Is the Current Ringo Starr a fake?

No.

Ignorance and Arrogance: a quasi-repost

[The following was written 3 December 1990 under the title “Three short notes” and belongs to the prehistory of this weblog. The George Bush mentioned is of course the father; I doubt that I’d ever heard of the son at that time.]

Two instances of surprising ignorance in my weekend’s reading: Bruce Michelson in an essay on The Mysterious Stranger mentions that Mark Twain already had the idea for the book before The Innocents Abroad; he goes on to say “In the Alta California letters from which Twain’s first real book developed, there is a sketch for an ‘Apocryphal New Testament,’ in which Jesus returns to earth as a playful boy:”—and the passage that follows is Twain’s description of two incidents (the clay birds and the dyer’s shop) from the Infancy Gospels. It sure looks as if Michelson thought Twain was inventing a plot, instead of repeating a well-known story, and even if Michelson somehow was unfamiliar with the Infancy Gospels, he must have read The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts, and this matter is dealt with in the introduction. (Another oddity is the fact that Michelson speaks of the second manuscript (Young Satan) as if it were the first, and overlooks the first (“Mr. Black” etc.) altogether.)

In Tell Me Why Tim Riley seems to think that George Harrison wrote the words of “The Inner Light” (from the Tao Te Ching), instead of merely setting them to music. “George’s philosophical musings are less condescending than those of ‘Within You Without You,’…” And yet, even if we grant Riley’s ignorance of one of the greatest religious works of all time, he has read I, Me, Mine, and that should have straightened him out. Worse yet, in his description of The Beatles Forever he quote Schaffner as saying, “The lyrics to Harrison’s ‘The Inner Light’ were ‘pinched almost verbatim from a Japanese poem by Roshi, translated by R. H. Bluth’”.

George Bush, it is reported, has appointed Robert Martinez of Florida to the post of drug czar here in the land of the free—another illustration of how phony this “war” on drugs really is. During Martinez’s reign in Florida drug use has increased. What is the secret of his success? He emphasizes punishment over education, jail over treatment. How does Bush justify his choice? He points out that 61 (or some such number) men have been executed in Florida during Martinez’s rule—a revealing admission. It’s blatant now—he doesn’t even bother to hide the fact that the “war on drugs” is a phony war to conceal the real war on the Bill of Rights. One thing’s for sure—whether we have Conservatives or Moderates in office, the government gets more and more power over the citizen.

[Note and Update: The Bruce Michelson essay referred to above was “Deus Ludens: The Shaping of Mark Twain’s ‘Mysterious Stranger’” in NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Autumn, 1980), pp. 44-56.]

I Can't Cope

News in Brief

Sri Lanka—Authorities have taken Chandrasiri Bandara, a popular astrologer, into custody to investigate one of his predictions. Defying the polls the astrologer says that changes in the alignment of the cosmic spheres on 8 October are bad news for the present government, signifying hard times ahead with rising living costs. (Economists have made similar predictions.) The prime minister, he predicted, would become president, and the opposition leader prime minister. The Criminal Investigations Department is looking into the basis for the prediction according to police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekera. It is not clear exactly what they are looking into—do they think he had political motives, or are they merely suspicious of his astrological interpretation? The arrest is condemned by the opposition. (BBC)

Los Angeles—Noted Beatles collector Michael Jackson died Thursday of possibly natural causes. The owner of such coveted Beatles memorabilia as the rights to the bulk of the Lennon-McCartney catalog, Jackson has been the subject of much speculation recently concerning the disposition of these much-coveted sentimental treasures. One theory has it that he's left at least some of his collection to ex-Beatle Paul McCartney. With the imminent re-release of the Beatles catalog in listenable condition for the first time since the advent of the CD, fans are concerned about the fate of these soon-to-be-lost tracks. Jackson's condition is unchanged. (NY Daily News)

