Ringo Starr, from A to Z

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This article was published 03/10/2022 (1425 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

He gets by with a little help from his friends.

Drummer Ringo Starr brings the latest version of his All-Starr Band to Canada Life Centre for a performance Oct. 4.

By all accounts, this will mark the first time Starr, born Richard Starkey in 1940, will set foot on Manitoba soil since Aug. 18, 1964, when a plane transporting him and his Beatles cohorts to a show in San Francisco touched down in Winnipeg for refuelling purposes. (The lads were only on the ground for 24 minutes, but that was enough time for John Lennon to crack “That’s not my fault” when a local reporter introduced himself as “Bob Burns, from CJAY TV.”)

If you’re unfamiliar with the All-Starr Band project, it’s a supergroup of musicians fronted by Starr. The personnel changes from tour to tour, and everybody gets a turn to perform a tune or two of their own, in addition to accompanying their leader on songs he made famous as a member the Fab Four, and during a successful solo career. (Winnipeg’s Burton Cummings was among Starr’s enlistees in 1992, as was Randy Bachman three years later. The current lineup, version No. 15, includes Edgar Winter, Men at Work’s Colin Hay and Toto’s Steve Lukather.)

Starr will undoubtedly be his usual charismatic self on stage, sharing stories from a career spanning seven decades. Of course, it’s impossible to learn everything about the man in the space of two hours, so ahead of Tuesday night’s show, here’s an A to Z of all things Ringo.

APPENDICITIS

Starr suffered a variety of health woes as a child. Appendicitis led to peritonitis, which led to tuberculosis. He was in a sanitarium in 1955, recovering from the latter, when, as part of his therapy, he was invited to join a hospital band composed of teenage patients. Guess which convalescent asked to give the drums a shot?

BEST MAN FOR THE JOB

Starr replaced Pete Best as the Beatles drummer in August 1962. Not everybody was pleased. During a performance at Liverpool’s Cavern Club shortly thereafter, fans protested outside, holding placards reading: “Pete forever. Ringo never.”

CAVEMAN

You can add Hollywood actor to Starr’s long list of accomplishments. In addition to flicks he appeared in as a member of the Beatles — Help and A Hard Day’s Night, to name two — he also played the lead role in Caveman, a slapstick comedy that hit theatres in 1982. So what if Caveman, which has a 35 per cent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, wasn’t exactly Citizen Kane? That’s when he met Barbara Bach, his wife of 41 years, who portrayed Lana, his onscreen love interest.

DON’T PASS ME BY

Appearing on Side 2 of the Beatles (a.k.a. The White Album), country rocker Don’t Pass Me By served as the first Starr-penned tune recorded by the band. Although you won’t find it on any official Beatles’ greatest hits packages, it was released as a single in Denmark, where it soared to the top of the charts in April 1969.

EDDIE CLAYTON SKIFFLE GROUP

Starr joined his first professional band, the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, in 1957. He was working as an apprentice machinist at the time and hadn’t given much thought to becoming a full-time musician. The only reason he auditioned for the group, made up of mates from his neighbourhood, was because his mother, Elsie, told him over and over he should “have a go.”

FLORIAN ASTEROID

4150 Starr is the name attached to an asteroid discovered in 1984, measuring seven kilometres in diameter. The heavenly body joined 4147 Lennon, 4148 McCartney and 4149 Harrison, minor planets that orbit the sun in an asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter.

GEORGE

Starr, an only child, has often referred to George Harrison as the brother he never had. He teared up during an interview in July, as he recalled the last words the “quiet Beatle” ever said to him. Starr was visiting the guitarist in a Swiss hospital, where he was dying of cancer. The drummer told his pal he was headed to Los Angeles from there to see his daughter, who was undergoing brain surgery. “Do you want me to come with you?” Harrison quipped.

HALL OF FAME

Starr is a two-time member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, having first been inducted in 1988, with the rest of the Beatles, and again in 2015, for his solo work. He also belongs to the Classic Drummer Hall of Fame, the Liverpool Wall of Fame and the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

IT DON’T COME EASY

Music critics largely dismissed Starr after the Beatles breakup, not expecting him to make much of a mark on his own. He proved them wrong in April 1971 with It Don’t Come Easy, a worldwide Top 10 smash. Equally impressive: the song, which featured Harrison on guitar, was used in a Season 2 episode of The Simpsons, in which Starr starred as himself.

JEWELRY

Starr was originally tagged Rings, owing to his penchant for hand jewelry. He switched that to Ringo, reportedly because it sounded like a cowboy name, and he loved country music. Coincidentally, Ringo was the title of a No. 1 country and western single for actor Lorne Greene in 1964, the same year four songs by the Beatles collectively spent 18 weeks at the top of the charts.

KLAATU

On the cover of his 1974 effort, Goodnight Vienna, Starr dresses like Klaatu, the lead character from the 1951 sci-fi film The Day the Earth Stood Still. Oddly enough, when Canuck band Klaatu released its debut album 3:47 EST in 1976, rumours ran rampant that the group was in fact the Fab Four using an alias, owing to its Beatlesque sound.

