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Thoughts, reflections and opinions on The Beatles
‘We’ve been together now for 40 years’ – Ringo and Barbara
Back when I was growing up in the early 1980s, my Dad would often muse (as fathers do) on the mysteries of the day. How the England football manager remained in his job, for example, what Boy George was all about, or whether William Shatner wore a wig. And one thing which really perplexed him was how Ringo Starr – the short, big-nosed, least good-looking member of The Beatles – had bagged himself a Bond girl. And not just any Bond girl, either. Barbara Bach was a grade A beauty who had matched Roger Moore’s 007 step for step as a rival KGB agent in The Spy Who Loved Me (at least until the final reel, when she had inevitably ended up in a bikini waiting for Bond to rescue her). How had Ringo managed that, my Dad (and I) wondered, clearly not considering anything beyond physical attraction and simultaneously failing to acknowledge Ringo’s charm, charisma and quirky sex appeal. I daresay we were not alone in pondering their match-up, though, and yet last month Ringo and Barbara celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary, cementing their relationship as the most enduring of all Beatle marriages. And they seem to be as solid as ever.
Their paths first crossed, in a very indirect fashion, in 1965, when 17-year-old Barbara attended The Beatles’ famous Shea Stadium gig in New York with her younger sister Marjorie. Barbara later said she was acting as a chaperone, and was more into Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones at the time. Strange to think, though, that she would have seen her future husband perform ‘Act Naturally’ at such an epochal event, though it’s unlikely she would have heard him above all the screaming. She was just embarking on a successful modelling career, which later morphed into acting, and wouldn’t encounter Ringo again for many more years.
The pairing didn’t have the most auspicious beginning. They met on the set of the goofy film comedy Caveman, in 1980, a fun but schlocky prehistoric caper which it is hard to believe anyone ever thought was a commercial proposition. This was when Ringo was still dabbling in acting, but it proved to be the latest in a long line of cinematic flops for him, and probably also put paid to whatever movie momentum Barbara had (after Bond, she’d also starred in World War II thriller Force 10 From Navarone opposite Harrison Ford). More importantly, however, it brought them together, and they were apparently smitten from very early on; by the end of filming, Ringo had left his long-time girlfriend Nancy Andrews and Barbara also ended her relationship of the time (her first marriage had ended in divorce in 1975). Their blossoming romance was strengthened when the pair survived a serious high-speed car crash on the roads of Surrey in May 1980 (Ringo later had his wrecked Mercedes crushed into a cube and used it as a table – class). Within weeks, they had announced their engagement and in April the following year were married at Marylebone Town Hall in London (which seems to be a good start point for Beatle marriages, with Paul tying the knot with both Linda and Nancy there). The McCartneys, along with George and Olivia, were among the guests, and the “reunion” – especially coming so soon after John’s death – inevitably triggered Beatlemania-like crowd scenes, a media scrum and headlines around the world.
In the early days of the relationship, echoing John-and-Yoko and Paul-and-Linda, Barbara was by Ringo’s side as much professionally as personally. She had cameos in his videos for ‘Wrack My Brain’ and ‘Stop and Smell the Roses’ in 1981, plus a prominent role in The Cooler, the short film he made with the McCartneys that same year. And the spree of chat show appearances to promote the Stop and Smell the Roses album during that period invariably featured both of them, often holding hands and swooning over each other. In acting ventures too, they came as something of a package, appearing together in the 1983 blockbuster mini-series Princess Daisy and Macca’s ill-fated Give My Regards to Broad Street film the following year. The former was a very curious affair, one of the many glossy, star-studded two-parters based on best-selling raunch and romance novels which littered TV schedules of the time (see also Lace and Hollywood Wives). In it, Ringo played a gay fashion designer, with Barbara as his lesbian wife. No, I’ve no idea why, either. I dimly remember it being on in our house at the time, and recall two things: a scene where Ringo and Barbara paint each other’s toenails on a yacht, and my Mum decrying Ringo for slumming it in such a production (I don’t know if my Dad was present, but you can guess what his comment would have been). Either way, that and Broad Street – where they had thinly written parts as a drummer and a journalist who hook up together – did little to advance their thespian careers; in fact, they pretty much put a full stop on both of them.
