映像◆ジョン・レノン射殺事件2日後の報道特集 1980/12/10 https://youtu.be/brYZPUabTWU
‡1980(昭和55)年12月10日(水)
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┃ THE BEATLES INTERVIEW ┃ ＤＭ's Beatles site
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛by Ｄmitry Ｍurashev
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①｜Doncaster, England｜No.07
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‡1963(昭和38)年12月10日(tue) December 10
At the end of the first year of sweeping Beatlemania in Britain, the Fab Four gave an entertaining and enlightening interview to Dibbs Mather during a stop in Doncaster on December 10th.
Q: "Ringo☆Starr, it's been suggested that boys coming from the particular area that you've come from, if you'd hadn't found an interest in music, might have found it much more difficult to get out and make a go of life. Would you comment on this?"
Ringo: "I think it's true, you know. I mean, when I was sixteen I used to walk along the road with the rest of the lads, and we'd have all our trade coats on. You know, we'd had a few knocks with other rival gangs, sort of thing. But then I got the drums, and the bloke nextdoor played a guitar. and I got a job..."
John: (sings) "'Teddy Booooy!'"
Ringo: (laughs) "...and we started playing together. and another bloke from work made a bass out of an old tea chest... you know them days. This was about '58, mind you. and we played together, and then we started playing on dances and things, you know, and we took an interest in it. Then we stopped going, you know, out to sort of hanging around corners every night."
Q: "Would you say that the enormous difference which your success in this field has had, has greatly influenced you, Ringo, as far as your philosophy of life or what you want to get out of it?"
Ringo: "Oh, yeah."
Q: "George Harrison, how different is your life now as a member of the Beatles to what it was, say, even four years ago?"
George: "Everything's completely changed. We don't have a private life anymore. and we, umm, are public property now. Not that we mind."
Q: "You don't mind being such public property with no private time at all?"
George: "Well, you get accustomed to it, and after a while you just take it for granted and you just do everything automatically... like signing autographs and (laughs) waving at people."
Q: "What about homelife with your own family? Do you ever get any these days?"
George: "Yeah. Occasionally, say once every fortnight, we manage to get home. and, umm, if we're not appearing in our hometown then it's usually OK; they don't expect us to be there, and we... It's, you know, quite quiet."
Q: "Does this change the status for the family much?"
George: "Umm, not really. It makes 'em more popular (laughs) and people sort of after a while spot 'my' parents, anyway. You know, it's the same with the others. They'll say, 'There's George's dad,' whereas before they wouldn't know him from Adam. But, you know, they're just still the same as before."
Q: "What about the wealth that comes with this kind of success? Has that made a great deal of difference to the way you live... and the way your family live?"
George: "No. It hasn't made... not so far anyway... it hasn't made any difference. Except for holidays and things like that. You know, we can just get the money out of the bank and go wherever we want."
Q: "You are one of the reputive deep-thinkers in this group. How do you see it as a peak in your life? What happens to you after this is over?"
George: "Well, umm, I suppose we'll stay doing this sort of stuff for a couple of years. Whether we're... I mean, naturally we wont be able to stay at this level. But, umm, we should have another two years at least, I think."
Q: "What happens to George Harrison then?"
George: "I don't know. I'll know by the time that comes along. Probably I'll have a little business or something like that."
Q: "You don't want to go on in the profession?"
George: "Probably, yeah. I'd like to make records, you know, with other artists. I don't mean perform... I mean as a producer."
Q: "The technical side."
George: "Mmmm. But I don't know. You can't really tell at this stage."
Q: "Paul McCartney, you're one of the 'original' Beatles. Where did the name Beatles originate?"
Paul: "Well Dibbs, uhh, John thought of it first of all. Just as a name; just for a group, you know. We just didn't have any name. Well, oh yeah; we did have a name, but we had about ten of 'em a week, you know... and we didn't like this idea so we had to settle on one particular name. and John came up with the name Beatles one night. and he sort of explained how it was spelled with an 'E-A,' and we said, 'Oh yes, it's a joke.'"
