Original subtitles

What happens when you go on a journey

into your life, visiting places and people you

hadn't seen for a long time?

I had no idea.

I am Rick.

You must be Rick.

I am, I am, and I know who

you are.

It's wonderful to meet you.

You're a legend in this town.

Well, let's get to it.

Starts with the year 16.

Year 16.

That's a Ringo song.

Year 16.

Thank you very much.

Great.

Wonderful.

And what's the next one?

Next one is short people.

Oh, okay.

Good friend Randy?

Yes.

How are you?

Sweetheart.

Hello.

Hi.

Good.

Come on in here.

Okay.

Welcome, welcome.

Very nice.

I think that Klaus was immediately in Los

Angeles.

He came right in and fit incredibly into

the studio environment, but there was nothing suggesting

like he was a joiner.

It wasn't even thinkable that somebody would go

into music to make money, to be in

a room playing with people.

That was quite a blessing for all of

us.

That's why we came here.

Will you forgive my dog?

I do, I do.

He's Jubal.

He wants to be a biped.

Jubal wants to be in the movies.

He wants to be a biped, but he's

very ashamed about being a quadruped.

Ooh, ooh, the microphone he wants to eat.

Jubal, shh.

It's okay, darling.

It's all part of God's great universe, kid.

Get used to it.

Have you seen Dr. Too Little?

Well, not recently.

Don't pass a dog in it like this.

Cut this out.

Hey, where's the ball?

Here's the ball.

Oh, yes, I have the ball.

Sally, I think Jubal wants to repair to

the outside to go have a conversation with

Mr. Squirrel.

Klaus was the bass player of the time.

He was like the first call.

That's all there is to it.

See, now, I'm telling you, man, this is

called music production 101.

It's the most important thing.

This is the lead sheet, which we intend

to ignore, but we first have to learn

it.

Man, it's been a productive day already.

I feel very honoured to be able to

put Randy Newman's music together.

That's three.

Are you going to see him any time

soon?

Who?

Ringo.

He's going to come to the session.

Excellent.

He doesn't have much time, which I didn't

know, but I understand it, because he's got

his whole family together, and he doesn't see

them very often.

Yeah, of course not.

And he wants to know.

Absolutely.

To celebrate my 70th birthday, we thought it

would be a good idea to make a

record with my friends.

When I arrived at Blue Palm Studios, I

wasn't sure who was going to turn up.

This is Graham.

How are you?

It's great to meet you.

This is fantastic.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you for coming.

And can you put a Band-Aid on

him?

Oh, Mr. Volman.

Hi, guys.

All right, motherfuckers, let's go.

When I got into playing rock and roll,

it was like a must.

I couldn't stop myself.

The stops?

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, sometimes we rock right through it.

It's hard to follow it, though, just with

the piano.

You didn't make a mistake.

You were perfectly right.

That's one thing where Bandai did a funny

thing with the beat.

We worked together a lot because he's a

good friend, and he actually was living with

George Harrison and I.

So we had to keep him busy.

But the other thing people may not know

is that when, in the 70s, when we

were recording together, we had to put Klaus

by the door.

Because if the union came in, he had

to run out.

As we couldn't have him because he wasn't

in the union.

I was hiding, yeah.

So that's why he's still by the door.

I want to hear it.

Two, three, four!

Whenever I hear this song, I think of

the old days in Hamburg with the Beatles.

With this painting, I tried to capture the

atmosphere in the Top Ten Club where the

Beatles were playing.

It's one of those early morning moods.

Suddenly somebody opens the door, and the sunlight

comes in.

We'd always seen his drawings, and we always

liked his style.

I'm not sure how the idea came about,

but it was like, would you see if

you can come up with a cover?

I'm not sure who asked him.

John called me and said, Klaus, do you

have an idea?

He asked me to come to the studio

and listen to the tracks.

I was overwhelmed.

It was so beautiful.

Such fantastic music.

Again, another step in a new direction.

It was really mind-blowing.

At the same time, it was groundbreaking.

That's what I was trying to capture on

this cover.

When I was finished with it, I went

up to EMI.

I put it up somewhere on the shelf.

I was silent in the room.

I was shaking.

I thought they don't like it or something.

It was a really awful moment.

Then Paul came up and said, what's this?

Me in this corner.

There was a photo of Paul sitting on

the toilet.

He said, look at me on the toilet.

Then George Martin came and said, you can't

do the Klaus.

You have to take this off.

Eventually I did this, but I was so

happy because the ice was broken.

They came into details and started talking about

it.

Very exciting to see the drawing.

It was like, wow, what a great cover.

That made me happy, really happy.

Because the Beatles were spending so much time

getting famous and going around the world and

making records and stuff, the people we'd known

all of that time were very special to

us just because we'd known them so long

and they were dear friends.

Klaus was one of those.

We didn't always have that much time together,

but you knew that whenever you did get

some time, it would be good time because

of all the memories and because of the

things we shared.

He's very much our type of person.

I had my life and they had theirs.

