Interview with Maureen Cox , 1988 (Ringos ex wife)

Interview with Maureen Cox, 1988

Interview with Maureen Cox from Le Chroniqueur, a French magazine, in July of 1988. The interviewer is a French reporter named Maurice Devereux. I have included the original French text after the English translation.

Q: So let’s start at the beginning. How did you first meet Richy?

A: Well… (pauses) I first met him at the Cavern. I was dating Johnny Guitar at the time in the Hurricanes (You know) and Richy was just the drummer at the time. I don’t remember when he first asked me out on a date, but he did just after he left the Hurricanes and joined the Beatles. I was excited! Here I was a silly sixteen-year-old hairdresser dating the most popular drummer in Liverpool. Our first date was a little silly. (chuckles) We just walked around the block for a while, gossiping and talking because he had to go back in the Cavern and play again. After a couple of months, I began to realize that I was infatuated with him.

Q: You and Richy went to Greece with Paul [McCartney] and Jane [Asher] in 1963, right?

A: Yes we did.

Paul, Jane, Maureen and Ringo

Q: How was that trip?

A: It was excellent. I think it was my first trip out of the country and I was so thrilled when Richy asked me to go. I was quite nervous because I was going with Paul and his girlfriend, but once we were there I relaxed. Paul is such a nice, genuine person and I quite enjoyed him. I got to know Jane as well during that trip. While Paul and Richy were off horsing around, Jane and I chatted quite a bit. She’s such an intelligent person and I thought them quite an odd couple at first. Paul is such an assertive fellow (you know) he knows what he wants and Jane is that way too. I often wondered to meself how they ever stayed together as long as they did (you know). Richy isn’t assertive at all. He’s pretty laid-back and gentle - some people could call him a pushover. He has this inferiority complex about ‘im. I don’t know how to describe it. He just wants me to constantly reassure ‘im that I love him because he gets afraid. We would be lying in bed and he would hold me close to him and say, “Do you really love me?” I would have to constantly reassure him that I did love him, that I did care for him; and I think he was really pleased to hear me say that to ‘im. He was so afraid that I might not love him.

The newlyweds

Q: You attended a couple of studio sessions with him? He said that sometimes he would take you with him.

A: Yeah, I went to a couple of them with him. It was only because he asked me - not because I wanted to. I was so used to him coming home from the studio and me sitting up till the crack of dawn waiting for ’im. Going to his work would seem out of the ordinary (y’know), so I told him that if he wanted me to go, I would.

Q: What was it like to sit in the studio with John, Paul and George?

A: It was like watching a couple of actors rehearsing a scene in a movie (laughs). I would sit there with a cup of coffee in my hand and watch them for a while or maybe gossip with Linda [McCartney] or Mal [Evans]. When I did watch them, I always thought to meself, so this is what he’s been doing for the last six years! (laughs) I sometimes felt like a fly on the wall, but I knew that I had to be the luckiest fly in the world. Pattie [Harrison] would sometimes be there, but she would always leave early.

Linda and Maureen, watching Ringo at work.

Q: Yoko Ono was there too.

A: I always thought her strange. I mean she would always interrupt the lads when they were working or do strange things without any reason whatsoever. I was there when John brought the bed, and said something about wanting Yoko to be there. I asked Richy about this and he just shook his head in disbelief. I often wondered how they all put up with her. Even Richy would come home and tell me all these strange stories about her. He once told me about her moaning into John’s microphone while they were recording a song and how the two of them would make-out during takes. I always avoided her in the studio for those reasons. She was just too strange for me.

In bed in Abbey Road studios: Pattie Harrison, Mal Evans, Linda McCartney and Yoko Ono

Q: Were you there when Richy walked out?

A: No, but I was surprised when he came home so soon. He told me to pack my bags without giving me much of an explanation; but I could see a look of distress in his eyes. It was just painful. I fought with him for a while, I really did and I told him that it was foolish to go away so soon, but I could tell he didn’t really care at that point. I do remember him muttering something about Paul under his breath- something really dirty which made me believe that Paul and Richy had a row.

Q: Can you recall what Richy said?

A: They were all curse words. I don’t really want to repeat

Q: (interrupts) Just do the best you can.

A: (laughs and puts her hands to her face) Ohhh.. it’s easy for you to say.

Q: (Whistles) Wow! Were they that bad?

A: Well pretty much. I will never forget what he muttered as he folded his socks and put them in the suitcase. He said:”Paul is a freaking moron.”

Q: You used freaking instead of the “F” word?

A: (laughs) Yes I did. He put so much stress on that word that it shocked me to hear him say it because he usually isn’t like that.

Arriving in Sardinia, 1968.

Q: Did you know why he left? Did he tell you?

A: From what I heard him tell Peter [Sellers] on the yacht, Paul wanted a certain drum pattern on a song and Richy was just fed up with his coaching him too much. He usually did something totally opposite of what Paul specifically told him to do, and Paul would get upset.

Q: What would you say is his greatest weakness?

A: His inferiority complex, his low self-esteem. I think, in a way,that was why he turned to drinkin’ so heavily. I think he used it as a cloth to hide his weakness. He would drink to get plastered to hide from it, but he knew that eventually he couldn’t. I remember he even tried to commit suicide once.

Q: Really?

A: Well, I shouldn’t say he did it intentionally because it took place when he was drunk (or at least I think so). He tried to cut his throat with his razor in the bathroom. He really frightened me at first, but I knew he wasn’t conscious of it. It was something that he wouldn’t have done if he was conscious and I knew this.

Q: Let’s turn to the positive. What was his greatest strength?

A: Ohhh… I would say it’s his personality. Richy is such a cheerful, peaceful man that it’s wonderful to talk with him. He has a wonderful sense of humor and can be very charming at time. My mother loved him when she first met him because he charmed the socks off of her. (Laughs) He was excellent with children - mostly because he’s usually gentle and playful. I used to comment to him that he still acted like a child, but he laughed it off.

Q: Was he passionate?

A: Oh yes, he could be very passionate when he wanted to be. Especially during meetings (According to the translator, in the article, it was ”sex” not meetings). He could be extremely passionate then.

Q: I noticed you haven’t mentioned John yet? What about him?

A: John is the funniest person you’d ever want to meet. You could never know when he was being serious. That’s John for you!

George Harrison, Julian Lennon, Maureen Starkey Tigrett and Ringo Starr backstage at the Royal Albert Hall for The Natural Law Party, 1992

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Maureen "Mo" Starkey Tigrett, born Mary Cox, (4 August 1946 – 30 December 1994) was a hairdresser from Liverpool, England, best known as the first wife of the Beatles' drummer, Ringo Starr. They divorced in 1975 after ten years of marriage. She lived with Isaac Tigrett from 1976 and eventually married him in 1989. Maureen died at home of leukaemia on 30 December 1994, after receiving treatment at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. She had three children with Ringo: sons Zak and Jason and daughter Lee, and one daughter with Tigrett, Augusta. Her four children, her mother, her then-husband Isaac Tigrett and her ex-husband Ringo Starr were at her bedside when she died. Paul McCartney's song "Little Willow" on the 1997 Flaming Pie album was for Maureen and dedicated to her children.