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, including his current home city of Beverly Hills, since 2008. During a recent press conference for his reflective new Americana album, the T Bone Burnett-produced Long Long Road, he revealed that before getting the fateful invitation 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 Beverly Hills birthday bash, just three days after America’s own big birthday, we had to ask how his life and career might have panned out if he’d gone down what he has called “another path I could have taken,” and had actually emigrated to the U.S. of A. back in 1958.
“You never know, do you? I’d probably be queuing up to see Ringo playing!” quipped Starr, who just wrapped the spring leg of his All-Starr Band tour at Los Angeles’s Greek Theatre. He speculated, “I’d be doing rock/pop,” even though his original inspiration for wanting to relocate to Houston had been Texan blues great Lightnin’ Hopkins, but the scrappy, plucky, lucky musician always knew that no matter where he ended up, he’d be playing the drums — or at least a cymbal or snare.
“I came in with skiffle, which was with brushes and you learn how to play, and then went to just a snare drum,” Starr said of his humble beginnings. “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 cymbals! And we went on anyway! We were a lot looser in those days.”
Among the illustrious performers at this year’s Peace & Love Birthday Celebration were several of Starr’s Long Long Road studio players, including Molly Tuttle, Sarah Jarosz, Daniel Tashian, Colin Linden, David Mansfield, Ketch Secor, Jeff Picker, and Gregg Bissonette. “Before Ringo was in Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Rory Storm called his band the Texans. So, we’ve been calling this band the Texans, because I just thought it was the greatest name for a band ever,” producer Burnett declared in his introduction, in a full-circle way connecting the celebration to the 18-year-old Starr’s American dream.
“The Texans” then took the stage to perform Ringo and Beatles classics like “Drive My Car,” “Act Naturally,” “Octopus’s Garden,” and, of course, “Birthday.” Starr joined in for that finale, along with his wife Barbara Bach and famous friends like Toto’s Steve Lukather, actor Ed Begley Jr., the Cult/Guns N’ Roses drummer Matt Sorum, and Starr’s favorite drummer of all time, Jim Keltner, while guests like superstar songwriter Diane Warren, rock photographer Henry Diltz, current Rolling Stones drummer Steve Jordan, and even Purple Rain star Apollonia Kotero looked on.
See highlights from the event below!