LUDWIG

Ludwig Drums, founded in 1909, have long been Starr’s instrument of choice. He’s not alone. The Chicago-based company’s wares were also preferred by Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham, Cream’s Ginger Baker and Rush’s Neil Peart. Ludwig’s worldwide sales were $6.1 million in 1964. That number more than doubled the following year, after Starr appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in ’64, banging away at a set of Ludwigs.

MR. CONDUCTOR

All aboard! Starr portrayed Mr. Conductor in the first season of Shining Time Station, a spinoff of Thomas & Friends. He was nominated for a Daytime Emmy as Outstanding Performer in a Children’s Series, but left the show ahead of Season 2, when he was replaced by comedian George Carlin.

NO. 1 WITH A BULLET

Starr has hit the top of the Billboard charts twice as a solo artist. The first time was for Photograph, penned by George Harrison, and again for You’re Sixteen, a cover of a ‘60s rockabilly hit by Johnny Burnette. He never duplicated the feat in his native U.K., where his biggest hit, Back Off Boogaloo, stalled at No. 2.

OCTOPUS

Octopus’s Garden, Starr’s contribution to the Beatles’ Abbey Road, was apparently inspired by a Mediterranean cruise he took with actor Peter Sellers. The pair were enjoying a lunch of squid when the ship’s captain informed them as octopuses move along seabeds, they use their arms to gather rocks, to build something resembling a garden. Hmm, Starr thought; because of ongoing differences in the band, he often wished he lived “under the sea,” too, which caused him to reach for pen and paper.

PILATES

No, no, no, no, he doesn’t drink it no more.

Starr is presently an unabashed health nut, who subscribes to a vegetarian diet and practices Pilates and meditation on a daily basis. That wasn’t always the case; he attended a detox clinic in Arizona in the late ‘80s, back when he was consuming, according to a 1989 court deposition, 16 (16!) bottles of wine per day, along with a mountain of cocaine and marijuana.

QUEEN ELIZABETH II

Starr was first introduced to the late monarch in November 1963, following a performance at London’s Prince of Wales Theatre. He was in her presence again in 2017, when she knighted him, along with the Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb. “God bless Queen Elizabeth peace and love to all the family peace and love Ringo,” he tweeted shortly after her death last month.

RINGER STAR

If you’re having trouble drumming up the $138.50 it costs for a ticket on the floor to see Starr live in Winnipeg, there is a cheaper alternative. When Ringer Star, a tribute artist who has been performing as Starr since 2013, last played the Mayo Civic Center in Rochester, Minn., admission was free.

SIGNATURE

Starr stopped signing his full tag 30 years ago, opting for a star next to or below “Ringo,” instead. Good news if you have something/anything carrying his full signature; a 45 RPM copy of Twist and Shout fully signed by him and Paul McCartney is currently on sale for US$10,908.99 (shipping is free!).

TANGY TOMATO

Ringo Star is a snack food enterprise based in Delhi, India. Among its most popular flavours of salty, rice-based treats are mast masala and tangy tomato, both of which come shaped like — what else? — rings.

UNIVERSITY DEGREE

In June, Starr was awarded an honorary degree as a “doctor of music,” by Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Not too shabby for a person who was reportedly barely able to read and write when he dropped out of school for good at age 15.

VISUAL SNOW

Starr is a highly charitable sort, going all the way back to when he participated in Harrison’s historic Concert for Bangladesh in 1971. Among the dozen or so groups he contributes to regularly are the American Foundation for AIDS Research and the Elevate Hope Foundation, the latter of which works with abandoned and abused children. He also supports the Visual Snow Initiative, visual snow being a brain disorder with no known cure that causes one to see coloured or black and white dots across their entire line of vision, whether their eyes are open or closed.

WHAT’S MY NAME

Don’t expect Starr to utter anything along the line of, “And now, one from me new record …” when he’s onstage. If that were to occur, it would be a selection from What’s My Name, released in October 2019. The LP was Starr’s 20th solo release, and will likely serve as his latest for a while to come. In a 2021 interview with Esquire magazine, he commented it was highly unlikely he would record another full-length album.

XMAS

Ahead of Christmas 1999, Starr issued the holiday-themed I Wanna Be Santa Claus on Mercury Records. In addition to standards such as Winter Wonderland and — natch — The Little Drummer Boy, the record also contains Christmas Time (Is Here Again), originally recorded by the Beatles in 1967 for a fan club release that same year.

YELLOW

Inspired by the Ringo-sung ditty Yellow Submarine, also the name of a 1968 animated film, 60 shipyard employees in Starr’s hometown of Liverpool built a 15.62-metre-long yellow sub. The representation, which stands almost five metres tall, is currently on display at Liverpool John Lennon Airport.

ZAK

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Zak Starkey, born to Starr and his first wife Maureen Starkey in 1965, is an accomplished drummer in his own right. Besides guesting with his dad in the All-Starr Band, he has also played with Oasis and the Icicle Works, and presently performs and records with the Who.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca