Ringo Starr
Ringo Starr
Richard Starkey, MBE, known professionally as Ringo Starr, is an English musician, singer, songwriter and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for the Beatles. He occasionally sang lead vocals, usually for one song on an album, including "With a Little Help from My Friends", "Yellow Submarine" and their cover of "Act Naturally". He also wrote the Beatles' songs "Don't Pass Me By" and "Octopus's Garden", and is credited as a co-writer of others, including "What Goes On" and...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionDrummer
Date of Birth7 July 1940
CityLiverpool, England
I never studied anything, really. I didn't study the drums. I joined bands and made all the mistakes onstage.
If you could play, I'd play with you all night. But if I'm just playing by myself, it gets boring pretty quick.
They paint you red before they sacrifice you. It's a different religion from ours - I think.
I've said this over and over again, but I love being in a band.
And in a marriage you can't TRY and be married. You're married or you're not married... as far as I'm concerned.
With God's help, I've not had a drink in nine and a half years. That's my whole story right there. And because of that, I'm doing this. I'm making records, I'm touring. I was so involved in just getting brain damaged, I wasn't doing anything. I had great ideas, many notebooks filled with notes, some of them I can read and some of them I just can't read, but I really didn't do anything constructive, it was all just good ideas. Now I'm trying to lead a constructive life a day at a time.
We will miss George for his sense of love, his sense of music and his sense of laughter.
Ringo: 'I had no schooling before I joined The Beatles and no schooling after The Beatles. Life is a great education.
For me, I want to get across the stage to the people. I want to point at you, thirty, forty rows back, and you know I'm pointing at you, and we're having a laugh and getting it together.
F irst and foremost I am a drummer. After that, I'm other things. ...But I didn't play drums to make money. I played drums because I loved them. ...My soul is that of a drummer....It came to where I had to make a decision -- I was going to be a drummer. Everything else goes now. I play drums. It was a conscious moment in my life when I said the rest of things were getting in the way. I didn't do it to be come rich and famous, I did it because it was the love of my life.
Well, I'm getting happier all the time, which is very nice.
That's all drugs and alcohol do, they cut off your emotions in the end.
The Beatles were just four guys that loved each other. That's all they'll ever be.
I used to wear different rings when I first got called Ringo in about 19, about, umm, '59 I got called Ringo.