Stockholm, Sweden—The Swedish Court of Appeals blandly ruled that Judge Tomas Norstöm, one of three judges who presided over the recent Pirate Bay trial, had no conflict of interest, despite his membership in two advocacy groups on the other side of the issue, the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property and the Swedish Copyright Association. "For a judge to back the principles on which this legislation rests cannot be considered bias," appeals court judge Anders Eka said, apparently with a straight face. Four men involved in the operation of The Pirate Bay, which among other things makes it possible for smaller artists to share their work with others via peer-to-peer networking, were tried and convicted for copyright violations earlier this year, despite the utter worthlessness of the legal claims against them. Backlash against the verdict is considered responsible for electing a member of the Pirate Party to the European Parliament. (ZDNet, BBC)

Fifth Beatle

Neil Aspinall, the fifth Beatle, died recently. We read that Paul McCartney was at his bedside. It seems appropriate and it might even be true, though with the ex-Beatles you never really know. The event prompted one write to ask just how many fifth Beatles there were, anyway. Good question. In a way there was no more a fifth Beatle than there is a fifth gospel, simply because the question is essentially meaningless. Where do you start, exactly?

When the Beatles first came onto the radar in America there were four of them--John, Paul, George, and Ringo, in that order. (At first it was more like Allen Sherman put it, "Ringo is the one with the drums; the others all play with him," but fairly quickly it was John, Paul, George and Ringo.) The little brother of a friend of mine, just learning to talk, quickly learned the litany in the form "John Paul George n Oingr." There was, however, actually a backstory on the Beatles that most of us didn't know, and some of us--me for one--didn't care about.

The original group--The Quarry Men--had been founded by John Lennon (the John of the formula), along with people like Pete Shotton, Colin Hanton, and Eric Griffiths. A buddy named Ivan Vaughn introduced Paul McCartney (the Paul of the list) to John, and Paul eventually brought in a young friend of his named George Harrison (George of the list). Now they weren't the Beatles yet, but at least a sort of argument can be made for the canonical order--John, Paul, and George.

Next, however, came Stu Sutcliffe, an art-school classmate of Lennon's, who couldn't play bass, but had the money to buy one. Sutcliffe is one of the many Fifth Beatles we've heard of, but in point of fact he was more like the fourth, given that there was no regular drummer for the group yet. He was one of the original Beatles, however, in that the group acquired its name during his tenure with the band. The fifth Beatle then would be--all together now--Pete Best.

Pete Best brought with him a fellow named Neil Aspinall--another Fifth Beatle--who drove the band about and made necessary arrangements. He was never a member of the band per se, but he was part of the ensemble, and a very necessary part at that. Along with Mal Evans--a fan who first saw the Beatles perform at the now-legendary Cavern Club--he took care of the Beatles needs long after the band stopped touring. Eventually he became the head of Apple Corps., the Beatles' own record label.

One odd note that crosses my mind--I don't know that I've ever heard Mal Evans called the Fifth Beatle, or the Sixth Beatle, or anything like it, though he was as much a part of the group as anybody else. However--

Next we have their manager, Brian Epstein, who discovered the band while trying to run down a copy of a record they had made backing Tony Sheridan (who although he appeared on their earliest record, has never been a Fifth Beatle as far as I know). Brian Epstein has been described as a Fifth Beatle, which I suppose makes a sort of sense, though he was never really one of the group. He managed them, but he didn't necessarily hang out with them. And then came George Martin, who in a musical sense might be said to be the Fifth Beatle. He produced them, made arrangements for them, played piano (in studio) for them, and in the end even oversaw their musical legacy.

So what about Ringo Starr (the Ringo of the litany)? He's the Fourth Beatle, and yet he only comes in after many of the Fifth Beatles so far enumerated. It's been fashionable to denigrate Ringo Starr as the least talented member of the team--maybe not even the most talented drummer in the Beatles--and yet it's worth remembering that in the early days Ringo was the one everybody remembered. Even the Queen thought he was the Original Beatle (rather than the last to join). I think it was Paul McCartney who observed that it wasn't till Ringo joined the band that things really started to happen for them.