But when we were together somewhere, it was

always like the old days.

Hamburg was a lot of change.

When we started going down to the Kaiserkeller

and I met the Beatles, they were little

boys, no money, no nothing.

And I looked up to that band from

that moment on.

When I saw Paul sing, this charisma he

was spreading, the way John was singing, and

George with his little song, and those people

together just was fantastic.

And then later Ringo joined them.

I mean, we had our little crew of

people.

We loved them.

But in those days, nobody really knew and

I couldn't wait for them to be famous.

We had a little trepidation to go there

because it's a dangerous area.

Only rockers were in that area.

And then types like us, they're called X's.

It's a short form for existentialists.

We looked different to everybody.

The club, you had all those people in

their leather jackets and leather boots.

I remember seeing them coming in.

They'd wander in, they'd listen to the music,

and they'd sit down.

And they looked very cool, you know, they

looked quite mysterious.

Long black scarves knitted by Astrid and our

suede jackets.

We looked more like those French avant-garde

people.

I was, of course, fascinated by the Beatles,

but what excited me the most was this

sexual atmosphere in that club.

Oh, ain't she sweet To see her walking

down that street Well, I ask you very

confidently Ain't she sweet On that day, we

were in the Kaiserkeller every night.

The influence that we had on the boys

only showed much later.

I would say when you had the Beatles

for sale, for example, and they had those

scarves and their hair was really so loose,

then they sort of were at the point

we were when we were in Hamburg.

They were sort of the original inspiration for

that.

You know, Jürgen actually was the one who

cut me and John's hair in Paris years

later.

Sex, it was only sex, because they know

that the girls they liked, just like my

girlfriend Alice, they didn't go for those kind

of teddy bears, they called it, you know,

leather jackets and Elvis cut.

They wanted people like me, you know, artistic

types.

When I was playing piano as a child,

I played really good in front of audiences,

and I always enjoyed myself just with myself

playing music.

Then when the decision came up, what am

I going to do?

The whole family sort of decided, because I

was young, it's not the music because it's

a hard job, we decided for me to

learn graphics.

And that split of music and graphic has

been all the time with me.

That was the big room.

That was the big living room with the

two stools.

There was the window in it.

To the left of it was the room

of my father, a library with a lot

of books in it.

And at the top was where my mother

lived, who got up very early and always

set everything on fire at five in the

morning.

We were sort of surrounded by classical music.

It was really great.

I was lying on the carpet, and somebody

was changing the record, and we were really

getting into this music.

My mother was playing the piano, my father

was playing the piano, my mother was drawing,

my father was drawing, so it was natural

that this kind of music sort of was

my thing, too.

When I

came

to Hamburg, I went to the Meisterschule, and

I worked very hard and learned a hell

of a lot.

I started drawing funny figures, people with long

fingers, and developed my style of drawing, and

that made me, bit by bit, finding my

own line concerning the graphics.

And this music love, I mean, I was

listening a lot to Chet Baker and Ray

Charles and Miles Davis, and that was really,

I loved all that.

And then this rock & roll was something

completely different.

Oh, I see.

Let's listen.

I think you can just pull it up.

It should work, shouldn't it?

I think so, yeah.

Before the solo, you just want to hear

it.

One for the money, two for the show,

Three to get ready, now go, can't go,

But don't step on my blue suede shoes

You can do anything, but leave on my

blue suede shoes I can't burn my house,

steal my car, Drink my liquor from an

old fruit jar Do the thing that you

want to do Put up a hundred men

over them shoes I wanted to play those

simple, stupid songs.

Some of the lyrics are nuts, but it

was so earthbound, and it wasn't intellectual, it

was just a feeling.

Most of the songs are just three chords.

That's all it was.

And it didn't have much to do with

music.

It was more a feeling, and it was

a rhythmical feeling.

That was the main thing about it.

That really interested me, and that's what I

wanted to do.

You can knock me down, step in my

face Slander my name all over the place

Do the thing that you want to do

Put up a hundred men over them shoes

Three to get ready, now go, go, go,

But don't you step on my blue suede

shoes laughs Yeah, Jim, great

feel.

I never played what was written down on

the music sheet.

I always played what I felt was right

for the piece of music.

Nobody ever told me what to play, which

I'm very proud of.

At the same time, sometimes I wish music

wouldn't have even been there, and I would

have just been doing drawings, so it's very

difficult.

Did we go too fast?

No, I couldn't slow it down now.

It's like it's all right.

He always watched the guys on stage with

big eyes and a longing.

And often in the top ten later, when

Stuart preferred to sit with me, Klaus played

bass.

Never on stage, he didn't dare, but he

took a chair and sat in front of

the stage and played bass.

That black figure in front, that's me.

Paul is playing the piano.

Pete Best is still playing the drums.

That's Jürgen Vollmer.

And on the sofa, there's Astrid and our

Stuart.

Stuart played with the Beatles because John persuaded

him to.

Because John was the absolute persuasion artist.

But Stuart's heart was always in painting.

