Interview: John Lennon and Ringo Starr in Los Angeles

Q: There’s also this thing about Hayley Mills in the paper, too.

Ringo Starr: Hayley Mills is the worst one. We went to, uh, well you know…

John Lennon: That’s the worst rumour.

Ringo: It’s so silly anyway…

John: That’s so bad on Ringo.

Ringo: Even if we have a photo with, you know, President Johnson, most people would probably say we’re going steady. It just happened that we went to a party for…

John: Anthony Newley.

Ringo: Anthony Newley, and you know at a party in this club where we went and they were there and I just happened to start talking to her and someone clicked a photo. Then after that, you know, I’m married off to her which is silly.

Q: Another thing. There was one thing in Los Angeles, an incident which I heard about, about somebody talking about various parents, families. Do you like when your families are involved in gossip talk?

John: No.

Q: When I say families I don’t mean your immediate family, John, I mean parents and relatives and uncles and aunts.

Ringo: No, I don’t like it

John: That’s our Ringo talking.

Ringo: This is Ringo anyway. I think, you know…

John: The main thing about families is the reporters can come up and sort of con them, or you see our sort of parents and relations and those people don’t know anything about the business which we didn’t at first. So everybody comes up and says ‘Mrs Starkey, Mrs Starkey’ to his mother.

Ringo: Mrs Graves.

John: Mrs Graves or whatever she’s called. Or Mrs Harrison, George’s mum: she doesn’t know what to say like ‘No I don’t feel like talking’; they just talk.

Ringo: They think that ‘if we don’t talk it may be wrong and that if we do talk’, you know, they can’t win.

John: They take complete advantage of that.

Ringo: They take, you know, as John said, advantage of them ’cause they’re just sort of in the middle they don’t know what to do for the best. I’ve informed mine, you know, finish with it, get out, there’s no need for you to talk to reporters about anything, you know.

Q: There’s another thing the fans say. You’ll meet a fan outside of a hotel, and er, very passionately involved with The Beatles and wanting to see The Beatles and they’ll say to you, ‘such poor boys, they’re all cooped up in the hotel.’ Now I know what this problem is and believe me everybody understands, me probably more than anybody else – in fact I’ve reported on it.

John: What do you mean, you’re cooped up?

Q: That’s right. I’m cooped up myself.

John: You’re in on it because you’re frightened to miss anything.

Q: Yeah. That’s the truth. Anyhow, they’re outside and they’re saying – I don’t know whether this is just a cover, what do you think? – I said, ‘why are you down here’ and they say ‘we want to bring gifts because we feel so sorry for them. And also in connection with your wife, you see a lot of fan signs for your wife. Do you think this is just a cover for the admiration, to get close, it’s just an excuse or do you think a lot of people really feel this way?

John: I think that with my wife – I hate saying that word it sounds sort of formal – with Cyn, it starts off sort of ‘well he’s hooked. We’ll sort of like ’em both, we’ll like his wife’ but a lot of ’em are very genuine, yeah, you can see through letters. You know, the letters you get where they’re addressed to Cyn that say ‘I like you’, you know, and this and that – or, I don’t know, they say all sorts of things – are genuine. A lot of them are genuine. Some of them are fake. You can read through them a mile, or sort of ‘Hello Mrs Lennon, may I call you Cyn? Could you get me 95 autographed photographs of the boys?’ Then you know they’re just, you know, just in it…

Ringo: You can tell the genuine fans I think, you know. All these people that sort of write in, saying, like there was a big thing with Maureen Cox and I anyway I’m to take her on holiday, who, you know, is a nice girl, she’s just sort of ordinary, she’s from Liverpool. And the genuine fans wrote in saying, you know, ‘if you are going with her, good luck and I hope you’re happy’ and that, and then you get these, to me they’re just halfwits who start writing these letters saying, you know, ‘you’re a traitor’ and you’re doing all this. But the thing is, you know we’re human beings and we’re allowed to go with girls. If it hadn’t have been Maureen it would have been someone else.

Q: Just like anybody else, you’d be going out and dating.

Ringo: The thing is, the genuine fans know we are ordinary human beings. We go with girls and things like that. It’s just these people who, I don’t know what to call ’em, they’re not really fans they’re just threats.