Another candidate for the position of course was disk-jockey Murray the K, who proclaimed himself the Fifth Beatle, but is hard to take seriously. After all, he was far more peripheral in the story than even Alistair Taylor, who to the best of my knowledge no one has ever called the Fifth Beatle.

So what has become of these various Fifth Beatles? Stu Sutcliffe exited first, dying of brain hemorrhage (possibly from a kick to the head) before the Beatles had become truly famous. If he thought he'd be remembered I imagine it would be as an artist, not as a bass-player. Brian Epstein, their manager, died of an accidental drug overdose a few years later. Mal Evans was shot in Los Angeles by the police in 1976 and Murray the K died of cancer in 1982. Pete Best and George Martin are still with us, but now Neil Aspinall has passed on. He joins John Lennon (First Beatle?, murdered 1980) and George Harrison (Third Beatle?, died of cancer 2001) in that Great Dance Hall in the Sky.

Fake History: The Replacement of Ringo Starr

It was forty-five years ago today that Ringo Starr first appeared with the Beatles at the Cavern Club. He was a replacement for Pete Best, one of history’s best-known also-rans, and it is said there were shouts of “Pete Best forever; Ringo never,” as the band played. But in point of fact it was to be Ringo Starr, not Pete Best, who made history as the drummer for the Fab Four.

Now the firing of Pete Best is one of the most controversial events of early Beatles history. This piece isn’t about that as such, however, but about another short-lived Beatles drummer, Andy White. Specifically, how and why did it happen that Andy White, rather than Ringo Starr (or for that matter Pete Best), came to play the drums on two early Beatles tracks.

The official version of events rests on the highest authority—the actual accounts of the two people most directly involved. Ringo Starr and George Martin together tell the story something like this: When the Beatles auditioned for George Martin on 6 June 1962, the A&R man was not particularly happy with Pete Best’s drumming. He took their manager, Brian Epstein, aside, and told him in effect: I don’t care what you do with the group as performers, but Pete Best’s drumming is not up to speed for recording purposes, and I’m going to bring in a session drummer for the actual sessions.

Well, goes the story, this was the last straw for the rest of the band. Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison got together and decided to replace their weakest link with the strongest drummer in the Liverpool band scene—one Richard Starkey, alias Ringo Starr. Their manager was given the unenviable task of firing Pete Best, and it was the new improved group that presented itself for their first EMI recording session in September.

The trouble was that George Martin had already booked session drummer Andy White to sit in for Pete, and he’d never even met Ringo Starr, let alone auditioned him. When Ringo Starr showed up, expecting to play, George Martin wasn’t about to chance it. He gave Best’s replacement a tambourine to bang on, and it was in this manner that their first EMI release, “Love Me Do,” was recorded.

Later on, of course, Ringo Starr showed that he could handle the drumming on his own, and when the time came to re-record “Love Me Do” for the album there was no need to bring in a session drummer. And all was sweetness and light from then on, or whatever.

Now this is the version told on The Beatles Anthology, and in various older reference sources. There was some confusion about the exact date of the Andy White recording session—was it 4 September or 11 September?—and certain other details were puzzling. As Allen Weiner put it in his 1986 book, The Beatles: A Recording History, “No two accounts of this recording session seem to agree, including those of Ringo, George Martin, and EMI.” One of the most obvious discrepancies is that the “Love Me Do” take that appears on the single is the one with Ringo Starr drumming, contrary at least to Starr’s own recollection, while Andy White drums on the album take.

It is probably true that George Martin’s lack of enthusiasm for Pete Best gave the other Beatles the impetus for firing their long-time drummer. As Best tells it (Beatle! The Pete Best Story) he first heard a rumor that he was leaving the Beatles for Lee Curtis and the All-Stars in mid-June, not long after the audition session at EMI. Brian Epstein denied that the Beatles were thinking of replacing him, but under the circumstances it seems likely that the idea was at least in the air at that point. The ball didn’t drop until two months later, in mid-August, when Brian Epstein told Pete Best he’d been fired.

