In exclusive interviews for the new issue of MOJO magazine – on sale in the UK from Tuesday, August 23 – the two surviving Beatles relive the madness of their ’60s tours, but insist that after their famous decision to quit the road after their San Francisco show at Candlestick Park on August 29, 1966, there were further discussions to take their late-’60s music to the stage.
“It wasn’t like we’d placed a wreath on the live Beatles,” Ringo Starr tells MOJO’s Andrew Male. “The rooftop gig [atop Apple headquarters at 3 Savile Row, London, on January 30, 1969] showed that we could still do that stuff. And we could maybe have gone out live again. It didn’t happen. But it was never like, Oh, that’s dead, the Beatles are dead. It was always a possibility that we would do it again. (to Paul) and you, in fact, tried one time to get us to go out again, didn’t you?”
“But you didn’t listen to me!” replies McCartney in mock outrage.
“I listened,” rejoinders Ringo. “It was the others!”
The pair, interviewed in anticipation of the release of Ron Howard’s Beatles tour doc Eight Days A Week, talk us through the highs and lows of the Beatles’ gigging career as part of a 20-page Beatles Live! Special.
