Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion (10 page)

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Alan Caldwell was a great disappointment to me. His skills: solid yet unspectacular. His demeanor: courteous yet envious. His discipline level: sizeable yet inconsistent. His ultimate life goals: unsatisfactory. He wanted to be an artist—specifically, a musician. Now, I have the utmost respect for music makers, but what Alan Caldwell never realized is that Ninja warriors are just as artistic as
the best singer or guitar player or drummer … if not more so. He was quite vocal in his opposition to
my
opposition to modern music.

This is not to say I dismissed Alan Caldwell’s goals entirely. As a matter of fact, I thrice watched Alan Caldwell and his band perform. (I refuse to refer to him as Rory Storm; that is a ridiculous name for a Ninja Lord, and no matter what I thought of his skills, Alan Caldwell
was
a Ninja Lord.) Had Alan Caldwell’s Ninja moves been more than merely solid, and had his band’s music been less derivative, I might not have been so saddened by his choice to merge the worlds of Ninja and rock ’n’ roll. Besides, there was already one Lonnie Donegan walking the Earth, and even to my unenlightened ears, one Lonnie Donegan was more than enough.

Most galling to me was that he taught the members of his band numerous Ninja moves … and he taught them sloppily. Double spins became half spins. Graceful cat somersaults became clumsy dog rolls. Please do not get me started about their abominable work with the shuriken, as my stomach becomes pained when I think about it.

However, there was one gentleman in the band for whom there was hope, who had a glimmer of talent. With regular training, with hard work, and with proper discipline, young Richard Starkey—who became known to the world as Ringo Starr, a pseudonym that was far more palatable to me than the silly stage name Rory Storm—had the potential to become Great Britain’s first true Ninja Lord.

R
ingo Starr is happy to talk to you. He’ll tell you stories, he’ll crack some jokes, he’ll laugh, he’ll cry, and he’ll drink you under the table. Thing is, you have to find him first, and good luck with that one.

Lennon thought he was somewhere in China, studying kung fu with a rogue group of former Shaolin monks. I wasted ten days and almost ten grand on that tip.

McCartney said he hadn’t spoken with Ringo in several years, but added that one of his mates told another one of his mates that Starr was in Los Angeles, holed up with a swimsuit model. Wrong-o.

Harrison didn’t have a clue, but he had a gut hunch that the drummer was in South America, possibly Brazil. All I got out of that trip was sun poisoning and the knowledge that I look horrible in a Speedo swimsuit.

If the rest of the Beatles didn’t even know where Ringo spent his time, how the hell was one little journalist from Chicago supposed to track him down?

Ultimately,
pointed me in the right direction, explaining that after the Beatles’ demise, Ringo made it his goal to move up fifteen levels on the Ninja Lord scale, and the only way to make that happen is to practice your Ninja art in the coldest place on Earth. So, since 2001, Ringo has been bopping between London, the North Pole, and the South Pole.

In December 2005, before I’d fully healed from the various beatings John Lennon imparted upon my body, I went to my friendly neighborhood camping supplies store, bought nearly three thousand dollars’ worth of cold weather gear, and boarded a plane to Bumfuck, Antarctica, where, for twelve days, I drank a whole lot of piping-hot miso egg-drop soup with good ol’ Richie Starkey.

RINGO STARR:
The Hurricanes only did three Ninja/rock shows in Liverpool. Rory wanted to keep the Ninja stuff secret until we got it just right, and, man, talk about secret—outside our families and our Ninja master, he didn’t tell anybody about the gig. Our audience consisted of Rory’s sister,
, and two of
’s disciples. Not an auspicious way to start a new trend, eh?

But Rory’s goal wasn’t to start a trend; all he was concerned about was, as he so inelegantly put it, “kicking some fookin’ Quarrymen arse.” Nobody was beating down my door with an invitation to join their band, so I stuck with Rory, even though I didn’t want to kick
anybody’s
fookin’ arse. Personally, I thought John, Paul, and George were fine fellows, spot-on musicians, and a credit to the living and undead alike.

The Hurricanes had already been playing at the Kaiserkeller for a good long while when the Beatles were unceremoniously dumped into the club, and I’ve gotta tell you, the audiences that saw both bands play were treated to one helluva show. The Beatles’d go on first, roar through fifteen or twenty songs in forty-five minutes, then John would pick three girls from the crowd, bring them up onto the stage, and juggle them, while the other guys played circus music in the background. I still have no idea how he was able to do that without hurting anybody.

Then it was our turn. Rory liked to structure our sets so we’d play two songs, then give five minutes of Ninja demo, then two more songs, then more demo, and so on. Musically speaking, we weren’t too bad, and our Ninja moves improved more every day, especially those of Johnny “Guitar” Byrne, who got to the point where he could open a bottle of beer with a Ninja star from ten meters away. Bruno probably could’ve charged more than a three-deutsche-mark cover—today, it’s a common triple bill, but in 1960, no club in the world could deliver a Ninja/zombie/music trifecta—but Mr. Koschmider wasn’t exactly the brightest star in the Hamburg sky.

I thought Pete Best was one helluva drummer, and aside from that one Wednesday night when George broke a guitar over his head, hauled him up with one hand, and threw him all the way across the club, I saw no indication that any of the other Beatles were dissatisfied with his drumming. I jammed with them every so often, and
though they always liked my playing, they never came close to asking me to join. And I was cool with that. I knew if I left the ’Canes and neglected my Ninja studies,
would be pissed. And
is the last person in the world you want to piss off. So I treaded water and waited to see what would happen next.

JOHN LENNON:
It was the day after Crimbo, 1960. Paul, some bird that Paul’d picked up, and I were at a party at Paul’s mate Neil Aspinall’s flat. Right before midnight, I dragged Paul into Neil’s bedroom—I accidentally ripped off his right hand, but he slapped it right back on, so that’s neither here nor there—then threw him onto Neil’s bed and asked him, “What the hell’re we doing, mate?”

He said, “I dunno about you, but I’m repositioning my hand, which you just ripped the hell off. And I’m drinking, y’know.”

I said, “I don’t mean here, I mean
here
.”

Paul said, “Umm, you lost me.”

I said, “What’re we doing with the band? What’s the point?”

He gave me a funny look, then said, “I thought the point of being in a band was that there’s no point. We play a few tunes, we drink a few drinks, we have a few laughs. That’s enough for me. Who needs a point? It’d be nice to have some dosh in our pockets, and maybe make a record someday, but if we keep going the way we’re going, I think that’ll come.”

I said, “That’s not enough for me.”

He said, “Well then, what do you want?”