Meet The Beatles! (Or at least one of them)

January 31, 2012 - Sometime in early January, SiriusXM satellite radio announced that Ringo Starr would be hosting a Town Hall meeting to be broadcast live on Sirius radio from the Troubadour club in West Los Angeles, California, to promote Ringo’s new album release, “2012.”  Sirius listeners who wished to be part of the audience were told to submit one question per listener to Sirius through their website and that after reviewing the submissions, twenty lucky listeners would be chosen to be on hand live at the Troubadour with Ringo to ask their questions directly to him.

Fourteen months ago, I was fortunate enough to win tickets in the 4^th row to see Paul McCartney and his band perform live at the Apollo Theater with an audience of Sirius listeners, Sirius staffers and dozens of McCartney’s celebrity fans, so I knew that while the odds of winning probably were not great, I could not possibly win without entering.  I spent a few days mulling over potential questions and, realizing that he was promoting a new album, decided to ask Ringo specifically about how he became a songwriter.  I then logged-on and found that the question submission space allowed for 1,000 characters, so the questions could be long; thus, I wrote a series of four or five questions related to songwriting and clicked the “submit” button.

After submitting, I decided to read the rules to see the specific details of the contest.  I was crushed to read a rule stating that only entries with one question would be considered.  I thought I was out of the contest as soon as I submitted my series of songwriting questions; game, set match.

Still, I figured I would log on and listen when the town hall took place. 

On Tuesday, January 24, while eating lunch at work, my cell phone rang and when I failed to recognize the number on the caller ID, figured I would let the call go to voicemail until I remembered that I had just promised a former student who had just applied for an internship that I would serve as a reference for them.  So I answered the phone.  The caller told me that she was from SiriusXM and was calling to congratulate me as my question was chosen for the town hall with Ringo Starr, though Sirius could not supply airfare or hotel accommodations.  She asked if I still wanted to go.  Seriously?  I’d start walking right then and there from my home in New Jersey if that was what it took to get to LA by Monday to meet a Beatle!

The problem was that the event was scheduled for Monday, January 30, from 1pm to 3pm (Pacific time) in Los Angeles.  I had an event to attend at my children’s school in the early afternoon on Sunday, January 29, and a minor surgical procedure scheduled for seven in the morning on Tuesday, January 31; if I was going to go to California, I had about a thirty-six hour window for the round trip.  I promptly looked-up flights on American Airlines and found that I could get out locally from Newark Airport Sunday evening, but would have to return home on the red-eye (the overnight flight) to New York’s Kennedy Airport in Queens in order to make it to my surgery on time.

It would be a crazy whirlwind trip, but after working as much as seventy-five hours a week at my five jobs during the fall, a wild two day cross-country jaunt would not come close to exhausting me.  Besides, I had a few aces in the hole – may Dad worked for American airlines and I would be flying for free and my brother, Jeff, and his wife live in Los Angeles with their newborn son and, after checking Google Maps, I was pleased to discover that Jeff’s home was located about ten minutes from Los Angeles International Airport and about fifteen minutes from the Troubadour.  The entire trip would cost me nothing and by staying with my brother, I'd be the first family member other than grandparents to see the new baby.  Excellent!

Unfortunately, however, my wife, Susan, would not be joining me as my guest.  There simply was no possible way to make arrangements for our own kids to get to and from school those two days.  My oldest daughter, Katie, wanted to go with me – and I would have LOVED for her to come along – but the contest rules limited winners and their guest to adults aged eighteen or over exclusively.  I was sure my brother would be happy to join me.

On Sunday afternoon, my father was gracious enough to drive me to Newark Airport and agreed to pick me up at Kennedy upon my return to drive me straight to surgery so Susan could get the kids off to school.  While I have always been a comfortable flyer, as fate would have it, I had visited the 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan on Monday, January 23.  Thus, terrorism was on the back of my mind as I traveled to the airport and it left me with a sense of unease.  I looked for a sign that my trip would be completed safely and that sign came when I arrived at the TSA screening line:  The Beatles “Penny Lane” was playing on the loudspeaker at the screening line.  It would be a safe Beatles trip with Ringo!

After and uneventful flight, I arrived in LA, was picked-up by my brother and went to sleep.  Or tried.  I was too excited to sleep and spent the night tossing and turning.

On Monday, we went to the Troubadour and arrived at 11am to find a short line had formed.  I checked-in and a video crew was walking the line and interviewing attendees.  They asked if we would agree to speak on camera and I said I’d be happy to do so; just as happy as I was when I was on line at the McCartney show at the Apollo.  The Sirius staffers were stunned; I had won two of their major contests involving the two living Beatles.  We had a good chat on camera before entering the Troubadour.

The Troubadour is an extremely small club with an amazing history.  Many of the biggest artists of the 1970s traced their beginnings to gigging at the club including James Taylor, Carole King, the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne and Elton John, among many others.  There was hardly any memorabilia visible of the club’s past, however.  The room featured a stage, a small open area that was filled with forty folding chairs for the town hall’s attendees, and a bar.  That was basically it.  From the middle of the floor, one could look left and right and see outside if both the front and back doors were open.  There was a balcony, which housed the VIP rooms, but they were not very large, either.  Regardless, it was the perfect venue for this event as every seat in the room was within 15 feet of the foot of the stage.

When the contest winners were e-mailed with contest details, we were told that the entire group would take one group photo with Ringo.  Not to sound like an ingrate, I thought it disappointing that I would have to appear in a photo with 38 complete strangers and Ringo.  While waiting for the event to start, we discussed this with other contest winners and all were in agreement; we figured that there were just twenty of us and if we lined-up for individual photos of the winners and their guests with Ringo, twenty individual photos could probably be taken in less than three minutes.  Heck, it would be just like lining up for character photos at Disney World!