And so it was the new line-up that came to London on 4 September 1962 for their first recording session. But—contrary to the story—there was no session drummer waiting in the wings. The plan, apparently, was to do the recording with the new drummer—or, at any rate, that’s what actually happened. Here’s Mersey Beat’s contemporary account:

It was a long and hard afternoon’s work. Six numbers were considered and eventually two were selected for the actual recording session in the evening. The work was relieved when one of London’s best known photographers, Dezo Hoffman arrived to take numerous photographs—you will see the excellent results in Mersey Beat soon.

EMI’s session records show that the two songs picked were “Love Me Do” and “How Do You Do It”. The recording of the latter—a Mitch Murray song especially selected by George Martin as a potential hit—seems to have gone fairly well. “Love Me Do” was another matter. Again from Mersey Beat:

Everyone was anxious to attain a perfect sound which would reproduce The Beatles’ unique qualities exactly. The backing … was “taken” no less than 15 times—John’s mouth (on harmonica) was numb with playing and the atmosphere was tense.

Another (later) Mersey Beat article gives at least part of the reason for the tense atmosphere:

…George Martin wanted him [Ringo Starr] to do some intricate drumming effects. He was naturally nervous—it was the first time he’d recorded, unlike the rest of the boys—and it took quite a bit of time.

Reverting to the previous article:

When the vocals had been recorded and the session ended (at midnight) everyone was so dazed and tired that it wasn’t really known how good or bad was the result.

The piece goes on to say that Brian Epstein and George Martin listened to the takes the next day and were extremely pleased. Probably the idea was to release a single with Mitch Murray’s “How Do You Do It” as the A-side and Lennon-McCartney’s “Love Me Do” as the B-side. Bassist Johnny Spence (of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates), however, was noncommittal. “Could it be better?” he asked. John Lennon and Paul McCartney, at least, were quite convinced that it could. They were adamantly opposed to putting out “How Do You Do It” rather than one of their own originals, for one thing. And it would appear from events that George Martin was far from satisfied with the recording of “Love Me Do,” especially if it were going out as the A-side.

A new session was booked for the next week, and on 11 September the Beatles again assembled at Abbey Road for a recording session. This time they were going to take another stab at “Love Me Do,” and record another Lennon-McCartney original, “P.S. I Love You.” And this time there would be another drummer present—session drummer Andy White.

Now this is key to understanding events. George Martin did not bring in the session drummer on account of Pete Best’s inadequate drumming, no matter what the authorities say. On 4 September he was perfectly willing to use Ringo Starr as drummer. It was only after that disastrous session that he brought in a replacement. In other words, Andy White never was a replacement for Pete Best. Andy White was specifically brought in to replace Ringo Starr. No wonder Ringo Starr thought “that’s the end. They’re doing a Pete Best on me.” (Hunter Davies, The Beatles, p. 163)

This fact explains a lot of the early confusion, especially about recording dates. It was obviously a lot more palatable to blame the Andy White replacement on Best’s drumming than Starr’s. Best was a nobody, a has-been, while Ringo Starr was—well, Ringo Starr. For the new story to be true, it was necessary to suppress the 4 September recording session. The story only worked if George Martin had never had a chance to appraise Ringo Starr’s drumming. The result was fake history, and fake history at its most devious. Nobody really had a vested interest—except maybe Pete Best—in correcting the story with the facts, and even now that the studio records are widely available, it is still possible for George Martin and Ringo Starr to relate their version of the story without blushing. But there it is.

Nothing is Real

Decades ago now talented songwriter John Lennon was murdered by a born-again Christian missionary. Did we hear in the news about the murderer's religion? About his missionary work in Lebanon? How he once belonged to a group that prayed for the death of John Lennon? Of course not. That would have been politically incorrect. Instead we were given a fairy-story about this guy being a demented fan--something asserted without any evidence--a bizarre twist on the blame-the-victim theme. It seems it was Lennon's own music that drove this guy to take his life.

