Ringo Starr has lived in America for more than 50 of his  86 years, and he has held his annual Peace & Love Birthday Celebration in various U.S. locales, most recently his current home city of Beverly Hills, since 2008. During a press conference for his reflective new Americana album, the T Bone Burnett-produced Long Long Road, he revealed that before getting the fateful call from Brian Epstein to join the Beatles, he’d seriously considered moving to Texas at age 18.

So, when Starr spoke with Lyndsanity at this year’s birthday bash, just three days after America’s own big birthday, we had to ask how he thinks his life, and his career, might have panned out if he’d actually emigrated to the U.S. back in 1958.

“You never know, do you? I’d probably be queuing up to see Ringo playing,” quipped Starr, who just wrapped his All-Starr Band tour at Los Angeles’s Greek Theatre. But he knew that no matter where he ended up, he’d be playing the drums. And the scrappy, plucky, lucky musician would be making do, in any situation.

“I’d be doing rock/pop,” he said. “I came in with skiffle, which was with brushes and you learn how to play, and then went to just a snare drum. In fact, with the Beatles even, at the Cavern [in Liverpool] one time, everything turned up, all the instruments and the amps — but no drums, just the symbols! And we went on anyway! We were a lot looser in those days.”

Among the players at this year’s Peace & Love Birthday Celebration were members of Starr’s Long Long Road band, including Molly Tuttle, Sarah Jarosz, Daniel Tashian, Colin Linden, David Mansfield, Ketch Secor, Jeff Picker, and Gregg Bissonette. They were fittingly introduced by Burnett at “The Texans,” which the producer called “the greatest name for a band ever.” See highlights from the event below.