Ringo Starr
Ringo Starr
Richard Starkey, MBE, known professionally as Ringo Starr, is an English musician, singer, songwriter and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for the Beatles. He occasionally sang lead vocals, usually for one song on an album, including "With a Little Help from My Friends", "Yellow Submarine" and their cover of "Act Naturally". He also wrote the Beatles' songs "Don't Pass Me By" and "Octopus's Garden", and is credited as a co-writer of others, including "What Goes On" and...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionDrummer
Date of Birth7 July 1940
CityLiverpool, England
I'm the greatest in this world.
My soul is that of a drummer.... I didn't do it to become rich and famous. I did it because it was the love of my life.
I like playing with a live band and I've got my act and we're fine.
I think the most exciting thing is that you expect people our age to know the music, but actually a lot of kids know the music, and if anything is left, we have left really good music, and that's the important part, not the mop-tops or whatever.
Last night I had a peace dream...
Peace and love, peace and love!
I'm warning you with peace and love I have too much to do. So no more fan mail. Thank you, thank you. And no objects to be signed, nothing. Peace and love, peace and love.
You got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues...And you know it don't come easy.
That's when we decided to stop in '66. Everyone thought we toured for years, you know, but we didn't. I joined in '62, and we'd finished touring in '66 to go into the studio where we could hear each other... and create any fantasy that came out of anybody's brain.
I met The Beatles while we were playing in Germany. We'd seen them in Liverpool, but they were a nothing little band then, just putting it together. In fact, they weren't really a band at all.
I never take it as any real pressure. It's like my son. I only gave him one lesson. When I went to give him the second one he said, 'Oh, I can do that dad.' I said, 'Now you're on your own.'
I'm not the creative one. I know that. If Rory Storm hadn't come along... and then The Beatles... I would have continued running around in teddyboy gangs. Today, well... I'd probably be a laborer. I'm glad I'm not, of course. It'll be nice to be part of history... some sort of history anyway. What I'd like to be is in school history books and be read by kids.
People only look at me as a Beatle but my friends look at me as a whole person. That's how life works, but it's not bugging me anymore.
There's a woman in the United States who predicted the plane we were traveling on would crash. Now, a lot of people would like to think we were scared into saying a prayer. What we did actually--we drank.