Paul McCartney sets up an experimental studio in Ringo Starr’s flat

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From Wikipedia:

34 Montagu Square is the address of a London ground floor and basement flat once leased by Beatles member Ringo Starr during the mid-1960s. Its location is 1.3 miles (2.09 km) from the Abbey Road Studios, where The Beatles recorded. Many well-known people have lived at the address, including a British Member of Parliament, Richard-Hanbury Gurney, and the daughter of the Marquess of Sligo, Lady Emily Charlotte Browne. The square was named after Elizabeth Montagu, who was highly regarded by London society in the late 18th century.

Paul McCartney recorded demo songs there, such as “I’m Looking Through You“, and worked on various compositions, including “Eleanor Rigby“. With the help of Ian Sommerville he converted the flat to a studio for Apple Corps’ avant-garde Zapple label, recording William S. Burroughs for spoken-word Zapple albums. Jimi Hendrix and his manager, Chas Chandler, later lived there with their girlfriends. While living there, Hendrix composed “The Wind Cries Mary”. […]

Starr’s lease

Starr leased Flat 1 in 1965, shortly before his marriage to Maureen Cox. It consisted of the ground floor and lower-ground floor (the cellar/basement in the original house), and entrance was gained by walking down the steps leading to the lower-ground floor door, or the front door at ground level. The ground floor had an en-suite bathroom (with a pink bath sunk into the floor) a bedroom and a sitting room. Downstairs was a kitchen, a bathroom and a bedroom/sitting room, which had its original fireplace. A resident of the square, Lord Mancroft, welcomed Starr, saying to a journalist, “We’re a very distinguished square, and I’m sure we’ll welcome such a distinguished gentleman and his lady.”

The Swiss Embassy was, and is, located at the back of the house at 16–18 Montagu Place, but in August 1965, an embassy spokesperson complained that Beatles’ fans were defacing their back wall (in Bryanston Mews), with messages meant for Starr: “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”.

The Starrs lived there until Epstein’s accountant suggested that the group members should move to houses near his, in Esher. On 24 July 1965, Starr bought Sunny Heights for £30,000 ($72,000), on South Road, St George’s Hill, but retained the lease on the flat. He rented the flat to The Fool, who were employed by Apple for various endeavours, such as painting the Apple Boutique in Baker Street, London, and designing psychedelic clothes for all four Beatles, as well as The Hollies, Marianne Faithfull, Procol Harum, Donovan, and Cream.

McCartney and Hendrix

McCartney rented the flat from Starr in 1965, and asked Sommerville to install recording equipment (including two Revox reel-to-reel tape machines); planning to use it as a demo studio, and for recordings of spoken-word albums. The house was not far from the Abbey Road studio where The Beatles recorded, and Jane Asher’s parents’ house at 57 Wimpole Street, London, where McCartney was living at the time. He recorded a demo version of “I’m Looking Through You” at Montagu Square in late March 1965, and worked on the composition of “Eleanor Rigby”. Sommerville moved into the flat, even though it was supposed to only be used as a studio, but defended the move by stating that he had to be “on call at all times”. Sommerville recorded Burroughs there, for Apple’s Zapple label offshoot, but discouraged other people who were interested, believing he was working for McCartney exclusively. During the time Sommerville was recording Burroughs, a friend of McCartney, Barry Miles, visited the apartment:

Ian [Sommerville] was in the strange position of playing host in Ringo’s expensive apartment, fixing everyone drinks, fussing about, cautioning everyone not to lean against the green watermarked silk wallpaper in the sitting room.

McCartney later gave up the flat, and it remained empty until Starr sub-let it to Hendrix with Kathy Etchingham, and Chandler with Lotta Null, in December 1966, for £30 ($63) a month (£265.12—$568.23 today). Hendrix and Echingham lived on the lower-ground floor, and Hendrix composed “The Wind Cries Mary” there, after an argument with Echingham about her cooking skills. For three months, between 1966 and 1967, Hendrix shared the apartment with Gordon Haskell, a bassist who played with the psychedelic band Les Fleur de Lys. When Hendrix was under the effects of LSD, he threw whitewash over the walls, forcing Starr to evict him. Starr also lent the flat to other pop stars and friends over the next few years, when they needed a place to stay in London. Lennon’s mother-in-law, Lillian Powell, stayed at Montagu Square rather than at the Lennons’ home, Kenwood, in Weybridge, when she visited her daughter, Cynthia Lennon. […]

William Burroughs used it – and Paul used the studio to record all the early takes of Eleanor Rigby, but we never got around to actually using it as an avant-garde studio largely because we couldn’t hand out the phone number because it was Ringo’s flat and in the end no one knew about it; even the musicians who we hoped would use it didn’t even know it existed.

Barry Miles – From MOJO November 2022

[William Burroughs’] idea of good music would be Louis Armstrong, Viennese waltzes – because he studied medicine in Vienna before the war – and Moroccan trance music. He liked McCartney though, and they used to smoke a lot of dope together and talk about cut-ups and different ways of encouraging creativity by random interventions. And Burroughs was fascinated to watch him working on Eleanor Rigby. Bill was amazed by how much narrative he got into such a small space.

Barry Miles – From MOJO November 2022

Last updated on August 16, 2023