He thought it was great to stand on

stage and pose, but that was it.

He never practised, which made Paul very angry,

which I can understand.

But John always said when Paul complained, it

doesn't matter, he looks good.

He really decided to stop playing in the

band.

He wasn't thrown out of the band.

He just said, I don't want to do

it anymore, I want to study art.

So he sold his bass to me.

And I said, well, John, how about me

playing the bass in your band?

And he said, oh, sorry, but Paul already

bought the bass, so he's going to be

the bass player.

When I became friends with Klaus, I always

thought, what can you do to make the

boy look even better?

And Klaus had one flaw, one thing, that

was his protruding ears.

And when he went to Tenerife to help

his father build a house, he promised me

he wouldn't have his hair cut until I

visited him.

And he kept his promise.

And I arrived in Tenerife, and there was

my Klaus, beautiful, with long, dark hair, without

protruding ears.

I bought a letter from Paul, saying, Klaus,

we are just now having a break.

We just finished our LP, and we're doing

this and that, and we're doing a hell

of a lot of stuff.

So, can we come and see you?

And I said, great, yes, please come.

We did little trips.

We went to the mountains, and went to

the beach, and they got sunburned, and all

red noses, and shivering with sunburn.

You know what that's like when you're sunburned.

We had a great time.

It was beautiful.

I like them so much.

I like George in particular.

Such sweet, open, friendly people.

Something I've never known in Germany.

Making fun of themselves, making fun of their

countrymen, making fun of the Germans.

They had a great time.

They just were happy.

I thought, this is the way you should

really live.

And in that particular direction, my life started.

It started changing to that effect that I

said, I have to get away from Germany.

I moved to London first when I wanted

to work there as a commercial artist.

And I talked to George about it, and

he said, why don't you come and stay

with us?

I came by train, actually.

And I had my stuff with me.

I even had my tape recorder, a suitcase,

and a classical guitar.

I loved playing classical guitar at that particular

time.

And the chauffeur picked me up.

It was called Bill Cobbett.

He came in an awesome princess car.

He picked me up at the train station.

And he drove me straight to the studio,

to EMI Studios.

There was a time when it was a

really hot spot.

Outside the gate, you had all those kids.

And when he came closer to the kids,

instead of slowing down, he was speeding up.

And the kids just screaming.

But when they saw the fast car come,

they were kind of bursting apart.

And then I could drive in.

And George came towards me and gave me

a big hug.

That was great.

I always have this sort of embarrassed feeling

when I meet any of them, even today.

I mean, George the least.

But there was always this, they are those

big guys.

And I'm just the little guy, you know.

With them, I always have this looking up

feeling because I really think they're fantastic, fantastic

people.

This is Green Street.

That's where the apartment was where the Beatles

stayed.

As a matter of fact, first, all four

stayed there.

But when I came, it was only George

and Ringo.

I brought this classical guitar with me.

And I learned how to play classical guitar

in Spain.

And George saw me play.

I was sitting down playing Tarraga and Bach

and Rodriguez.

And he couldn't believe it because he would

have loved to be able to play like

that.

But he never learned it.

I don't know why.

And then he asked me, Klaus, why are

you putting the guitar on your left knee?

And I had to explain to him, classical

guitar players put the guitar on their left

leg.

And then I got a job as a

commercial artist for the Smith Warden Agency.

And I was really at the point of

getting up the ladder of doing commercial art.

So I was moving up, you know.

I really noticed, I realised that I'm good

and that I can really do good stuff.

Joe?

Yeah.

They just asked me where the original of

the revolver cover is.

That's a question I get all the time.

It's hanging in my library.

Right on.

Want to borrow it?

I want to look at it, but I

don't want to borrow it.

I want to see it.

I'll bring it in tomorrow.

Yeah, right on.

Did you work on it a little, change

anything?

Oh yes, it's in colour now.

Yeah, he got his crayons.

Yeah, it's in colour now.

That's interesting.

But it's still nice.

I digitised it.

No, it's just like it was.

I've been wondering who this guy is ever

since the revolver cover.

I came across the revolver cover in Los

Angeles, the original artwork.

I still get it out and look at

it and see stuff that I haven't seen.

But besides that, Krauss has a real discography.

You've got to look around for it.

It's amazing the stuff that he's played on.

I just don't want no short people over

and over.

They'll never catch us.

Get into a van.

Yeah.

Ž Ž Ž

Short people got no reason to live Ž

Ž Short people got no reason Ž Ž

Short people got no reason to live Ž

Graphics and music don't have much in common,

sound, you can't draw, that's not possible.

Of course you can do like a revolver

cover, you can get the feeling of the

certain period and you get the image of

the person, of the people that are on

the LP, but you cannot put music into

visuals, I don't believe in that at all.

I was nominated for a Grammy, I couldn't

believe it, that was just incredible, but I

didn't go there to pick it up or

something, but you know I was very proud.

I put myself on there, nasty, and John

saw that immediately and said hey you put

yourself on there you bugger.

