July 7, 2010. Copyright 2010, Graphic News. All rights reserved

The “loveable” Beatle, Ringo Starr, turns 70
By Susan Shepherd

LONDON, July 7, Graphic News:  The best thing about being in The Beatles, says Ringo Starr, was having three brothers. After growing up an only child, who lost countless schooldays to illness, he found himself, at 22, the oldest member of what would quickly become the biggest band in the world. It gave Richard Starkey -- as he was born, during the Second World War in the working-class Dingles area of Liverpool -- a sense of belonging like no other. For eight years, from August 1962 when he replaced Pete Best on drums, until April 1970 when the official break-up was announced, Starr, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison dominated popular culture with their music, their films and their apposite message of peace and love. He was there in time for their first hit single -- Love Me Do -- released just a month after he joined; and he was there at the end, on the roof of the Apple headquarters in London’s Savile Row, the last time the Fab Four played together in public. By then the clean-cut boys from Merseyside, who’d driven a generation of teenage girls crazy, had become four grown men pulling in different directions, but with a back catalogue appreciated by a global fan base.
 
Starr was more than merely the Beatles’ drummer. His is the lead voice on two of their best-loved numbers, Yellow Submarine and With a Little Help From My Friends; among his song-writing credits is Octopus’s Garden from the 1969 LP, Abbey Road. And it was one of his “Ringo-isms”, as Lennon called them, that spawned another famous lyric when, after a particularly tiring session in the studio one evening, Starr commented that it had been A Hard Day’s Night.
 
Ringo -- he won the nickname early on for wearing a ring on every finger -- had been given his first drums by his step-father after leaving school at 15 and starting his own skiffle band. Later, his grandfather gave him the £25 downpayment he needed for a professional kit. Last year, the London-based Sunday Times newspaper estimated Starr’s wealth at $196 million. Now a grandfather, he has a home in California and 15 solo albums to his credit. The All-Starr band he formed after the Beatles split tours every couple of years and is currently playing dates in North America. Among those who have been part of its line-up are saxophonist Clarence Clemmons, from Bruce Springsteen’s band, and former “Eagle”, Joe Walsh. The eldest of Starr’s three children, Zak Starkey, from his 10-year marriage to Maureen Cox, is also a drummer.
 
If John Lennon was “the genius”, Paul “the heartthrob” and George “the quiet one”, then, says Ringo, he was “the loveable one”. “I know I was loved”, he said in a interview to mark the release of his latest album, Y Not, earlier this year. And it was this affable personality that ensured he kept close ties with the other Beatles. When Lennon was assassinated in December 1980, it was Starr and his then-girlfriend, Barbara Bach -- now his wife of 29 years -- who flew to Yoko Ono’s side. A year after George Harrison died from lung cancer, Starr played in a benefit concert for his old friend and has frequently performed on stage with McCartney. Among his abiding influences, he cites Hollywood’s original singing cowboy, Gene Autry. For his 70th birthday he would, unsurprisingly, like the world to unite for peace. “Wherever you are at noon on July 7th’, he has asked his fans, “I’d like you to gesture peace and love”.
/ENDS