Q: "Since then, it's come to represent a large section of the young population - called the 'Beatle People.' Do you people regard yourself as leaders of this particular group?"
Paul: "No, we're not leaders of any sort of group. The thing is - people always say, 'Well, you started great trends and things,' but in actual fact all that we've done is gone along with the trends. and if, in going along with it, we sort of encourage other people to go along with a couple of our ideas, you know; all very well. But we haven't tried consciously to start anything like a trend, you know."
Q: "Now, you were very much younger when this enormous success started, and you're riding the summit of it now. Do you see it as a peak... a mountain... interfering with the flow of your life?"
Paul: "I don't really know what you mean by 'very much younger.' It was only a year ago."
Q: "But you've been working since '58, haven't you?"
Paul: "Well, yeah... not working, you know. I mean, strictly speaking we've been out of work since '58 and we've been doing this as a hobby. 'Cuz we've only been doing it as semi-pros. I left school and went right into it. and we were only sort of picking up a few quid a week, you know. It really wasn't work. I think the main thing is now that, as we've got ourselves a bit of security... we don't really have to worry, at the moment anyway, what we're gonna do after it. So we don't."
Q: "None of you are really concerned with going on in this field as a profession?"
Paul: "Yeah, of course we are. I think all of us really, if it suddenly flopped, then we would do something in this profession. But what we mean by Ringo and George's answers, that we don't really want to do... like the conventional answer is, 'I'd like to do ballads and films and straight-acting,' which is so corny. Because half the people who say that can't act or ballad or film. So, umm, we probably wouldn't want to do that unless we thought we could do it. We're having a bash at a film next year, and if we find that any of us can act, say, one out of us may become actors. But we haven't got any great hopes of being actors at the moment."
Q: "It's said, John Lennon, that you have the most 'Goon-type' humor of the four Beatles."
John: "Who said that?"
Q: "I think I read it in one of the newspapers."
John: "You know what the newspapers are like."
Q: "I don't know. What are they like?"
John: "Wrong."
Q: (laughs) "This is going wrong... I want to get a nice 'Personality' bit."
John: "I haven't got a nice personality."
Q: (laughs) "Is this evidence of Goon-type humor?"
John: "No, I don't think I really have Goon-type humor. That's just an expression people use."
Q: "What has the success you've enjoyed with the Beatles meant to you personally?"
John: "More money than I had before. That's the good bit."
Q: "Is it going to make any difference to your life the way you live it after, say, this calms down... the enormous excitement you're generating at the moment?"
John: "I don't know, you know. Really."
Q: "Do you think your career as a comic might open up to you?"
John: "No. (laughs) I don't stand a chance being a comic."
Q: "Why not?"
John: "I'm not funny enough."
Q: "Umm, you were interested in poetry in school."
John: "Who said?"
Q: "It's printed in a book compiled by the Beatles and entitled, 'The Beatles.'"
John: (laughs) "I haven't read that book. We don't normally write those things."
Q: "Written any good comic poems lately?"
John: "Yes."
(interviewer hands John a piece of paper containing one of Lennon's poems. The other Beatles giggle)
Q: (laughs) "I just happened to have it here by sheerest coincidence."
John: "'Dressed in my brown...' Oh no, I've lost it. Hold on. I can't read it, you see. I've only just written it. (giggles) Well, that's how it starts, actually!"
Q: (laughs)
John: (reads) "Dressed in my teenold brown sweater I easily micked with crown at Neville Club, a seemy hole. Soon all but soon people accoustic me saying such thing as 'where the charge man?'"
John: "I'm turning it over--"
(reads) "All too soon I noticed boys and girls sitting in a hubbeled lump; smoking Hernia and taking Odeon, and getting very high. Some were only 4 foot 3 high, but he had Indian Hump which he grew in his sleep.'
John: "But things like that just help me keep sane."