That was a thing I did for Gary

Wright, now this is very big, so that

was the actual cover saying extraction, and then

I thought why always have a cover where

you, that's glued and stuff, so I thought

I just had one big piece of paper,

fold it up, making this to one big

portrait on the one side, and on the

other side you have this cover.

Jimi Hendrix, I like it myself, this is

done on scratch board, you have a black

piece of material in front of you and

then you scrape into it, and I enjoy

doing this, I like coming from the dark,

into the light.

Tobo Negro, they're a death punk band, it's

not my music but it doesn't matter.

What my main thing is, I'm a commercial

artist, and if you're a commercial artist you

have to really be able to get into

what the artist or what the particular person

wants, you have to really think what's the

audience out there, who's going to get this,

and yeah, that's what I did.

It's funny, I always remember the sunny part

of it, because it seemed to be sunny

all the time, which most likely wasn't the

case at all, you just feel like it

was sunny all the time.

In the 40s and 50s, everyone wanted to

be a grown-up, where suddenly in the

60s, everyone wanted to be young, the young

wanted to change the world, and they had

a voice suddenly, with the Beatles and the

Stones, this kind of epicentre where they all

came to was London, so suddenly fashion, art,

music, everything, eyes and ears were on London,

and it was very powerful.

You've got the originals, yeah?

Yeah.

Good.

But this one...

No, because I thought they may be lost,

which would be dreadful.

Let me just see, let's look for the

one I like so much.

I love that, it's extraordinary.

Isn't that amazing?

I love it.

And Ossie Clark's dress.

That's Ossie's dress, yeah?

Amazing.

Yeah, and then I continued here, the hair.

But you know, the way the dress is

lit and everything, that was very much how

you wanted it, you were there...

I wanted the light from here and the

wind machine from there, so I could make

those long shadows, otherwise I couldn't have done

those.

Isn't it extraordinary?

Wow.

What magazine was it for?

Vogue.

Oh, it was for Vogue.

Yeah, it was spread in Vogue, I didn't

bring the original actual...

Magazine.

Magazine.

This was in colour, but I don't like

it in colour, it's much better in black

and white.

It's beautiful.

So like this one...

So we photograph my face and then you...

Just the face, and the rest is all

white, and the rest I did.

We think we must have met through Patty

Boyd, who was married to George Harrison at

that time, I think.

And he became...

He was a friend.

I mean, he became a friend, we all

got on really well, and there was a

whole group of us that met and would

go out.

And it was very much the in crowd,

the being going around, seeing people, seeing bands,

going to see Jimi Hendrix, or The Who,

and going around the clubs, and that was

my life in those days.

Then this phone call came from Gibson Camp,

and as he was married to Gibson, they

both really talked me into it.

First, of course, Klaus.

Oh, I can't do that.

And I'm not good enough yet.

And, oh no.

And I think about it again, and I

just said, you just do it now and

that's it.

And play with Gibson.

Well, good.

And that's how it happened that they formed

a band together.

The first few shows he was really like...

Hawke wrote with his rookie to the public.

Self-confidence is something somebody has, or he

hasn't.

The older you get, you get more confidence.

But that's the way I am, I can't

help it.

But it wasn't drugs, and it wasn't sex,

and it wasn't alcohol, it was something else.

He was fantastic, don't worry.

It was a great little funky band.

We had a wonderful time on stage.

It was really good.

Brian Epstein signed our band up.

Oh, well, this is interesting.

And then the band disbanded.

And then suddenly the Hollies, Manfred Mann, John

Mayle, the Moody Blues, they all wanted me

to play bass.

And I thought, oh, come on, what happened?

I didn't know what happened.

Suddenly I had the choice.

So I took Manfred Mann Band and worked

with the Manfred Mann Band, did loads of

hit records.

And there I was.

I always was embarrassed when people came up

to me and said, sign this autograph.

I never enjoyed that part of it.

That wasn't the point.

I just wanted to do things.

Whatever I did or whatever I do now,

I like doing just because I like doing

it.

And if a comment comes like, oh, he

will like that.

That already makes me, well, I don't care

if he likes it.

I want to like it, you know.

I'm doing it for myself, I must admit.

I don't know.

Is that selfish?

I don't know what it is, but that's

how I work.

And I see this devastatingly handsome young man

with this sort of this coat draped over

his shoulder.

I thought, oh, my goodness, this is obviously

the new lead singer.

I can't compete with this.

I've obviously come here to be told that

I haven't got the job.

And they said, oh, this is close.

This is our bass player.

And I thought, oh, thank God for that.

But what was your favourite of the records

that we did?

Can you remember?

I like Mighty Quinn a lot, but still

was nearly never released.

Do you remember that?

We recorded it and then we put it

aside.

It was lying around for like three, six

months before we put it out.

And you had supper with Lou Reisner, who

was the head of Mercury in America.

And he said, have you got any new

product for us?

We need a new single in America.

And I said, well, we've got this.

He said, sounds like a number one.

Well, I definitely wanted to stay in England.

And to do that, I had to get

married, which I did.

