Like Ringo, he’s quiet and self-deprecating. He has many of Ringo’s features, particularly the nose. And like Ringo, he hates onions, which is strange, considering they have not spent their lives together.
Ringo’s mother Elsie and his stepfather, Harry Graves, now live in a luxury, Ideal Home Exhibition bungalow in a very select part of Woolton in Liverpool. It cost £8,000. Marie Maguire, Ringo’s childhood girlfriend from the Dingle, helped his parents find it. It’s not far from the part of Woolton, the best part, where the Epsteins used to live. Elsie and Harry are the only Beatle parents still living in Liverpool.
The bungalow is set well back from the road, in almost an acre of land and is surrounded by lush lawns and rose bushes. It’s in the sort of posh suburban neighbourhood where all the houses look as if they’re uninhabited exhibition models, unlike the Dingle, where you can’t get moving for human beings hanging out of windows or congregating on doorsteps.
Inside, it is all lushly furnished, in good taste, G-plan style, all bought by Ringo. There are three gold discs and two silver Discs of Beatle records on the wall, all expensively framed. Over the TV is a wedding picture of Ritchie and Maureen and one of the children.
‘Looking back,’ says Elsie, ‘I think the biggest thrill was going down to the Palladium that first time. Sitting in the audience and listening to all the London people cheering. ‘Course, the two film premieres were nice. And the civic reception in Liverpool. They were all lovely. Everything was.
‘I will say this, he’s never got bigheaded. He’s never changed his life. Maureen’s very quiet, very natural.’
‘I think I preferred their earlier music best,’ says Harry. ‘The rock and roll stuff. But they’ve got to change, haven’t they? You’ve got to in this business. You’ve got to listen to their tunes properly now, more than once.’
Ringo’s parents were the last of the parents to be moved into a new house. ‘I always said I’d never ever move. I liked my neighbours so much down the Dingle. Even when the boys became famous, the neighbours never changed towards us. We never felt out of place. But the fans became too much. I couldn’t stand it in the end. It’s not so bad now, especially here.
‘It’s still very difficult for the boys, though. I’ve seen Ritchie sit in here till it’s dark because he’s scared to go out in the light. Isn’t it terrible? But you can’t have everything, can you?
‘I thought I’d get more privacy up here. I’ve always hated any publicity, reporters coming to see me, people asking me to go places, open things. Up here it really is quiet. Nobody knows our phone number up here.’
All the parents dislike publicity. None of them ever gives interviews. They wouldn’t like to say anything which would annoy their sons in any way. Elsie and Harry most of all. Ringo had to ring up and tell his mother not to say that the sun shone out of his eyes all the time.
While the Harrisons love being nice to fans, Jim McCartney loves all the new good things in life and Mimi loves her dream world of John as a little boy, Elsie and Harry, in some ways, haven’t yet come to terms with it all. It’s almost as if they can’t believe it. They still tend to think twice about doing anything, although they do enjoy themselves.
Harry gave up painting and decorating for Liverpool Corporation in 1965 at the age of 51. ‘I could have gone on another 14 years if I’d wanted to. The corporation were very good. They were almost as proud of the boys as I am. I had to take jokes of course. “You don’t have to queue up for your wages, do you!” That sort of thing.
‘Ritchie was at me for a long time to retire, but I didn’t think I should. Then one day one of his mates saw me up a 40-foot ladder in the snow painting a council house, and he forced me to give up.
‘Time does drag by a bit. I’ve decorated the house. I might do it again now, or get somebody to do it, now we can afford it. I’ve had to get used to a new sort of life. But I think I’m settling to it now. I’ve always got the garden. Or little inside jobs.’
In the evenings, they watch the TV, play bingo or go to dinner dances. Dinner dances are new things for them and they go a lot. They’ve made friends with several business people in the area who take them to their works dances. It usually comes out who they are and they have to sign autographs. Harry quite likes it, but Elsie doesn’t.
‘When I was down at Romford recently, seeing my relations,’ says Harry, ‘I went to a school do with my nephew. They had a sort of concert. It came out who I was, you know how it is, and I ended up signing about 300 autographs. I never saw the concert yet.’
Harry has always done a bit of singing, in pubs, usually imitating Billy Daniels. Since the Beatles, he always puts in a few of their numbers.
‘It rained for three days the other week and we just sat here, looking out at the rain. Just to give myself something to do, I thought I’d write a few songs. Do you want to see them? Here’s one, “They sit all day, thinking alone, Waiting for a ring on the telephone.” I’ve done about five songs now. I sent them to Ritchie, hoping he might put some music to them. It’s all they need, just a bit of nice music to go with them. But he sent them back. He says he can only play one instrument, so he couldn’t do any music. Well, it’s something to do, isn’t it?
‘It’s funny, after all these years, not wanting for money. After all the years of pushing along. We still go second class on trains. You get just as good a seat.
‘We do miss our old friends, but we often go and see them. Sometimes I go round the corporation sites, if I’m passing. I look up at the lads and they all shout down at me. I shout back, “That’s how it goes, lads. Keep the brush going.”’
‘It’s all out of this world, isn’t it?’ says Elsie. ‘There’s not much more they can do. They’ve done everything. The last five years has been like a fairy story. But I still worry about him, about his health, after all he went through. I know he’s a man, with little children of his own. But I still worry.’
29 the beatles’ empire
After the death of Brian Epstein, there was some reorganization done to NEMS Enterprises. Until then they had still been an expanding business, as managers, agents and theatre owners. It had then to be decided whether to go on, or whether to stop short and consolidate what they had. With the death of Brian, even though he hadn’t done as much personally in the last year, the figurehead of the firm had gone. He’d been the main talent spotter. He’d created everything in the first place.
His mother, Mrs Queenie Epstein, inherited the bulk of his fortune while his younger brother, Clive, took over as chairman. He’d always had shares in NEMS Enterprises, from those very early Liverpool days. Of 10,000 one-pound shares in NEMS Enterprises, Brian had owned 7,000, Clive 2,000 and the Beatles 250 each.
But Clive had continued in the television business, doing little on the show-business side of NEMS. He has Brian’s good looks, and many of his mannerisms — his habit of looking slightly away while talking to you — but he is strikingly fair-haired while Brian was dark-haired.
Unlike Brian, he has always led a much quieter and less exhausting life, professionally and privately. He likes to spend as much time as possible with his wife and two children.
Robert Stigwood left the firm soon after Clive took over, which in one way solved the problem of whether to expand as a management. Stigwood had been brought in to do just this, to use his flair to find new groups and promote them. He left, taking the groups he’d brought with him.
NEMS Enterprises is now, basically, a management and agency organization, whose managing director is Vic Lewis. Geoffrey Ellis, Brian’s old friend, is still there as a director. A lot of the Beatles’ interest and money now go into Apple rather than NEMS. Apple is the company they themselves have set up, which they alone control. It was being started, mainly thanks to Paul, before Brian died, but only began to be properly organized in 1968.