Shortly after discussing this with a few of my fellow contest winners, we were told we would be going upstairs to take individual photos with Ringo.  Wow!!!  I would get to meet Ringo, shake his hand, exchange a comment or two and get a photo as a permanent reminder of this most memorable event.

Meeting Ringo was a blast.  He was a cordial, accommodating host who exchanged some banter with his guests and smiled pleasantly for noted rock photographer, Rob Shanahan, who captured these pictures for forty most grateful fans. 


My brother, Jeff (left), Ringo Starr and I

 

We all shuffled back to our seats and I noticed drummer Gregg Bissonnette standing near the bar.  Bissonnette is a friend of Ringo’s who has been a member of Starr’s All-Starr Band.  He and I also share a common friend.  In the 1980s, Bissonnette was the drummer for David Lee Roth.  For the past sixteen years, I have worked with a man who served as a member of Roth’s security team in the 1980s and knows Bissonette well.  So I approached Bissonette and introduced myself.  He was friendly and told me to pass a “Hello” to our friend the next time that I see him.  Will do, Gregg!

Finally it was showtime and British actor/comedian Russell Brand took the stage to set-up the show, announce the ground rules, tell some bawdy jokes and, finally, start the live broadcast on SiriusXM.  Brand promptly introduced Ringo Starr and an intimate eighty minutes of conversation between the renowned Beatles drummer and fans began. 

The questions were excellent and one audience member noted that on this date, forty-three years prior, the Beatles performed their last live concert, the rooftop concert that became the Let It Be album.  Ringo answered them all and appeared to really enjoy the discussion, though at times, Russell Brand’s inappropriately sexually-charged quips seemed to frustrate Starr.  Midway through the Q and A session, Brand left the stage and was replaced by music producer extraordinaire Don Was, who conducted a more serious and musically-oriented session, even offering his own follow-up questions.

My opportunity to ask my question occurred during Don Was’ segment and Don did a great job of introducing me, pronouncing both my name and hometown properly – no small feat in itself.  I failed to mention that when we were seated in an order that matched our opportunity to ask our question, we were given a card with our question pre-printed on them because some people were, understandably, nervous and couldn’t remember their question.  The SiriusXM card simply gave us another souvenir (to go with the photo and an event pass hanging from a Sirius lanyard around our necks).  I did not need my card as I had wanted to thank Ringo for being an “entertainer for all ages” for years, and that’s exactly what I did.  I began by thanking him and explaining what “entertainer for all ages” meant; that the first song my children ever heard was his voice singing Lennon’s “Good Night” while being rocked to sleep; that as toddlers, my kids were fans of his narration of tales of Thomas the Tank Engine; and that the kids learned to sing along with him on “Yellow Submarine.”

He thanked me and then I asked how he got into songwriting and if the Beatles encouraged him.  He mentioned that the first song he had written, “Don’t Pass Me By” took time to join the Beatles catalog because the others were simply writing brilliant music and that to get one of his songs on an album meant taking something else off.  He also said that he had developed a knack for writing songs that he later discovered were simply re-writes of older hits, so they were never recorded; a remark that drew laughs.  Then he told the story of how he wrote Octopus’s Garden:  He had been on a boat cruise in the Mediterranean when he was eating octopus for the first time.  The boat’s captain told Ringo about how Octopus’s made gardens of stones on the ocean floor and that this conversation provided the inspiration for the song; simple as that.

After another half-dozen or so questions, Ringo introduced his band which featured the aforementioned Gregg Bissonette on drums, Richard Page (leader of 80s band Mr. Mister) on bass, Bruce Sugar (veteran sessionman and Ringo collaborator) and Mark Hart (hired gun for Supertramp and Crowded House) on keyboards and Steve Dudas (another veteran LA sessionman and Ringo collaborator) on guitar.  The group opened with the immensely popular "It Don't Come Easy".  Then Ringo took to his own drum kit and lit into "I Wanna Be Your Man."  Ringo returned to the foot of the stage and introduced his brother-in-law, Joe Walsh, who joined the group for the new version of “Wings” as featured on the new album.  The band went back to the Beatles to close the show with "With a Little Help From My Friends" and “Act Naturally”.  After shaking hands with Ringo at the end of his performance and thanking him once again (he thanked me for coming!), I turned and headed to the exit.

It was a great show to end an outstanding event with one of rock’s best drummers from the music industry’s greatest group.  And to top it off, upon exiting the Troubadour, we were each given a copy of Ringo’s newest release, 2012, on both CD and vinyl. 

As my departing flight was not scheduled to leave for another five hours, Jeff and I took a stroll up Doheny Drive to The Rainbow Bar & Grill, which ran parallel to Santa Monica Boulevard’s Troubador on Sunset Boulevard.  The Rainbow is a legendary hangout for rock musicians and their groupies from the 1970s through today.  John Lennon was a regular during his eighteen month “lost weekend” with Mae Pang and since the 1980s, the bar became noted as one of the leading homes for the LA metal scene.  We had a beer and their famous mozzarella sticks before heading to C & O Trattoria on Venice Beach for an outstanding dinner al fresco.

Then it was off to LAX for a routine flight and four hours of sleep on the red-eye.  Despite a long delay on the ground, I still managed to walk into the surgical center Tuesday morning just ten minutes late, to the shock of the nurses and doctors who were amazed that I had gotten off a plane from the west coast to be cut up.  Fortunately, the surgery went smoothly and the craziest 36 hours of my life concluded safely, successfully and most memorably.  Thanks, again, Ringo!