Rolls, when they passed a pub all lit up, with people sitting around in their shirtsleeves drinking. They couldn’t get over it. To them it was like a scene from a fairy tale they’d dimly forgotten about.
‘It looked great. We were past before it had really hit us. We were in suits and felt a bit stiff. We’d been to visit Queenie (Mrs Epstein). It wasn’t long after Brian had died. When we got home, we decided to change and go and have a drink. I took Maureen round to Cyn’s to sit with her while me and John went to the pub. It was just like the old days. We brought them back crisps and Babycham.
‘The pub itself hadn’t changed. It was just like pubs when we used to know them, straight out of Coronation Street. The barman was very pleased when he recognized us. We had a bottle of brown each. We had to sign a few autographs, but it wasn’t too bad.’
He thinks now, having done it once, they should be able to pop in for a quick drink more often. He’s never tried going for a walk on his own, because, of course, he doesn’t go in for walking. None of the Beatles takes any exercise whatsoever, except Paul when taking Martha for a walk.
Playing billiards or his one-armed bandit is about Ringo’s only exercise. ‘There’s the garden. What’s wrong with that? I often walk round the garden.’ He appears to need no exercise to keep fit, and has kept his same weight — between nine stone and nine stone six — for the last six years. Considering the unhealthy life he led touring, and his years of illness as a child, it is surprising. But they are all somehow fit, though rather pale-looking. They’ve had regular medical checkups for each new film and other big contracts, and nothing has been found wrong with them. John put on weight when they stopped touring, but he soon slimmed it off.