Peace, love and Ringo
Ringo Starr, coming to Easton’s State Theatre, talks about Beatles doc, his first drum kit and supergroup tour
Ringo Starr was inspired to be a drummer as a teenager. Some 65 years later, drumming remains what The Beatles stickman wants to be doing, “I was inspired at 13 and that has never left me, the dream and the joy,’ Starr said in a press conference to promote this year’s Ringo Starr and His All Starr Band tour. “Then, I started playing. I only ever wanted to be a drummer from 13 and then I got a kit of drums. And I was in a couple of really good bands … And it’s still there. I love to play, My mother had this great line ‘You know what, son? I always feel that you’re happiest when you’re playing.’ And deep inside I am.”
This summer, as he had done annually since 1989, save for the last two years, Starr will be playing with his aforementioned
All Starr Band, a supergroup that, for 2022, includes
Edgar Winter,
Steve Lukather
(from Toto),
Hamish Stuart, Colin
Hay, Warren Ham and
Gregg Bissonette.
Ringo and company will play 7:30 p.m. June 11 at Easton’s State Theatre.
Starr didn’t specify his inspiration to pick up the sticks and in 1957 he broke into music when he helped form the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, which, he said, he wished had been captured on film like The Beatles “Let It Be” recording sessions that became the recent documentary “Get Back.”
“The three of us worked in a factory,” Starr said “And we played in the basements of the workmen who eliminated s*** all over us. That’s where we started. That’d be interesting to see that.”
Speaking of “Get Back,” Starr gave Peter Jackson’s six-hour documentary, now streaming on Disney+, his full endorsement.
“I remember quite a lot of it,” Starr said of the “Let It Be” sessions. “We made those records and it sort of went through the same cycle. But the difference with ‘Get Back’ was that we had no songs to start. John and Paul would always have a couple of songs that would start the ball rolling.
“The only thing I was grasping and desperate for, is when we did ‘Get Back,’ if you look at the early sort of getting it together. It (the drum part) is just like
straight rock. I wanted to know how I got to that, that rock shuffle thing, just playing the snare drum. Because I have no idea why I changed that. I thought ‘I’ll see it on film. But it just happened the cameras were off when we did that.”
That disappointment aside, Starr said “Get Back” is a much more representative look at The Beatles putting together “Let It Be” than was Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s “Let It Be,” the 1970 documentary that, during its filming, provided the footage Jackson assembled into the new film.
“The original documentary, I never liked it,” he said. “It was so narrow. It was on one point of an argument and all these down parts. We were laughing and we were having fun as well and we played great and we did all this in a month. Michael Lindsey Hogg’s, I felt, was just too down. I spoke to Peter (and said) ‘I was there. It was lots of fun as well.’ He certainly brought that up. I’m ever grateful to Peter for doing such a great job.”
Although it was recorded before the “Abbey Road” album, “Let It Be” became the final Beatles album, released in May 1970, months before the band broke up. The Beatles, Starr said, had run their course
“We were lads when we started, and as it went on, we had wives and children,” he said. “And we stopped touring and made great records. But we didn’t make good records while we were touring. We played well together and we got on with each other. That’s just how it was. We came to a point, eight years later — it blows me away that we did all that in eight years — that it was time to leave.”
During the 45-minute press conference, several All Starr Band members shared their enthusiasm for the tour and being able to perform with Ringo.
Drummer Greg Bissonette was influenced by
Starr and loves being on stage with the former Beatle.
“I wouldn’t be a musician if it weren’t for Ringo and the Beatles,” Bissonette said. “My dad was a jazz drummer in Detroit. We went to the Olympia hockey arena where the Red Wings played, and he said kids were going to see the Beatles tomorrow night. My brother and I just flipped out …
“That started me going, being in the same room and hearing that music and hearing Ringo’s groove. I would come home every day after school and put on the headphones with my record player and just want to play along with him and try to get in that pocket. Now every night, five feet away, I get to look at his bass drum pedal and his snare and I try to get in that Ringo pocket, that swing that he’s given drummers, There’s nothing like it and what an honor, greatest gig of my life ever and I hope it goes a long, long, long, long time.”
Winter, who last played with the All Starr Band in 2011, is excited to be back for this year’s tour.
“To have the opportunity to play with so many great musicians. I mean, I never dreamed that I would even get to meet these people, much less share the stage with so many incredible talented musicians,” Winter said. “It means the world to me. If it’s Madison Square Garden or the club down the street on the corner. I’m gonna be playing for me.”
For Colin Hay, the former frontman of the Australian band Men At Work, going on the road with the All Starr Band is a unique musical experience. “I don’t know what it’s like for everybody else, but (for me) it’s one of those tours you do where in a sense you can just forget about everything else that’s going on in your life, whether it’s your own solo material, or other things which maybe you have to deal with before you go on tour or after you get back from the tour and you can kind of bask a little bit that you’re just out on the road with a Beatle,” he said in a separate phone interview. “And all of these other guys have had hits and you get to be a sideman for other people and play interesting songs that you wouldn’t ordinarily play, and sing vocal parts you wouldn’t ordinarily sing if you were doing your own material. There are challenges involved, that’s for sure. It’s just remembering everyone else’s songs and remembering which harmony to sing and so forth. So you’ve got to be on your toes. But it certainly is relatively stress free, for sure.”
If all goes as Starr hopes, the All Starr Band could have a gig for years to come. Starr, who spent the pandemic going to the gym, painting and making spin art, has no intent to hang up his drumsticks — ever.
“People are saying, ‘What about retirement?’,” said the 81-year-old Starr. “Well, I’m a musician. I don’t have to retire. As long as I can pick up those sticks. I got a gig. You know, I’m maybe playing the blues. That’s how it ends. I just love this.”