Q: "Is this business enough to drive you insane?"
John: "No, I'm quite normal really. If you read in the Beatle books... it says I'm quite normal."
Source: Audio recording of the interview
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②｜ Ringo☆Starr Interview for British Television program『Late Night Line-up』｜No.70
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‡1969(昭和44)年12月10日(wed) December 10
Segment One: Conversation in car
Ringo: "We have to turn into businessmen because of what we started, you know. I mean, we started it (Apple) as like a toy - because we weren't businessmen, and we didn't know what it involved, and we'd just started this great empire thinking we could do it whenever we felt like. But it ended up that we couldn't, you know, we had to go in. So what we're really doing now is paying for when we opened it and played about. Because we used to keep everybody on forever, you know, just because they were like a mate or a pal. They never did the jobs what we used to keep them on. You know, it's like another time we were being played on. So now, if they can't do the job then they have to leave, you know, which is fair. If you don't do your work then you've gotta go somewhere else, you know. It's not a playground anymore."
Q: "There's one of the problems of becoming a businessman, which you've said, you had to..."
Ringo: (as he's listening, he comically points to the large 'Magic Christian' movie pin on his hat for the camera.)
Q: (laughs) "Yeah... we got that!"
Ringo: "That's why I'm here, folks."
Q: "...is that you had to, at certain times anyway, be ruthless about hiring and firing and that sort of thing. Do you find that you've had to remove yourself from that so that you have a kind of hatchet man?"
Ringo: "Yes. We're all cowards."
(laughter)
Ringo: "We don't like firing anyone. We have Peter Brown. (laughs) Again, the dreaded Peter Brown. He fires everyone and puts his coat on specially to do it."
(laughter)
Q: (jokingly) "So they know it's coming."
Ringo: "No, no. (jokingly) But he always sacks them while he looks smart!"
Q: "Is your interest in science fiction tied up in any way with what you feel about religion?"
Ringo: "Yes in a way, because I really can't believe that this is the only planet with anything going on. Because there's like - the law of averages - If there's fifty billion planets in the solar system, I don't know how many there are, but that's only in OUR solar system. and then there's like millions of other solar systems. So if you just take the ratio of - in our system of five planets, there's the earth where there's something living for definite, because we're all here. So if you sort of do that, on average, there's gotta be somebody else out there, you know."
"I mean, George has a great scene where - like, Mars where we say there's no one on it. But that's like, there is someone on it, because it's just in another sort of time dimension which we can't see. Also, like earth, you know - There's another race going on as well for which the time is just slightly different. So everything is like sort of, you know, one thing. But the times are like that! (gestures to demonstrate with his hands.) So there could be like a hundred races living on just this planet... which is fantastic. and I really think it could be like that 'cuz we really don't know much about time in respect to it being different from OUR time. (laughs) I don't mean one o'clock, two o'clock."
Q: "No."
Ringo: "I just mean like time spent and the fourth dimension. I mean, we know there's three dimensions, and there's theories about a fourth dimension, but there could be fifty dimensions. and just - we're not bright enough to catch 'em all. In America, there's a guy (in the news) who's building a time spaceship. You just get in it and you press a button, and you open the door. and you're somewhere else but purely in time. and this guy's building it purely on instructions from another planet. You know, and all the weird stories about spaceships landing all the time. UFO (sightings) which they keep trying to squash. I mean - how many sightings there are, all those people can't be wrong, you know. I just wonder why the government is trying to squash that all the while - which is nothing to do with what we were talking about - but I just wonder what the governments are doing."
Q: "Do you believe in this particular time machine, or are you merely saying that this...?"
Ringo: "Yeah I believe it could happen, you know. I really think it's possible."
Q: "and you'd welcome this."
Ringo: "Oh yeah. Yeah, fantastic."
Q: "Are you going to move out of the country, back to..."
Ringo: "Yes, we're moving back to town."
Q: "Basically because you like town, or for the kids?"