Okay, right. This is beneath contempt, and posthumously justifies Lennon's crack about them being the simple-minded chroniclers of our times. Still, there is actually an interesting story here, though it has very little to do with Lennon, and much to do with the vagaries of the religion-addled mind. Let's start by going back, back, back....

In the first century (we may suppose, direct evidence being missing) people started writing what were later termed "gospels", short accounts that told of the message, as the writer saw it, of Jesus of Nazareth. The oldest extant gospel appears to be the one entitled Mark. The author liked to harp on certain themes--the notion that Jesus claimed secretly to be the king (which is what the term christ means), for example. One of these notions was that Jesus' closest followers didn't understand this. His followers, according to Mark, failed him on every level. One of them turned him over to the authorities, another one "cut him dead," (as Mary Magdalene puts it in Jesus Christ Superstar), and still others fail to recognize or report on the significance of his tomb being empty. A miserable performance all round.

Now historically this tells us that the author of Mark was acutely aware he was presenting a notion at odds with the teachings of Jesus' closest followers. A new teaching, as it were. For our purposes, however, the key point is that collectively the impression given by the gospel writers is that his key followers just weren't all that bright.

This notion has informed a great deal of scholarship (and faux scholarship) since. On the one hand it fits with the notion that Jesus was a god or an emissary of a god--it's not unreasonable that his merely human followers might not understand him clearly. On the other hand, for those seeking to create a better Jesus--to free him of having said some of the things that are (in that person's mind anyway) clearly unworthy of him--it works too. Who was responsible for screwing his message up? Those idiot followers, of course.

Yes, those idiot followers have a lot to answer for.

Now skipping quickly over some nineteen centuries from the first to the twentieth we come to the next step in the narrative. In the 1960s a fellow named Hugh Schonfield wrote a couple of books that became best-sellers and stirred up a lot of debate. If memory serves they were called The Passover Plot and Those Incredible Christians. As I recall Schonfield argued, on the basis of a painfully naive reading of the gospel texts, that Jesus planned for his own resurrection, but the plot failed. His followers spirited the body away, but the attempt to revive him failed, thanks to a spear in the side from one of the guards. The missing body, along with wishful thinking, inspired the story of the resurrection anyway--or something like that. I haven't reread the books myself for decades, and maybe I've confused it with others of its ilk. The thing is, as Schonfield correctly pointed out, the gospel narratives have been shaped by decades of church history that must be taken into account in examining the events of the time.

What John Lennon got out of this, when he read Schonfield, is that Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. He remarked as much to a journalist.

He also remarked in the course of discussion that Christianity would shrink in the future and ultimately vanish. Indeed, he said, it's already happening--the Beatles are more popular than Jesus now.

Nobody seems to have had a problem with this remark until the Beatles publicly stated their opposition to racial segregation, refusing to tour the Union of South Africa. This was still a hot topic in the south of the US, which was then segregated, and a few southern radio stations seized on this Jesus remark as an excuse to attack the Beatles. The manufactured outrage spread. The DJs organized book and record-burnings in their honor. In the end even the press got hold of the wrong end of the stick and started beating the bushes with it, as Neil Innes put it. The Ku Klux Klan joined the fray with various empty threats. Obscure fundamentalist ministers seeking their fifteen minutes of fame hopped on the bandwagon to issue vapid statements to the press. Then Lennon apologized, after a fashion, and the whole thing blew over.

Except among crazed fundies. What they got out of the whole thing is that John Lennon was an evil person who hated Christianity.

A historical footnote here. Lennon's religious views may be described as complex--or confused, depending on where you stand. A theist, he believed that the universe was eternal and uncreated, and that it was impossible to know anything about the past through archaeology, palaeontology, and the like. Evolution was impossible; things are now as they always have been. People who study the past just dig things out of the ground and make up stories about how life used to be. He had equal contempt for creationists, and as far as I can see, an equal lack of understanding. According to one story, he hired an investigator to check out European monasteries and other cultural backwaters for the spear that pierced Jesus' side, apparently believing it had some sort of mystic powers.