Barbara pretty much turned her back on acting after that. The problem was that Ringo’s music career had ground to a halt too by this point, leaving the pair with pretty much nothing to do apart from go to parties, appear on the occasional TV show and attend red carpet film premieres. And drink. Lots. Ringo’s boozing had become legendary during the 1970s, but by the mid-1980s had spiralled out of control – unfortunately dragging Barbara into the vortex with him. He later said: “We would sit around for hours and talk about what we were going to do, and of course I’d get so bleeding drunk I couldn’t move…..We used to go on long plane journeys, rent huge villas, stock up the bars, hide and get deranged.” Things reached crisis point in 1988, when he came to after a blackout and realised he had “trashed” not only his house, but Barbara too. The pair duly entered a rehab clinic in Arizona, insisting they shared a room and were treated together. They emerged sober, and have remained that way ever since – in fact Ringo, now a sprightly 80, has become something of a poster boy for healthy living, recently revealing that the only cheese he eats comes from goats, because their milk has “smaller molecules” than that from cows. Who knew?
If anything, the alcoholism and subsequent triumphant recovery seems to have brought the couple even closer. While she’s taken more of a back seat in his professional life (though I think she has a brief cameo in the video for his 1998 single ‘La De Da’), she’s always with him at public events, whether it’s collecting his knighthood at Buckingham Palace, being inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, his annual birthday ‘peace and love’ celebrations or attending a listening party for the latest Beatles deluxe reissue package. They are inseparable, always arm in arm and flashing peace signs in tandem. I always remember when I saw Ringo and the All-Starr Band at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire in 1998, I was near enough to the front to spy Barbara (and Olivia Harrison) in the wings dancing joyously to ‘Photograph’. And she must’ve heard that song a thousand times.
Such unfailing support must be a huge boon to Ringo, and rarely an interview goes by without him making some adoring reference to his wife. In 2016, for example, he gushed: “I think I love Barbara as much today as I did when we met, and I’m beyond blessed that she loves me, and we’re still together.” He’s also put his feelings into song many times, co-writing a host of strong numbers in tribute to Barbara during the second phase of his career, including ‘Mystery of the Night’ (from Y Not, 2010), ‘Not Looking Back’ (Postcards from Paradise, 2015), ‘Show Me The Way’ (Give More Love, 2017) and, best of all, the brilliant ‘Imagine Me There’ from 2003’s Ringo Rama. She was even name-checked in the touching Vertical Man number ‘I’m Yours’ (1998), which captured Ringo at his most dewy-eyed.
Barbara is far from a just a glamorous housewife of Beverly Hills, however. In 1991, she co-founded the Self Help Addiction Recovery Program (SHARP) with George’s ex-wife Pattie Boyd, and also runs the Lotus Foundation with Ringo, a charity which supports a range of good causes including people affected by cancer, domestic violence and drug abuse. And she has slotted seamlessly into the extended Beatles family – lending her support (alongside Yoko and Linda) to Olivia Harrison’s Romanian Angel fundraising campaign for orphans and displaced children in the 1990s, for example.
She always finds time to be there for Ringo, though. Most recently they ventured out during last year’s COVID lockdown (in masks, obviously) to send positive vibes on his 80th birthday from the Peace and Love steel sculpture he had gifted to the city of Los Angeles in 2019. It was a typically daffy Ringo gesture, but Barbara backed him all the way. Judging by his extravagant new hairdo, I wonder if she’s been taking charge of his grooming duties during lockdown, too. Whatever, their relationship is another example of how all The Beatles have tried to walk the walk, and not just talk the talk in their songs, and I raise a glass of fizzy mineral water (perhaps with a slice of goat’s cheese on a stick) in their honour. If my Dad was still around, I’m sure he would be sratching his head in bewilderment but, to lift a Beatles lyric, it’s clearly real love. As Ringo wrote on Twitter to mark their anniversary: “It was 40 years ago today. The love of my life said yes yes yes, and I said it right back. Peace and love.”
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