Ringo: "Well, we've been in the country now for five years. We've been to Weybridge for four, and then we moved to Elstead. and it was just a drag coming into town everyday in the car, you know. It took and hour and a half, and then an hour and a half to get out again. So I just hated the idea of three hours a day of my life wasted; sitting in a car. and also, it's better for Maureen if we come into town because... at least I go into the office and do, you know, see alot of people. Whereas I think she's getting a bit fed-up with being stuck out in the country. So if we're in town then she can leap about as much as I do, you know."
Q: "Zak is, what, four?"
Ringo: "Yes, he's four now."
Q: "Jason's two."
Ringo: "So we need to get settled by early next year so he can start school, which is a drag 'cuz I don't want him to go. (laughs) You know, because I think the way 'I'm' bringing them up is right. and you can get all that rubbish from teachers, you know, where they - it's like the Army where they make everyone the same, and just shove all those useless facts into his head. and that's the bit I don't like."
Q: "How are you bringing them up?"
Ringo: "Very nicely, thank you." (laughs)
Q: "Yeah, but I mean what's your system, or...?"
Ringo: "Well, I don't know - I'm just bringing them up, you know. I mean, I don't have a system. I just try and tell him what's right, and try and keep him alive. I mean, that's what I find with the first... well, still with Zak, but especially when they're two to three, and that. Just keeping them alive is hard enough because of the things they get into, 'cuz they're experiencing everything. Like, climbing up the walls, you know, trying not to sort of do anything. But you've got to be near enough so you can leap over there if he falls off, you know. Just things like that. All you can do is love them, you know, and answer their questions, which sometimes drive you nuts. All that, 'Why?' 'Well...' you answer. 'Why?' (laughs) and there's always a 'Why' to whatever you say. and the great scene about electricity - I went on for hours, and all he said was 'Why,' and you know, when you don't know about it - 'cuz he was trying to put his fingers in the plug, and I was saying, 'Now, don't do that, 'cuz that's electricity and you'll end up as a puff of blue smoke.'"
Q: (laughs)
Ringo: "and he was saying 'Why?' and I said, 'Electricity comes out of there and it's dangerous,' you know. and we got into 'Where does it come from,' and that. I was saying, 'Well it's like water, you see. Water goes through these machines and it sort of makes it,' because I really don't know how it does it. and he was saying 'Why.' (laughs) It just went on for hours."
(the car they are riding in arrives at it's destination)
Ringo: (to the camera) "OK, we're just getting out the car now. Cut."
Segment Two: Conversation in rowboat
Ringo: (rowing the boat) "I think once we get the voting age to eighteen, they'll have to DO things for younger people. They can't go on forever saying, 'We'll look after the old-age pensions.' You know, it's a nice thing to look after the old-age pensions, but they're not the whole world, you know. There's alot of other people who need looking after."
Q: "Yeah."
Ringo: "and when they fetch the voting age lower, and also members of Parlament are getting younger, and so I think it will work itself out. With the young vote and the younger members of Parlament, then we can get somewhere. You don't have to be like forty-five or fifty before you actually get into the house. and I think, maybe in the next generation, the Prime Minister will not only be black, but he'll be beautiful and twenty-six." (laughs)
Q: "What sort of minor social failures do you see? I mean, for example on the drug scene, do you think that is going to change radically?"
Ringo: "Yes. Everyone will have a right to take them if they want. I don't mean hard drugs because I'm not for them and they're banned. But I think we should all have the right, in our own homes, to smoke pot if we want to. I don't anymore personally. But, you know, I did it and I was annoyed that I had to hide. They keep saying, 'Well if you smoke pot then you're going to go on to heroin or something harder,' which - it doesn't follow, because it's the same chance as if you drink a bottle of beer you're gonna end up in an alley as an alcoholic. I mean, it's just the same, you know; the argument is silly. and so I don't see where they can give me the right to drink me-self to death and not smoke me-self to death, if that were the case. I just hate someone saying, 'Well, you can do that... and you CAN'T do THAT,' when it doesn't harm anybody. I agree when they say, 'You can't kill anybody,' you know, 'cuz I don't like violence and I think that's a good rule. As long as I don't hurt society I think everything should be alright - as long as I don't offend anyone enjoying myself."
