Final drum roll for Ringo Starr’s birthplace

The home of spurned Beatle Pete Best has been preserved – that of the man who replaced him faces demolition

Richard Brooks
July 6

At the height of Beatlemania, Ringo Starr’s role was famously written off by John Lennon. He wasn’t even the best drummer in the band, let alone the world, joked Lennon.

Now Starr faces a further indignity. The house at No 9 Madryn Street, Liverpool, where he was born Richard Starkey, 68 years ago tomorrow, is almost certain to be demolished after a decision by English Heritage not to list it.

Applications had been made to save the house, which is in an area of mid-Victorian buildings singled out as important by the architectural writer Sir Nicholas Pevsner, but it is doomed.

In contrast, Sir Paul McCartney’s childhood home was bought by the National Trust in 1997 after John Birt, then the director-general of the BBC and a Liverpudlian, argued for its purchase. John Lennon’s home, where he lived with his aunt Mimi, was given to the trust by his widow Yoko Ono in 2002 after she had bought it. Both houses are now seen by thousands of visitors a year. George Harrison’s childhood house, which is lived in by a family, is not under threat.

To add insult to injury for Starr, the home of Pete Best, the drummer the Beatles dumped in 1962, was listed by English Heritage in 2006. The conservation body says the building, once a Conservative Club before it was bought by Mona Best, Pete’s mother, is significant because it became the Casbah Club where the group played some of their early performances.

Starr recently referred to his birthplace in a song, Liverpool 8, released to commemorate the city’s year as European Capital of Culture:

Liverpool I left you, said goodbye to Madryn Street
I always followed my heart, and I never missed a beat
Destiny was calling, I just could not stick around
Liverpool I left you, but I never let you down.

The song was panned. The lyrics are hardly as evocative as Lennon and McCartney’s Penny Lane or Strawberry Fields, the former children’s home whose gates have now been preserved.

The city turned against Starr when he made dismissive comments about Liverpool on Jonathan Ross’s BBC1 show in January, saying there was “nothing” he missed about the place. A shrubbery sculpture of the drummer was later beheaded.

Starr lived in Madryn Street for the first four years of his life before he and his mother moved around the corner to Admiral Grove. English Heritage’s main reason for rejecting the listing request, therefore, is that Madryn Street has no real links with the Beatles.

Yet many Liverpudlians, despite Starr’s remarks about the city, want the street preserved. They include the former Liberal Democrat MP, David (now Lord) Alton, who, along with the Merseyside Civic Society, argues that the Victorian houses of the area, known as New Heartlands, should be refurbished rather than demolished, although their real concern is more about keeping a community together than preserving Starr’s house.

“There are those who believe Ringo’s birthplace alone is worth keeping,” said Jerry Goldman, director of the Beatles Story attraction in Liverpool. “He was born there, after all, while John and Paul [were] not born in the homes now owned by the National Trust.”

Goldman suggests an alternative plan: “No 9 could be taken down brick by brick and rebuilt in the new Liverpool Museum. This has a double advantage. It will mean displaying a mid-Victorian terrace house, and it was Ringo’s birthplace.” The Liverpool Museum, now being built, is due to open by 2011.

Starr’s home in Admiral Grove, where he lived from the age of four to 22, is open to the public – albeit in an unofficial way. Margaret Grose, who has lived there for more than 30 years, shows people around without any charge. They usually arrive in one of the taxis that specialise in ferrying fans around Beatles landmarks in the city.

“I get hundreds a year,” said Grose. “I knew him as a young boy. He was nice and polite. What I like to see are the smiles on their faces.”

Yet even she has a criticism: “His name is mud now because of what he said earlier this year about the city.”

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article4276550.ece

The least they could do is move it to another location to preserve the home itself.  That's messed up.  What do they want to do with that land anyways, build a Walmart?

Let's be fair here - why were Lennon and McCartney's houses preserved? Because of all of the songs that were written there! There's no preservation order (that I know of) slapped on John's birthplace. So why should Ringo's be different? There's no real Beatle history in that house, other than the fact that he happened to live there for a couple of years.

And as for Pete Best's place being kept - well, it is the Casbah - a piece of history!

That's my (poorly argued) penny's worth. And I say that as a Liverpudlian, a Beatle fan and an Historian!

Maybe Ringo could redeem himself by paying for it to be moved to the museum and contributing something to the new development to show he really does care about his hometown.

But in fact I think it's a bit like the Cavern fiasco. In twenty years time people will be saying how on earth didn't they save  it as a historic place.

As for the Beatles connection, I think it's important to show that Ringo was the poor kid from the poor part of town. And if you've seen this house it makes Lennon's suburban place look like a palace.

I'm just not sure that the house should be a museum, really. As I said, John and Paul's houses are the places where the early classics were written and demoed, but Ringo's house is just the place where his grandparents lived and Ringo's parents spent most of their unhappy marriage. Certainly he was born there, but nothing that could be described as Beatle Magic occurred under that roof.

And, if you want to put Ringo 'into context', then Liverpool still has plenty of grotty slums to show off! And, indeed, Lennon's earliest years at Newcastle Road and suchlike were hardly spent in grand palaces. Even when he did get to go and live at lovely Menlove Ave, I'm sure that it was George and Ringo who had the happier times at home. George with his beloved parents (his Mum used to go to his gigs!) and Ringo with his beloved Elsie and Harry.

You don't have to be materially rich to be spiritually rich :)

Quoted from NoNameR

And, if you want to put Ringo 'into context', then Liverpool still has plenty of grotty slums to show off! And, indeed, Lennon's earliest years at Newcastle Road and suchlike were hardly spent in grand palaces.

I don't think Ringo's house is a grotty slum. But it is an amazingly small terrace house and would surprise people who've never seen it.

In any case there's still Admiral Grove which is not much bigger and will probably be preserved one day.

The argument about riches versus happiness is quite appropriate which is why the house should be preserved.