How Ringo got to fly with a little help from his friends
As the Beatles legend reaches 80, his journey from a sickly schoolboy too poor to afford a drum kit to global superstar...
AS ONE of arguably the four most famous people on the planet, Ringo Starr was used to scenes of ecstatic adulation. But this was the reception which would move him the most. Stepping out with his bandmates on to the balcony of Liverpool’s Town Hall, as 20,000 fans down below erupted in ear-piercing screams, the drummer appeared genuinely astonished.
The year was 1964, Beatlemania was at its height, and the Fab Four were back for a triumphant homecoming, following a world tour which had catapulted them to stratospheric levels of stardom.
Back as conquering heroes, they had been given the keys to the city, and a police escort through streets lined with 200,000 fans.And now, from the town hall balcony, Ringo was able to see more clearly than ever just how far he had come. About a mile away from where he was standing was Myrtle Street, where he had spent a year in a children’s hospital, the first of many stays for the sickly child who grew up seeing more of the inside of wards than classrooms.
Not far from the heaving crowds were the places where, a few years earlier, he had worked dead-end jobs, passing the music shop with its drumkits he could never afford.
And in the distance, next to the docks and sitting under a thick cloud of coal smoke, were the terraced houses of the Dingle, the area where he was born and grew up.
Often overlooked by Beatles historians in favour of frontmen John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Ringo’s rise from poverty to one of the 20th century’s most celebrated people is arguably the most remarkable.
And while for long he was regarded as the least important band member, the last to join and with only a few songs to his name, as he turns 80 today many critics agree the drummer’s contribution to the quartet was, on the contrary, key to its phenomenal success.
Yoko Ono, speaking at the 2015 ceremony which inducted Ringo into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame – years later than the others – said: “No one is probably going to believe it, but he was the most influential Beatle.”
BORN Richard “Ritchie” Starkey on July 7, 1940, Ringo’s childhood was, as Beatles biographer Bob Spitz described, “a Dickensian chronicle of misfortune”.
The first few months of his life were spent hiding from German bombs which rained down on the nearby docks and oil terminal. The Dingle was already the poorest area of Liverpool, and things didn’t get easier when Ringo’s father Richard, known as “Big Ritchie”, walked out on the family when he was three. He hardly ever saw him again.
Mum Elsie moved to an even smaller terraced house and took on a number of menial jobs to support herself and her young son. Ringo later recalled: “She did everything. Scrub steps. She was a barmaid. She worked in a food shop. She had to earn a living.”
His first teacher, Enid Williams, also remembered:
“He was very quiet and rather delicate. He was an only child and he was rather coddled. He was kept out of school quite a lot, he had lots of colds.”
When he was six, Ritchie was rushed to hospital after his appendix ruptured and he developed an internal infection, peritonitis, leaving him in a coma for days. Elsie was told three times he wouldn’t make it. He ended up spending a year in hospital, missing school, and at the age of eight he still couldn’t read or write.
A few months before his 13th birthday, Elsie married Harry Graves, a painter and decorator from London who would become the father figure in Ritchie’s life and ultimately help him on the road to fame. “He was great,” Ringo later said. “I learned gentleness from Harry.”
But just weeks after the marriage, Ritchie contracted tuberculosis, spending 10 weeks back at Myrtle Street hospital before being moved to the Heswall Sanitorium on the more rural Wirral where he would spend the next two years. He never returned to school.
It appears to be the worst possible start to life. But if it were not for his long stay in hospital he might never have found his love for the drums. The hospital provided recreational activities, including music lessons.
Ringo later remembered:
“This woman would come in… with percussive maracas, triangles, little drums and sticks, and she would point to the red dot and you’d hit the drum, and she pointed to the yellow dot, and you’d hit the triangle or the maraca.
“That’s when I fell in love with drums. I only wanted to be a drummer from then on. But of course I had to work on the railways, I had to work on the boats, and I had to work in a factory for several years before it all came true.”
Physically weak and with no academic skills when he finally left hospital aged 15, he struggled to find a job, working as a British Rail messenger then as a Mersey ferry barman before becoming an apprentice fitter at a joiners, where he stayed for four years.
But his wage packet was never enough to buy the full drum kit he dreamed of. After buying just a bass drum for 30 shillings, he cobbled together the rest of a makeshift kit using biscuit tins and firewood.
In late 1956, stepfather Harry returned from a trip to London with an old drum kit he had bought for Ritchie for £25. The excited 16-year-old set it up in his bedroom, with Elsie and Harry constantly having to yell at him to keep the noise down because the neighbours were complaining.
Within weeks Ritchie had got together
with his neighbour Eddie Miles and two workmates and the band began playing during lunch time in the firm’s canteen.
Calling themselves The Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, the band debuted later at Liverpool’s Peel Street Labour Club in early 1957, before making several appearances at The Cavern.
Ritchie joined local rock ’n’ roll band Rory Storm and the Hurricanes in late 1959. They soon became the hottest group in Liverpool, with Ritchie Starkey renowned as the best local drummer.
He decided to change his name, using the nickname friends already called him, Ringo, because he always wore multiple rings on both of his hands. His second name came from how his bandmates announced his drum solos during shows – Star time.
Iris Fenton, sister of the band’s lead singer Rory, believes it was his time with her brother’s band that turned inexperienced Ringo into a confident showman.
Iris, 75, says: “If it weren’t for Rory he wouldn’t have gone anywhere. He was quite a shy boy but
Rory brought him out, he was the one who got him singing, and gave him the spotlight during shows with his drum solos. The band knew he wasn’t well off so helped him with his drums and expenses.”
Before long, the drummer had come to the attention of another local band, who had changed their name from The Quarrymen to The Beatles. John, Paul and George had just got a recording contract, but weren’t happy with their drummer, Pete Best.
PAUL later remembered how Ringo seemed perfect for the band. “We really started to think we needed the greatest drummer in Liverpool,” he said. “That was Ringo Starr, who had changed his name before any of us, who had a beard and was grown up and was known to have a Zephyr Zodiac.”
They offered Ringo £25 a week, £5 more than another band’s offer.
Iris, who dated both Paul and George and later married Alvin Stardust, remembers how Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein, called Rory to tell him they wanted his drummer in their band.
She says: “The band was doing a season at Butlin’s in Skegness and had three weeks left. Rory knew Ringo would be thrilled, but asked if he could stay to finish the season, and Epstein agreed. “But as soon as he told Ringo, he started to pack.”
The Beatles released their first single, followed by their debut LP, and started to tour the country, and Beatlemania was born.
Ringo was soon as much a Beatle as the others, while his “Ringo-isms” inspired the titles of several songs, including Hard Day’ s Night and Tomorrow Never Knows.
Today, as he celebrates that landmark birthday with Paul, his remaining Beatles bandmate, their thoughts are bound to turn to the two whose lives were cut tragically short.