(The wind catches Ringo's hat and blows it into the water. They joke as they attempt to retrieve the hat with the rowboat paddles.)
Ringo: "Awww."
Q: "It's in the water. Try and get it." (laughs)
Ringo: "Get a film of that! Ahh! Sink the 'Magic Christian'!"
Q: (laughs)
Ringo: (comically) "Spin 'round. Spin."
(Ringo does finally recover the wet hat. The subject of the conversation turns to Zak and Jason, Ringo and Maureen's two sons.)
Ringo: "When we got the kids, I was frightened at first, you know, when Maureen had the baby and I went in to see her. You know, just after she'd had it - it was all purple and crinkly. and the doctor says, 'Here you are. Here he is.' and they laid it on my arms saying, 'Ok, can you take it?' and I couldn't move because I just thought it would break. and this big nurse comes up and goes..." (demonstrates huge nurse quickly grabbing the tiny baby)
Q: (laughs)
Ringo: "and really, they're incredible, you know. and you can't get into children until you've had some. You really can't, you know. You can be very friendly with them, but when you've got them you really - such scenes you go through, it's incredible. I love it when they won't let me play with 'em 'cuz I have a tantrum! (laughs) It's sensational when we all play together, 'cuz I'm a kid."
Q: "You had alot of illness when you were a child. So much so that you lost out on alot of your education."
Ringo: "Yes."
Q: "Does this now bother you?"
Ringo: "Occasionally. When I talk to people as intellectual as you talk."
Q: (jokingly) "Ahh. But only with people like me."
Ringo: "Only with people like you. No, sometimes it does - where people put words that I really have never heard in my life, and I have to sort of stop and say, 'Excuse me what does that mean?' It's just a bit of a hang-up like that. But it doesn't bother me too much anymore."
Q: "But I mean, you've got time now if you wanted to, to have a little course of self-education if you like."
Ringo: "No."
Q: Do you read alot for instance?"
Ringo: "Yes, I read all the time. See, I always say, 'I'm intellegent but uneducated.' (laughs) You know, that's how I put it. But I don't know the actual spelling of the words. I can read any word you want to give me, and I know what alot of them mean, but I can't spell most of them."
Q: "What do you do when fans come and camp outside of your house?"
Ringo: "It depends on the day, you know. If I'm in a bit of a mood I go out there and say, 'Go on! Get off! Out of here!' and if I'm feeling friendly I sort of, you know, give 'em an autograph. With a very few, we fetch-in. We brought one girl in who was, umm - She'd ran away from home in Switzerland, you know, and we brought her in. She hadn't eaten for two days. and then we just called the police and they sent her home, you know - they took her to the embassy. and just the other week I got followed all the way home. There was two people in a car, and I was in a good mood so I said, 'Alright, come and have a cup of tea,' you know. So it depends what mood you're in."
Q: "But does it really seem to you to be an intrusion, or..."
Ringo: Yes, yes. I really feel that they should leave me alone, you know. Maureen keeps shouting at me, 'cuz she's always nice to them."
Q: "But I would think the problem is bigger really when it comes to your children."
Ringo: "Uhh, yes. We had to cool it a bit one time. Zak was sort of, when there was crowds around, he used to think that everyone had come to see 'him.'
Q: (laughs)
Ringo: "and he'd pose for the photos. So I had to tell him (laughing) it was daddy that was famous and not him!"
Q: "But I mean, do you mind him knowing that you're famous?"
Ringo: "No, he doesn't really know what it is. He gets excited if we're on the television, and that. At first he couldn't understand, like, we were on the telly and I was sitting next to him watching it, you know. and it threw him for a while - you could see him trying to figure out, you know, 'cuz he didn't really understand what television is. But it just threw him, like there was two daddies in one room - and one comin' out of a little box. But now he knows I'm in something, you know; he likes the records. But I don't think he really knows what the Beatles are - just that they play instruments and make records he can put on, and occasionally their on telly."
Q: "Yes, but he's going to know, isn't he. I mean, when he's about..."
Ringo: "Yes, well, that was the drag for sending him to school as well, is that I just don't want him to make all these pals 'cuz someone - it won't really happen while he's five, and that. But when he gets older, you know, and you get all these pals because of what 'I' am, you know; I dont want that. He may get it when he's five with all these crazy mothers pushin' their daughter on him. But you just have to watch it, you know. He'll have to learn like I had to learn. I was put-on for years 'til I sussed it out. You know, everytime you'd go to a club I'd think, 'Wow, it's great having all these friends,' and then you realize that half of them are sitting with you so that, if anyone'd come in, they're all: 'Hello, guess who I'm with!!' You know, it was all that scene. But it took you a while to learn that. You know, then you don't stand there anymore."
(after checking the direction of the rowboat, the conversation turns to his acting career.)
Ringo: "When we finished touring, everyone sort of found something to do - like umm, Paul and George produced (albums for) people. John then got with Yoko, and produced himself and Yoko. and I was sort of at a loose end for a while, and I always enjoyed filming."
Q: "More than the others do you think?"
Ringo: "Yes. and when Brian (Epstein) was alive I said, 'Well, let's make a film with something,' you know, and he had a few scripts then. We decided that 'Candy' was the best one. and 'Candy' was good for me as a trial because it was only two-weeks work and I had a small part, so I didn't have to sort of hold anything up, you know; it (the responsibility for carrying the movie) wasn't on my head. and after 'Candy' I thought it was so easy, then 'Magic Christian' came in - it was also by the same writer, Terry Southern, who I think is a fantastic writer. 'Cuz I think the lines in a film a more important than the camera. You know, what you have to say. and so I decided to do 'The Magic Christian.' (joking about the row boat) This is the slowest trip we've ever been on!" (laughs)
Q: "You said you want to be a film star. I don't believe that; you don't really want to be a film 'star,' do you?"
Ringo: "No, no. I want to be a film 'actor.' I don't want to be like Cary Grant or one of them who, like, really do the same performance in everything, and the story is the only thing that changes."
Q: "Would you be prepared, for the sake of argument, to go to drama school or something?"
Ringo: "No, no. I'm not interested in that part of it, because I think it's much better if you can just, you know - I keep reading about how I've got natural ability." (laughs)
Q: "Your co-star is Peter Sellers..."
Ringo: "Yeah."
Q: "...and he's somebody who really came to film acting from a very different sort of background."
Ringo: "Not really, because he was a drummer as well, in a band. How did he come different? The only difference - he had to work at it. He started with, like, walk-on parts and then he got a bit bigger part, and then he got his own films. The only difference is I, because of the name Ringo as a Beatle, I was allowed to walk right into a good slot, you know. I didn't have to stand-in, or do any of the small jobs."
"I'm getting sick personally of message films. It's about time we got back to Doris Day - Films like that where you can get involved, you know. I can't get involved in films anymore. I want it to be like when I was a kid, where whatever was on - if it was a western, I'd come out the theatre and I'd be shootin' and ridin' and whatever you do. and if it was a buccaneer film I'd sword-fence everyone in the street. and I'd like to get films back to that, you know, because that's what the function was - was to take it out to the real world. James Bond films, you know. Guys come out after seeing James Bond films... (laughs) Some WIVES have a great time, you know, when the guys come out..."
Q: (laughs)
Ringo: "...they strut up to her and say, 'Howdy, honey!'"
Source: Video copy of the original film footage
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①http://www.dmbeatles.com/interviews.php?interview=7
②http://www.dmbeatles.com/interviews.php?interview=70
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