Not an orthodox Christian, exactly, but not outside the pale either. He liked to think of himself as belonging to a tradition of enlightenment shared by Zen Buddhism, Sufism, and Gnostic Christianity.

He was a musician, for god's sake. You wouldn't expect him to be well-informed on these sorts of subjects. You'd ask him maybe about say Aeolian cadences or the like--though, come to think of it, he wasn't well-informed there either. But you see what I mean.

But the fundies could hardly be expected to understand these fine distinctions. For them, or a small subset of them, actually, John Lennon was Evil Incarnate, maybe even the Antichrist. His songs, seen through the lens of hate, seemed to support this. "Christ you know it ain't easy | you know how hard it can be | the way things are going | they're gonna crucify me." "God is a concept by which we measure our pain ... I don't believe..." "Imagine there's no heaven ... no hell below us ... and no religion too." Some of them prayed for the death of John Lennon.

It was one of these guys who decided to do more than pray. He decided to carry out god's will. He studied his prey carefully, and kept himself psyched up by reading pieces about him that cast him in a negative light. And in December 1980 he struck, silencing the voice that had entertained millions.

So who bears the responsibility of having launched an assassin John Lennon's way? Who was it who made sure that it would be Lennon who was the target, rather than say George Harrison (a non-Christian), or Mick "Sympathy for the Devil" Jagger? Was it the Christian cell that prayed for Lennon's death? Of course not. They were merely exercising their god-given right to believe whatever hateful and addle-pated thing they liked, regardless of consequences. What about those disc jockeys who started it all? Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and all that jazz. No, they can't be held responsible for anything, far from it. What about Hugh Schonfield, or the author of Mark? Let's not get crazy here. No, let's just call the murderer a deranged fan and be done with it.

Except that in my book it is a short step from burning the works to burning the man himself. People who misrepresent what somebody says, who needlessly stir up hate against him--and for ratings, at that--, who organize public burnings, who fan the flames of hysteria--people like this can't morally wash their hands of the results when some nutjob takes them up on their words. But that's just my opinion. I'm sure they never lost any sleep over the matter.

Why Hens Have No Teeth

Keep the mind perfectly still, place the fingers on the home keys, and begin typing. Whatever emerges--that's mindscum. Today's episode of mindscum features the Byzantine Majority Text, or maybe the Beatles' 1964 Australian Tour--it's sort of hard to tell the difference. The vitriol that has been thrown is sort of amazing, when you think about it. How much difference is there, say between the Textus Receptus and Ringo Starr? or between Jimmy Nicol and the Byzantine Majority Text? And if they can all be added together, do we really gain anything? Nicol I can't help but feel sorry for--where do you go from here? asks a reporter. Well, Ringo's going to join them in Brisbane, and then it's off to oblivion for me says Jimmy. And he disappears from the scene, a handsome guy with a drumset and no future. Still, it beats being a Spinal Tap drummer, I suppose.

But the Byzantine Majority Text--there's a losing concept. Let's count the readings, and see how many variants it takes to fill the Albert Hall. Create your own New Testament. Wanted: three thousand Greek calligraphers to write new version of the gospels; must be able to follow copy with ninety-five percent fidelity.... Who comes up with these things? Of course we could fall back on the Textus Receptus, the Mr. Ed of the textual world. Sure we know who created it, and when, and on what basis--but hey, Erasmus got it straight from the horse's mouth, or maybe from the Holy Ghost. Would he lie?

Throw the two into a pit and let them fight it out--two doddering old lamplighters on their last legs, throwing punches into the air and hoping for the best. Pitiful, just pitiful, as Jed Clampett might have observed. Like watching the Old Globe text duke it out with Pope's--is there some point to this? Where is Dr. Gonzo when you need him?

I wonder if Jimmy Nicol and Pete Best ever got together. Them two, Andy White, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr could get together and form an all ex-Beatles drummer band. It would probably have as much validity as the Byzantine Majority Text. At least you could dance to it.