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
A lot of the players I'm with, thank God, we're all still vertical. We've lost so many great players through the years, and we're still standing, as Elton John says.
I have no anonymity.I've not had a drink in nine and a half years. That's my whole story right there.
In 1989 I sort of got back into the music business and one of the reasons I got back in is [that] I put the first All Stars band together. It's actually progressed from that every other year, or every two years, I've put that together...more and more realizing that's what I do.
I'm always good for starting a bit of a tune and the first verse, but after that I just can never go anywhere. It takes me years, that's why I'm so slow.
And so we went away to play, and we'd come back to Liverpool. And while we were doing this - 'cuz we did it for two years. And then we'd go to Germany, and that's where I met the Beatles.
That's when we decided to stop in '66. Everyone thought we toured for years, you know, but we didn't. I joined in '62, and we'd finished touring in '66 to go into the studio where we could hear each other... and create any fantasy that came out of anybody's brain.
I've been asked to write my autobiography and really they only want 8 years (1962-1970), and I keep saying it would be five volumes before I even got into the band!
Being in The Beatles was a short, incredible period of my life. I had 22 years leading up to it, and it was all over eight years later.
Ten years from now, it'll all be the blues because that's the only speed I'll be able to play
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.
I've been making a CD, so I have lots of ideas, ... (The action) will be set around a band. They'll be their own characters. It'll be a very strange All-Starr Band.
It would have been nice if we could have come a bit earlier, but I tell you it's better late than never,
The whole quote was, 'Let's hear it for the vertical man, because so much praise is given to the horizontal one,'
That was a great time. I was in my 20s, had lots of energy. I have great memories of it.