Ringo Starr: On John Lennon, George Harrison and Paul McCartney
Click to viewIt was 50 years ago, Aug. 18, 1962, that Ringo Starr played his first gig with The Beatles, but he still remembers it vividly.
“It was a lunchtime session at The Cavern. I wasn’t with the band then. There was a knock at the door in Admiral Rd., where I was living back then, and it was Brian Epstein asking if I would sit in with the boys for a lunchtime session.
“He had a car, so that was great. I got up, rolled out of bed, went down there and that’s how it all started.”
Starr is sitting in a corner of the Avalon Theatre at the Fallsview Casino and Resort, where Ringo Starr and his All Starr Band start a two-night engagement Thursday, which kicks off their 27-city North American tour.
This is the 13th year Starr has put together a similar group. This year’s musicians include alumni Todd Rundgren, Mark Rivera, Richard Page and Gregg Bissonette as well as newcomers Steve Lukather and Gregg Rolie.
“The criterion to be in the band is if you’ve had a hit in this or the last century,” quipped Starr. “We’re the best 1-800 band in the world. Our secret? No sidemen, all frontmen.”
Usually, Starr prefers not to talk about the past, but he’s in a mellow mood and goes back to 1960, when the group he then belonged to, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, shared a stage in Hamburg with The Beatles.
“They were just starting out and we were the biggest band in Liverpool, but John, Paul and George, oh my. What a front line they made!
“The bands would perform 12 hours a night, six hours each, dusk until dawn. That’s how you learned how to play, you had to put in the time.”
Starr is 71 now and when asked whether he ever thought he’d be where he is today back then, he laughs.
“We were 19, 20, we were having a lot of fun. It was like let’s go! We never thought that four years from now we’d be the biggest band in the land. And we certainly never thought about getting old. You never do when you’re young.
“I remember we were opening for some act and her band was like 40, and we thought, ‘What, you blokes are still out there, doing it?’ And now, look at me, in my 70s and I’m still out there doing it.”
Not all of his colleagues are. Levon Helm of The Band died in April and Clarence Clemons from the E Street Band died in 2011. Both were veterans of the first All Starr Band tour in 1989.
“I knew I needed a big guy to lean on that first year and they didn’t come any bigger than Clarence,” recalls Starr.
“And Levon? This stuff happens, man. The wheel keeps turning.
“Some of the really big turns it takes can hit you hard,” he said. “John. George. They were my brothers. I was an only child and suddenly I had three close brothers I loved. Then I lost two of them.
“I couldn’t believe it when John went. I was in the Bahamas at the time, when one of the kids called out, ‘Something’s happened to John.’ And then the phone call came that he was dead. I still think of it.”
Harrison’s death from cancer in 2001 hurt as well, but Starr was still focused on the marriage of Harrison’s son, Dhani, just last weekend, an event he attended with the other surviving Beatle, Paul McCartney.
“It’s what happens, too. You gotta go with that. That’s how it is. It was great for Dhani, because I’ve known him since he was born. It’s not like The Beatles were at the wedding, it was just Paul and Ringo.”
The two former bandmates seem to have an amiable relationship, but asked if he was going to join McCartney at his 70th birthday celebrations on June 18, as McCartney had joined his in 2010, Starr replied, “Well, I know where Paul is going to be that day and I know where I’m going to be, and they’re not the same place.
“But we’re great mates, so don’t read anything into that.”
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