Then I could join the union and get

a work permit.

My main job was the music and drawing.

I only did from time to time.

Then I suddenly was doing sessions.

I was doing sessions for John.

That's how it started with John and then

going to Toronto playing.

Then George came, wanted me to do a

play.

And we did All Things Must Pass.

Then John came again.

Then Ringo came.

So that's how it started.

And then Richard Perry came, asked me to

play for Harry Nielsen.

Then it was Carly Simon and on and

on.

Suddenly I was in the music business.

I didn't plan that.

Nobody could have planned that one.

John wanted to put this band together called

the Plastic Owner Band.

So he called me and said, Klaus, you're

going to play bass.

And so I was worried.

And I said, well, tell me a little

more about it.

And so he started rapping on and saying,

yes, we want to play.

And it's all very important for us.

And Eric Clapham already said, yes, we're going

to do it.

And now I'm asking you.

So are you going to do it or

not?

He was getting very uptight.

So I said, OK, I'll do it.

Well, then see you tomorrow at the airport.

What do you mean?

We have to play.

The plane goes tomorrow to Toronto.

And the concert is the day after tomorrow.

We went on the plane.

And on the plane, we started to rehearse

in the last row.

It was really noisy.

The engines were right next to us.

And you know what an electric bass sounds

like when you don't have an amplifier.

You can't hear it.

So we went right from the airport to

the stadium, went into the dressing room, had

a little rehearsal, and then we went up

on stage and played.

I was thinking that John Lennon hasn't played

for years, hasn't been on stage for years.

And then suddenly he goes with no rehearsal

with a band that never played together before.

And that's a concert that was scary.

And I thought, well, he must know what

he's doing.

OK, we're just going to do numbers that

we know, you know, because we've never played

together before.

No soundcheck, no rehearsal, no nothing.

That's the way it sounds too.

Well, it's a one for the money, two

for the show, three to get ready now,

go, get close, don't you step on my

blues, baby.

Well, you can do anything for the hearts

of them blues, baby.

Well, you can knock me down right in

my face, write my name all over the

place.

Do anything that you want to do.

Oh, honey, lay off of them blues, don't

you, my blues with you.

Well, you can do anything for the hearts

of them blues with you.

Oh, honey, lay off of them blues, don't

you, my blues with you.

John was very, very quick in the studio.

He always wanted to get out of the

place as quick as he possibly can.

And he tried to encourage everybody to come

on, let's do it quick and do this.

And with George, it was completely the opposite.

He made the place comfortable.

It was always a great atmosphere wherever he

was, even in the studio.

I started to work for George.

That was All Things Must Pass LP.

I think All Things Must Pass sold more

than any of the Beatles LPs.

At the time, I was living in Hampstead

and I parted with my wife, Christine Hargreaves.

And then George offered me to come to

Why Don't You Stay at Friar Park.

And so I had this cottage.

And for me, that was just so good

because it was hard to part from Christine.

When I was living here and I was

part of his writing those songs, I was

involved with him, his music, his life all

the time.

There's somebody on bass who many people have

heard about, but they've never actually seen him.

Klaus Vorman.

It was very, very personal.

Not that George was not only nosy, but

he wanted to really know how you feel.

And I wanted to know how he felt.

So he was telling me about his life,

how he felt.

And he was asking me questions that really

went down to very personal feelings and very

personal things.

And that's why it's natural that he definitely

is the main person and the one I

love the most.

Klaus was the kind of friend that filled

many roles in George's life.

He could do drawings for him.

He could help him with the garden.

He could give him good ideas.

He could inspire him.

You know, a really interesting friend and a

friend to go along that artistic journey with

him.

Everybody knows George was a very spiritual person.

But at the same time, he had lots

of hang-ups that people don't know about.

And he would not let people know.

I know about those hang-ups and I

know about his fights he had with himself.

And I know that I was a big

help for him.

No, that's perfect.

His illness, it didn't bother him much.

He said, well, Klaus, don't worry about it.

We only live in this shell.

It's not important.

So he was trying to soothe me.

I dream a lot.

I dream about George in all different stages.

Sometimes when he's 17 or sometimes when he's

here at Friar Park or Los Angeles.

So he's with me all the time, yeah.

I was thinking about you all afternoon and

looking forward to this.

I got a little surprise for you.

Come right in, Klaus.

Okay.

Do some of these look familiar?

They should.

You played on almost all of them.

Starting with Harry, Carly, Ringo, of course.

It's been amazing how many memorable records we

worked on together.

It was fun.

It certainly was.

Here we have Nobody Does It Better.

Oh, there you go, Ringo.

You're 16 in photograph.

I first met Klaus Bormann in June of

1971 when I began work on the Nielsen

Schmielsen album.

He called me and said, well, Klaus, we're

doing working with Harry Nielsen and we would

like you to play.

And I was a small pause.

And then because I always do little pauses.

And then he said, well, we pay you

double scale.

That's interesting.

The first time anybody ever said that to

me.

And somehow I wasn't even aware of the

fact that I actually already was a well

-known bass player.

After that first session for the Nielsen Schmielsen

album, we knew that we were on to

something special and we had a great band.

We went on to do the song Without

You, which became number one all over the

world.

The next project I did was Carly Simon,

which became the No Secrets album.

I haven't seen Carly since in the 70s.

I don't know exactly what year.

And it was a long time for me

to wait to see her again.

She invited me to come up to Martha's

Vineyard, which was really great.

I guess we were out of touch in

that way.

On the other hand, there was a binder.

There was something about there's certain people that

you meet and right away, you know that

you know that they know that you know.

Back the way it used to be, everyone

thought I was funny.

Nobody ever asked me if I wanted tiny

little sandwiches set up to my room.

But back the way it was before, I

was always waiting.

Everyone thought I was OK, but now I'm

sent back the way it used to be.

Some people thought I was pretty, but not

many passes were made.

Klaus came in the first day of the

session and I was overwhelmed by his appearance.

He was just strikingly handsome.

And he was very, very modest, almost retiring

in his modesty.

You know, he would keep his eyes down

and then suddenly he would look up and

then they would look down again very, very

soon after.

And then Klaus, I don't know whether he'd

just been sort of noodling on his bass,

but he started playing this.

And I said, son of a gun, in

reaction to his playing, it didn't have anything

to do with the song.

Just he began to play, son of a

gun.

You know, I was so surprised.

Son of a gun.

That's how we're starting the record.

And it led the way for that song

to come to life.

It turned out to be one of the

most famous bass introductions in the history of

pop music.

And look, this is the low road and

this is the high road.

And they both lead to the same place.

It's just a tribute to I'll take the

high road and you'll take the low road.

And I'll be in Scotland before you.

For me and my true love will never

meet again on the bonnie, bonnie banks of

Loch Lomond.

All right, so which one do you want

to take?

Well, I always think you should go the

right way.

Take the high road.

The recording technology was far advanced in London

than it was in America.

The records just sounded better.

The engineers were trained better.

The arrangers even were trained better with more

classical background.

Was a time when people were much more

able to or into sharing.

Into sharing their music and sharing the chord

changes that they had just learned.

Mick Jagger wound up singing the background on

You're So Vain.

Paul and Linda McCartney sang background on a

song called Night Owl, which was written by

James Taylor.

Mick was recording background vocals in the studio

with me.

And he said, God, I'm really nervous to

meet Paul McCartney.

And Paul and Linda were really nervous about

meeting Mick.

You could imagine that they would have, along

with Klaus Vorman and others, have taken up

an instrument and said, hey, what about this

change?

What about this blues song?

Do you know this song of Elvis's?

And there were, it was like a bunch

of kids.

It was not till they grew up that

things became more, you know, there was a

fight to the top.

And Klaus was, I never felt that Klaus

was in competition with anybody.

Klaus was not the leader of a band.

You know, he was very much an artist

who fell into a category of being a

multifaceted artist.

We truly did have a family with all

of us working on that album together.

And Klaus, of course, was a major part

of that family.

He just always exuded a sense of peacefulness

and calm.

I can't ever remember him being flustered.

Used to be.

And it was very emotional for me, because

I haven't been in the music business for

so many years.

And I really said, stop, no more music.

This is it.

And now suddenly people said, why don't you

do this?

Remember a thing and visit all those people.

And I didn't know that this is going

to be so hard on me to be

back into the music business.

And suddenly they were all sitting and playing.

And the people are so nice.

And I realised all those times, those friends

I had, like John died, George has gone.

Those all were friends.

And then suddenly there I was with Carly

and all this came back to me.

It's very emotional, very, very hard.

I was going back and forth all the

time from London to New York, from New

York back to London, from London to L

.A., from L.A. back to London, from

London to L.A. to New Orleans, back

to London.

I thought it was silly.

So I thought, go to America, because everything

was happening in L.A. at that time.

We did the Ringo LP and I didn't

have anywhere to stay really.

So Ringo said, come on, stay with me

in the bungalow.

And for me, of course, that was completely

new.

I never had anything like this.

You must imagine my Camaro was standing outside.

Ringo rented a Camaro for me.

And in the morning when you wanted breakfast,

what do you want for breakfast?

I felt like a little king.

You had your own key.

I could go right from the bungalow into

the car and drive off.

And sometimes in the morning I wanted to

get out.

And I did a little drawing for Ringo

so that he knew where I was.

I had spent at least two years trying

to talk Ringo into doing a solo album.

We started that first session that week.

And by the end of the week, we

had five tracks completed.

Two of them became number one records, Photograph

and You're Sixteen.

And the Beatles had partied.

They all were friends of mine.

And I was sometimes even maybe a little

help for them to still like each other.

John was coming to Los Angeles.

He had written a song for Ringo.

I think that Ringo, in his excitement about

John coming, forgot to mention to George that

we were doing a track with John.

I suddenly found myself in the position of

asking John Lennon if it was okay if

George Harrison came down to play on a

track that I was producing with Ringo Starr.

And George just walked in 20 minutes later.

We had just started running the song down.

And he had barely had a chance to

hear it.

He just kind of came in quietly with

a little amp and his guitar plugged in

the amp and just started playing the perfect

quintessential Beatle guitar part.

And Paul, I told him, you got to

be a part of this album.

He said, okay, give me a deadline.

I work well with deadlines.

I said, Tuesday.

And Monday night, he called me up and

played the song over the phone.

So you're saying you want me to play,

not sing?

It was really cool around the piano.

I thought we were singing.

No, who's going to sing it?

I don't know what the hell we're doing.

There's no fucking organisation here.

I thought you were just going to play

the drum.

On this track?

On this track.

Great.

If you sing, I won't be here.

No, no, that's enough.

Great.

I'll play.

I wish you would sing, but I thought

you wouldn't want to sing.

No, I don't.

And now, or just before you were gone?

No, ever.

I've cancelled this song in my head.

We wanted to have something really extraordinary and

special to accompany the album.

Let's have a look, shall we?

Yeah, okay.

And I've never done it before.

It's the first time I did lithography.

That's I Am The Greatest.

The thing that always impressed me the most

is that when you listen to the music

and look at the lithograph, it captures the

spirit of each song.

And I think you outdid yourself from Revolver.

Well, it's different, for sure.

It's more personal for the song.

Yeah.

Because I didn't do that.

Like all those.

Oh my my, it's unbelievable.

I mean, look at the expression on these

faces.

You could just stare at each one of

these for an hour.

I can't help it.

When I get going, I creep into it

and try and get all the details, you

know.

You're 16 is, it's just classic in a

drive-in movie, making out in the car.

Hey, sounds good to me.

Yeah.

I love that huge fill you did in

the middle, didn't you?

Yeah.

Hey, it's a big yes from him.

Okay, when I see you do that.

Okay.

He's a great bass player.

He's one of the best in the world.

He's a creative bass player in that he

won't always pick the obvious note.

And he, the prototype of that is Louis

Armstrong.

He goes to the right place all the

time.

Mozart goes to the right place all the

time.

And Klaus Wurman, he'd go to the right

place.

And it was a pleasure working with him,

both personally and musically.

Klaus has a very special gift, his feel,

see.

Klaus doesn't play a bunch of notes.

He doesn't run up and down the scale.

But there's nobody with a feel exactly like

Klaus.

And Klaus is a remarkable tennis player too.

You know, he used to run me around

a lot.

Right.

It was just the most comfortable thing ever

to play with Klaus playing bass.

And it just happened here today, you know.

Playing that little silly little kind of short

people groove, you know.

I believe the first time we really played

together was with John.

That was on the Imagine album.

To be there in the room with John

and Klaus in the room, you know.

It was in John's bedroom, basically.

That was the studio in Ascot.

It was their bedroom that they cleared everything

out and made it into a studio.

So it was a very small room, actually.

We were all crowded into the room.

So it was George and it was John,

of course.

Jokov was there, Phil Spector.

And in the studio, you had Jim Keltner

playing drums.

Alan White played drums.

Nicky Hopkins was playing piano.

Most of the time, it was just that

crew of people.

Nobody else.

So John wanted to record the song and

he played it to us on the piano.

And it was Imagine.

And we were all sort of really very,

very moved because it was a beautiful song.

Just to hear him sing it and on

the piano.

And even for me, to this day, that

would have been enough.

Just the piano and John.

Nothing else.

We played as simple as he possibly can.

Just the root notes.

Very simple.

Nothing much to it.

And in the end, in New York, Spector

and John put on strings.

That's the way the track was put together.

John had already an apartment in New York

and spent a lot of time with Jokov

in New York.

I was sort of a strange addition now

after all these years of having played or

not played.

And when I played, I just played the

way I played.

And then after a while, I realised that

this was another addition.

I wasn't Paul McCartney playing the bass.

I played differently.

And if I made a suggestion to a

certain arrangement or something, that wasn't Paul.

That wasn't John.

That was me.

So the input I gave to the songs

and the material was a different one.

Well, that's the house we went to, where

Harry and John were doing this record, Pussycats.

It was a crazy time.

It was L.A. The house was full

of people.

We had several apartments.

On the top floor, you had the round

one with the round glass.

That's where John was living, with May Pang

at that time.

And right next to it, the window to

the right, there was an apartment where Keith

Moon was living.

And right next to that, the last window,

that's where I was staying.

And behind that, that's where Ringo was having

his apartment.

Sometime we were just waiting for John and

Harry to come back.

They just were lost for a few days.

They went out partying all day.

Everybody knows about it.

They spent a lot of time in the

bars and drinking at private people's house, being

outrageous.

My wife and I went down one time

for a party, a rather civilised party, or

at least the front part of the party

was civilised.

And when we left, I think that was

maybe one of the nights that John and

Harry woke up with the sun blazing down

on them, and they were like at the

beach.

