This wonderful post from @nerktwinpeaks reminded me how much I love Ringo’s flat, 34 Montagu Square in London. It has so many good and awful and hilarious stories.
Ringo took a lease on the flat in 1965, shortly before his marriage to Maureen. Everyone remembers how luxurious it was, with silk wallpaper and a pink sunken bath. The weird thing is that none of that comes across in the photographs. I don’t know if it’s the photography, changing tastes, or shaky memories, but there is this gap between the extravagant rock star pad everyone keeps describing, and the pictures, which look like this:
Baffling. Anyway, Ringo and Maureen didn’t stay long, and I can see why. “The only way they could avoid the constant mob of fans camped outside was to climb over the kitchen sink and out of a small window into the back-yard mews.” (This is the same period when Paul was climbing over the roof to get away from fans in Wimpole Street. I wonder if John and George had their own escape routes?)
Their neighbours, the Swiss Embassy, complained about all the fan graffiti: "Our back wall is now very unsightly and we shall have to redecorate. Our chauffeur, who is French and took part in the first World War, says the language some of these young people use is worse than anything he ever heard in the trenches".
So Ringo and Maureen moved out - but they kept the flat, and the subletting history is amazing.
From March 1966, it became an experimental studio. Paul, Marianne Faithfull, John Dunbar, and Barry Miles had the bright idea of an avant-garde audio magazine, which would share recordings of poetry readings, new music, discussion, and whatever else took their fancy - the first issue, Miles remembered, “was to have a long electronic piece by Paul, a ‘mutter’ poem by Pete Brown [not the same as Brian Epstein’s assistant Peter Brown] and probably a story”. They talked to Ian Sommerville, electronics technician and boyfriend of beat writer William Burroughs, about the equipment they’d need, and planned a state-of-the-art studio at Brian Epstein’s new office building. Then, Miles explains:
“A hold-up over the office building meant that we would first have to move into an old flat of Ringo’s while the building was fitted out, and just use temporary equipment for the first disc. Ringo’s flat was in a basement at 34 Montagu Square, not far from Wimpole Street. It was a good location for the studio: central, easy to get to... Ian naturally regarded it as Paul’s studio, while Paul regarded it as some kind of ‘people’s studio’…”
In the meantime, personal drama was brewing: “Ian had been effectively homeless since breaking up with William Burroughs so he had moved into the flat along with his boyfriend, Alan Watson. This was a good thing,” Miles says cheerfully, “because it meant he was always there, ready to record something.” Burroughs seems to have been much less happy about it, but went on using the studio.
“I saw Paul several times,” Burroughs remembered. “The three of us talked about the possibilities of the tape recorder. He’d just come in and work on his ‘Eleanor Rigby.’ Ian recorded his rehearsals. | saw the song taking shape. Once again, not knowing much about music, I could see that he knew what he was doing. He was very pleasant and very prepossessing. Nice-looking young man, hardworking.”
The magazine never got made, and the studio was abandoned. Ian moved back in with Burroughs, taking the recording equipment with him.
In December 1966, Jimi Hendrix moved in, along with his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham, his manager Chas Chandler, and Chandler’s girlfriend Lotta Null. They loved the flat: Kathy said it was her favourite of all the places she'd lived, while Jimi told a journalist it had “stereo all over the place, and a very kinky bathroom with lots of mirrors.” He wrote The Wind Cries Mary there, after a fight with Kathy.
“We were lucky to get it,” Kathy wrote, “as Paul McCartney had just moved out of the flat before us. The neighbours weren’t too happy about having musicians in the flat. Paul had been using it as a [demo] recording studio and I’m sure it wasn’t very soundproof. The elderly lady who lived upstairs could be rather grumpy.” She also remembers a party which “got a bit out of hand” (the Christmas tree got knocked over, landing on The Rolling Stones’ Bill Wyman).
Jimi, Kathy & co moved out after more complaints from the neighbours (in some versions, after Jimi got high and threw whitewash over that silk wallpaper). Ringo lent the flat to various other friends and relatives, including Cynthia Lennon after her breakup with John.
Then Cynthia and John swapped: Cynthia moved back to Kenwood with Julian, while John and Yoko moved into the flat. The nude photographs for Two Virgins were taken at Montagu Square in August 1968.
This is where the story gets darker and sadder. CONTENT WARNING: pregnancy loss.
In October, police raided the flat for drugs. The stress of the raid may have caused Yoko’s miscarriage, while the drugs charge would have an impact on John’s US immigration status. [EDIT: I should have said, John *believed* the raid contributed to the miscarriage. I’ve also added a content warning to the tags - thanks to @i-am-the-oyster, whose tags reminded me that I hadn’t.]
The owner of the property was so offended by all the publicity that they took Ringo to court, trying to stop him lending the premises to anyone else. They didn’t win, but Ringo had had enough, and sold his lease of the flat.
