It’s now been more than six decades since the Liverpool band shot to fame
Ringo Starr joined The Beatles in 1962(Image: Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
Ringo Starr has revealed one thing he “always wanted” even though everything “worked out” for The Beatles. The Fab Four’s drummer, whose real name is Sir Richard Starkey, grew up in Dingle and replaced Pete Best in the band back in 1962.
Before that, Ringo had been in a number of Liverpool bands – most notably Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. The Beatles, famously also made up of the late John Lennon, George Harrison, and Sir Paul McCartney, went on to international fame.
But the 84-year-old musician has since said despite their success, he “always wanted” a different singing voice. Sir Ringo said while he can “hold a tune”, he found that everything “worked out” for them all because of the songwriting talent within the band, the Sunday Times reports.
He told the publication: “Well, I always wanted to be someone else. Like Jerry Lee [Lewis] or someone! I mean, I can hold a tune, as long as it’s in my key. And it just worked out with The Beatles because John and Paul were great writers.
“That’s what made us. And I’d get one song. And a couple of them were really good, you know, ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’ and ‘Yellow Submarine’. They’re still huge and I still do them on tour. They wrote me a lot of really nice songs.”
The Beatles pose for the press before performing on stage at the A.B.C. Lincoln. November 28, 1963(Image: Mirrorpix)
The ‘Sentimental Journey’ hitmaker has just released his 20th studio album ‘Look Up’, and as he and his band ‘Ringo Starr and Friends’ continue to tour, he admitted that it is still “fun” to him but he often tends to perform the classics on the road rather than playing newer tracks for his fans.
He said: “The band sounds great. We have a fun time and we just do it. In the late nineties, I would put in, like, two or three from the new album, and you could feel the room empty. It happens to everybody.
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“I was with [Sir Elton John’s] mother at Wembley Stadium. He came on and said, ‘I’m only going to do the new album’. Me and his mother left after three tracks because we didn’t know them.”
More recently, Ringo joined Paul McCartney on stage for the final night of his ‘Got Back’ tour at The O2 in London in December. Now more than 60 years on from when the band first formed, The Beatles are also nominated for two Grammys.
The Fab Four returned to the charts last year with the track ‘Now and Then’ that was completed with the aid of artificial intelligence (AI). Released last November, ‘Now and Then’, featured cleaned-up John Lennon vocals from the 1970s and 1995 guitar recordings from George Harrison alongside new work from Sir Paul and Sir Ringo.
The vocals are taken from a demo recorded by John at his home in New York’s Dakota Building. The track is nominated for Record of the Year and Best Rock Performance at the Grammys which will take place in February 2025.