They had been out on the beach all

night drinking and carrying on and writing songs.

And you come to a session, they started

at 7, and at 10 o'clock, everybody's

stoned, and not a tone of music had

been played.

And Harry was paying for every penny for

it, not the record company.

It's his party, he wanted to have it

later.

But I didn't enjoy it because those all

were leeches, that were people that were sort

of taking the money of my friend, and

I didn't like that.

You could fill a room of apes with

a lot of cocaine and V.S.O

.P., Courvoisier brandy, and the works, the best

marijuana in the world, but if the apes

didn't have an idea or the power of

syntax, you would yield zero from the experience.

Well, actually, sub-zero, considering the expense of

the narcotics.

It was the talent that provided some great

music.

Oh, that once I knew, I knew it

once, I knew he needed me.

Until the day I die, I won't know

why, I knew he needed me.

It could be fantasy, oh, or maybe it's

because he needs me, he needs me, he

needs me, he needs me, he needs me,

he needs me.

guitar plays All

this going to parties and meeting the people

late at night and having dinner at one

o'clock in the morning and hanging out

at the pool and meeting Mr. So-and

-so, I was getting very tired of that,

and I thought, if this really means being

in the business, that's not for me.

I'm Klaus.

Very good to meet you.

Yeah, great.

It's a pleasure, pleasure.

So you rented the house from Cynthia?

Yeah.

I then started building this, and I felt

much, much better.

Was it just this, this part?

Just that part, yes.

Right, and so this became the extension.

This is all new, that's the extension.

And there wasn't anything on this side?

No, that was empty.

This is the cave for Klaus.

We thought it was a cute idea.

I was living here in the house with

Cynthia and Otto, and I was very much

involved in the family.

You see, it's great to have a family,

and it's great to have kids, but it

just distracted me so much from my work

at that particular point that the work suffered.

I even put the model exactly the way

the sun was shining and put it outside

on the deck and looked at it.

What is it going to be like in

the morning?

Where does the evening sun shine in?

Do we put a little more...

I played for Randy Newman, I remember that,

and it was about the last things I

played.

I played on short people and several on

his LP.

What a tree, eh?

It's beautiful.

And after that, I was asked to play

for Mac Rabanak.

He asked me to play in his band,

and that for me was tops.

And I realised that even with this great,

fantastic band, my heart wasn't with the music

anymore.

I adore this man, I love it, but

I couldn't play anymore.

Anyway, at that time, the decision was between

Cynthia and I that I want to go

back to Germany.

Thank you.

In Germany, I had the feeling that the

people in the record companies, they didn't have

much of a clue what a really good

band is.

It was a completely different atmosphere than it

was in America or England.

So I thought this would be a good

little slot where I could fit in to

be the sort of in-between the record

company and the band.

And when Trio came along, the band came

to me and said, why don't you produce

us?

I never thought of being a record producer.

So that's how I got into producing records

and we had this thing where Trio was

doing the last and final version of Da

Da Da.

Was es los mit der Mannschaft?

Geht es immer nur weg ab?

Da na na na da da da da.

That was very, very funny, very funny.

And the other song was Anna and Christina

was in the choir who was singing.

That's how I got to know Christina.

I worked with him as well.

For me, Klaus was always a man, his

calmness, his charisma, who stood above the things

of life.

We've been together for 20 years now.

We have two children, two wonderful children.

He is really my great love and he

is also my greatest sparring partner in life.

Most people that are really, really successful, they

don't actually have the time to spend for

a family.

And to me, the family is very important.

That's why I have long stretches where I

didn't do much work.

Friendship and the family, it's more important than

all the music, all the arts, anything.

People that accept my personality and accept me

the way I am, then I can produce

them.

But I'm not really THE producer.

That's why I stopped doing that.

That's when I started saying, OK, I'm doing

my graphics again.

I always had been doing little graphic things

in between.

And then this book, Hamburg Days, came along

and people said, let's do a book about

the time when you met those Beatle boys

first.

And that's how I got back much more

into the graphics.

I think everything changes all the time.

I could have ten versions and I would

like to know how they all were.

You know, if I would have done this

or if I would have done that, being

part of the Beatles or playing with a

foreigner or whatever, it would interest me.

I'm curious how my life would have gone

or what would have happened.

If I would have said, OK, I'm 15,

all I want to do is the rest

of my life play tennis, it would have

interested me too.

So those things, you can't say, this is

it and I'm happy with the way it

went.

It could have been all completely different.

I always have been following how things just

are going.

I never forced myself into anything.

I always floated sort of along.

I need it bad Just like a dog

when he's going mad Woo-wee, baby, woo

-wee Baby, won't you give your love to

me Any minute, mine anymore Told me you'd

want me around no more Woo-wee, baby,

woo-wee Baby, don't you let your dog

bite me instrumental There's

a me and I'm in love again Had

no lovers and you know it You know

I love you, yes I do And I'm

saving all my love in jail for you

Any minute, mine anymore Told me you'd want

me around no more Woo-wee, baby, woo

-wee