Old pal: Starr was hopeless singer and girl mad
me. I get emotional thinking of him 40 years ago talking about me on tape and thinking of me. George, the same. I’m such an old crybaby.” Ringo and wife Barbara Bach,
RINGO was a terrible singer in his school choir and used to get the cane, according to his oldest friend Davey Patterson.
Speaking from their native Liverpool, Davey paid tribute to the man he knew as Richard Starkey – and revealed their families once swapped rented homes. Davey said: “We were 73, have been quarantined at home in Beverly Hills for 11 weeks.
He had to cancel plans for his three sons and grandchildren to fly from England for a birthday bash. A tour has also been put on hold.
Still fighting fit, Ringo says his drink and drug problems are long in the past.
He tells Washington radio WTOP: “I look after myself. I work out. I watch what I eat – blueberries in the morning, broccoli at night. I have energy.”
Ringo fell in love with music when he always together at school, we joined everything – night school, libraries, Boys’ Brigade. We joined the choir.
“I’d say his singing voice was the same as mine – terrible!
“You’d usually get two-and-six [around £3 today] for a wedding so that’s why we joined.
“We’d be about 12 I suppose, before our voices broke. We was given small drums while confined to hospital for more than a year after contracting tuberculosis aged 13. At home he fashioned a set from biscuit tins. His first real set cost £12.
And, from that day, a Starr was born. He adds: “I’m blessed every time I sit behind the drums. That was my dream when I was 13, to play drums, with good players. And I ended up with the best players on the planet. And I’m still playing with really cool players now.” were good friends. I last saw him when he was 24 and still living in Admiral Grove.
“I lived in that house. He was born in Madryn Street and his mum and my mum were friends and they swapped houses.
“We went to the same primary school and then sat together at Dingle Vale secondary school.
“We were friends until we left school. I joined the Merchant Navy and, of course, the rest is history with Richard.”
Davey said he and Ringo got the cane – one on each hand – for jumping around in a claypit outside the pottery classroom.
And he said Ringo was a sucker for the girls, adding: “He was always falling in love, Ritchie. He was girl mad. We all were.”