Ringo Starr

Sir Richard Starkey, known to the world as Ringo Starr, was born on 7 July 1940 in Dingle, an inner-city area of Liverpool. He became an English musician, singer, songwriter and actor, and achieved international fame as the drummer for the Beatles. In the era when Liverpool skiffle groups gave way to American rock and roll, Starr moved from local bookings to Hamburg stages and then into one of the most famous bands in popular music.

With the Beatles, Starr was best known for drumming that served the song. He sometimes sang lead vocals, usually on one track per album, including “Yellow Submarine” and “With a Little Help from My Friends.” He wrote and sang “Don’t Pass Me By” and “Octopus’s Garden,” and was credited as a co-writer on three other Beatles songs. He joined the group in August 1962, replacing Pete Best, after having played with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes.

His childhood helps explain the directness of his later life in music. He suffered life-threatening illnesses, including appendicitis followed by peritonitis, a coma, and a long recovery in Liverpool’s Myrtle Street children’s hospital. At eight, he remained illiterate and struggled with mathematics. In 1953 he contracted tuberculosis and spent two years in a sanatorium. There, medical staff encouraged patients to join a hospital band, and Starr first used a makeshift mallet made from a cotton bobbin to strike cabinets beside his bed. He later said, “That’s where I really started playing. I never wanted anything else from there on.”

Family life also shaped him. His parents separated when he was young and divorced within the year; he later said he had “no real memories” of his father. His mother, Elsie, worked cleaning houses and then as a barmaid. In 1954 she married Harry Graves, who introduced Starr to recordings by Dinah Shore, Sarah Vaughan and Billy Daniels. Starr later said of Graves, “He was great [...] I learned gentleness from Harry.” Other early musical inspirations included Lightnin’ Hopkins, Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams, before the skiffle craze drew him into performing.

After the Beatles disbanded, Starr released successful singles including “It Don’t Come Easy,” “Photograph,” “You’re Sixteen,” and the UK number two “Back Off Boogaloo.” His 1973 album Ringo reached the top ten in both the UK and the US. He acted in films, appeared in documentaries, hosted television shows, narrated the first two series of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, and played Mr. Conductor in the first season of Shining Time Station. Since 1989, he has toured with sixteen variations of Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band.

Starr’s playing emphasized feel over technical virtuosity, influencing drummers to think of their parts from a compositional point of view. He also influenced techniques such as matched grip, lower drum tuning, and muffling devices on tonal rings. He named the Beatles’ “Rain” as his finest recorded performance. He entered the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1999, was named the fifth-greatest drummer of all time by Rolling Stone readers in 2011, entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a Beatle in 1988 and as a solo artist in 2015, and was appointed a Knight Bachelor in 2018 for services to music. His own words carry the same quality as his drumming: brief, steady, and close to the life that made him.