in march 1969, as john and Yoko were stag-
ing honeymoon bed-ins, Paul and Linda were
celebrating their own newly minted union in
the Greek Isles, and George Harrison and his
wife, Pattie, were getting hauled into court one
day on pot charges, Ringo Starr was out on a fi lm
location, tromping through a muddy fi eld with
comedy-hero-turned-costar-and-friend Peter
Sellers. The two would share top billing in The
Magic Christian, a black comedy in which Ringo
plays a homeless waif adopted by the richest
man in the world. The fi lm would fi zzle despite a
glittering cast that included screen heavyweights
Richard Attenborough, Laurence Harvey and
Christopher Lee, Raquel Welch and Yul Brynner.
But in the swinging London of 1969, a Beatle’s
star power outshone all the rest. And reporters
purportedly there to talk about his movie side
gig wanted only to know what he thought about
the shenanigans the tabloids were reporting
about the other Beatles. Ringo replied that he
sometimes wondered the same thing. “I read the
paper like anyone else and I think, ‘What’s this?
What’s going on?’ ”
The truth was that, consciously or not, Starr
was already fashioning his post-Beatles afterlife.
He had seen the future the summer before when
after a spat with McCartney while recording The
White Album’s “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” he walked
out of the session. According to Philip Norman’s
1996 book Shout! The Beatles in Their Genera-
tion, Starr went home to his wife, Maureen, and
forlornly announced, “I’m not a Beatle anymore.”
But after recharging his batteries and fi nding
I
THROUGH THE DISCORD OF 1969, THE MAN
WHO PROVIDED THE BACKBEAT ALSO
KEPT THE PEACE. BUT HE WAS AS READY AS ANY
OF THEM TO BEGIN HIS POST-BEATLES LIFE
44 THE BEATLES 1969 PEOPLE
