In February 1985, Zak rang Ringo at his office, at the mews house in London, asking him when he would be home from work.
‘I said I wasn’t sure, probably about 7.30. He said in that case pop in and see me, I’ve got a surprise for you. I thought it must be some recording deal. When I got home, it turned out that he’d got married that morning…’
Ringo laughed. Wasn’t he at all worried, being the father of a 19-year-old, without a regular job or qualifications, who had just got married to a girl six years older than himself?
‘Not at all. We’ve known the girl, Sarah [Menikides], for some time. We didn’t expect them to get married, not just then, but I was quite glad he’d done it secretly, with no fuss. I couldn’t be more pleased. She’s very nice. They’re like chalk and cheese, but so are me and Barbara, but it works. Barbara’s not musical, doesn’t like staying up late. Basically she’s quiet, yet she’s married a rock drummer. You know how noisy they can be. Sarah’s done the same thing.’
Although it was a secret wedding, with no photographs in the newspapers, Ringo knows that the next stage will be very hard to keep quiet.
‘I was telling them only last night about their “global” baby. When they get round to having one, it’s bound to be global news. I think it will be great. Fabulous. I’m dying to be a grandfather. I’ll spoil the shit out of my grandson. Of course it will be a boy. I’ve already told Zak that. And I want him to be called little Richard, after me. They’re not very keen on Richard.
‘When Zak was born, I really wanted to call him “XL”. I thought names were boring for people. Letters would be much better, but Maureen refused. So we agreed on a short name that couldn’t be abbreviated. It was the old cowboy in me, calling him Zak.
‘Yes I know Jason is two syllables, but we usually call him Jay. He’s an inch taller than me now, so he says, but I deny it. Zak is about my height. I deny that as well. I’m bigger than both of them and always will be.’
It will be interesting to see if any of Ringo’s children make it as pop musicians. Paul has three children, yet to emerge into the public glare, and perhaps one of them will inherit his musical ability, just as he inherited some from his own father. In 1985, it was Julian Lennon, of the second-generation Beatles, who was doing best in the pop world, with a successful album behind him and a song that got into the Top Twenty. His voice does have overtones of John and he can write pleasant tunes.
But as Ringo well knows, it will be the arrival of a third- generation Beatle that will most amuse the world at large. It is hard to imagine, but it will happen soon that a still small voice will be able to say, ‘My Grandad’s a Beatle.’
George started off in great style after the Beatles split, obviously thankful to be on his own at last, in charge of his own destiny, able to concentrate on his new passion, which was Indian music and mysticism. All Things Must Pass in 1970 was highly acclaimed and so was his concert for Bangladesh in 1971. An enormous amount was raised for refugees, some ten million dollars, although not without several law cases. There were further legal problems when it was alleged he had ‘subconsciously plagiarised’ bits from someone else’s song in ‘My Sweet Lord’. This case dragged on for years, in Britain and in the US, and George was eventually fined a large amount. By which time, oh dreadful irony, he had to pay up money to a company run by Allen Klein, of all people, who had bought up the copyright of the original song, the one from which George is supposed to have taken bits.
George had vowed he would never tour again, but he did so in 1974, across the States, which was not a huge success. He was criticized for being too experimental, though people were mainly disappointed because he refused to play many Beatle numbers. It exhausted George, mentally and physically, and in 1974 he came close to having a mental breakdown.
He had started so well in 1969, moving off quickly and freeing himself from the worst of the Apple madnesses, but he was in a fairly depressed and unhappy state by the mid-’70s. His marriage to Pattie was collapsing, which he admits was becoming evident as early as 1972, when he wrote ‘Sad Song’. ‘It is so sad,’ he said. ‘It was at the time I was splitting up with Pattie.’ They were divorced in 1977. They had had no children. Pattie later married George’s friend, the guitarist Eric Clapton.
In 1978, George married Olivia Arrias, a Mexican-Californian, from a Roman Catholic family, who had originally come to work as a secretary in his record company, Dark Horse Records. They had lived together for about four years before they married. (All four Beatles ended up marrying foreign girls, all American-based, three of them divorcées. And three Beatles themselves got divorced and then remarried.)
Their first, and so far only, child, was born on 1 August 1978, a boy named Dhani. He has brown eyes and dark hair, very like his mother. It was George’s first child, born when he was 35, rather old to become a dad for the first time, but then George did always very sensibly take his time.
They live in an enormous Victorian Gothic mansion, Friar Park, at Henley-on-Thames, in Oxfordshire, which he and Pattie moved into in 1969, buying it at a time when it looked as if it might be demolished, since the nuns who were living there could no longer afford its upkeep. This house, in the last ten years, has become a major passion in his life. He has had his own record studio built on to it, plus a temple, but the main energies have been put into the 36-acre garden. He has a staff of ten gardeners, growing and caring for exotic flowers and plants. His two older brothers, Harry and Peter, work for him on the estate, supervising the garden and the house, one living in the gatehouse lodge and one nearby. At the entrance to the house is a wooden signpost that says ‘Private: Keep Out’ in ten different languages. There’s even an American English version which reads ‘Get your ass outa here’.
George’s book I Me Mine (published in 1980 by Genesis Publications, and in 1982 by W. H. Allen) was dedicated to ‘gardeners everywhere’ and in it he says that he now looks upon himself as a gardener. ‘I’m really quite simple. I don’t want to be in the business full-time, because I’m a gardener. I plant flowers and watch them grow. I don’t go out to clubs and partying. I stay at home and watch the river flow.’
The latter is certainly true, as he lives a private life, but he is not a recluse, as some people have described him. A recluse, of the Howard Hughes variety, implies an eccentric, if not someone tinged with madness, which George is certainly not. He is sensible, well balanced, witty, aware of himself, aware of the world, honest and forthright, kind and generous and idealistic. He can also be grumpy, harsh and unfair and harbour resentment. In many ways, holed up in that Gothic folly, he leads a more ‘ordinary’ life than Paul, in that, unlike Paul, he no longer plays the public part of a rock and roll superstar.
He keeps out of the limelight because he knows, only too well, that the lime wants to alight on his old Beatle days, a subject he hates talking about. Even at the time, back in the late 1960s, writing my book, I found it hard to get George to talk about being a Beatle. It was a shame, as he has the best memory of the four and saw things very clearly.
With John, I often felt that his rubbishing of his Beatle days was partly for effect, to be contrary, to be provocative, and also to cover up his own guilt. Given the right interviewer, and the right atmosphere, John could always be talked into going over it all, once again. Paul will very easily talk about the past. But George was always matter-of-fact, quick and dismissive. Fifteen years later, he has many more engrossing topics to concern himself with. No outsider has trapped George, in the last 15 years, into talking properly about his Beatle days, either for or against them. It is only in passing, in brief conversations, or quick asides, that he will mention them.