Getting high with Bob Dylan, a year in the hospital, and being one form
away from becoming a Texan. He was part of the most legendary band of all time,
but there's still a lot to Ringo Starr that has yet to be told.
In an interview with Live for Live Music, biographer Michael Seth Starr explains how
Richard Starkey ended up with the name Ringo Starr. Going by "Richy" for most of his life,
Starkey became Starr in 1957, when he joined Rory Storm & the Hurricanes,
a Liverpool band that, according to AllMusic, were even more popular than the early Beatles.
The new stage name had a simple significance, mostly stemming from
the fact that Rory Storm and Ringo Starr were both huge fans of American Westerns.
"Hey, look! It's Ringo!"
With films like "Stagecoach," in which John Wayne played "The Ringo Kid," and 1957's "Gunfight at
the O.K. Corral", which featured a character named Johnny Ringo, the snappy name was an attractive
choice for the Liverpool drummer. Starr was also quite fond of wearing rings, making "Ringo" all
the more fitting. And of course, with a last name like "Starkey," it seemed a no-brainer for the
aspiring musician to fancy it up a little and turn it into the now-iconic "Starr."
According to biographer Bob Spitz, Ringo Starr had one of the more tragic childhoods of the Beatles,
growing up the most poverty-stricken of the four. The Dingle, the rough district in Liverpool that
Starr called home, was known to be a violent neighborhood. When the drummer was only three,
his father initiated a divorce and left the family. With his father out of the picture,
Starr's mother had to desperately work any job to provide for herself and her
growing son. As Starr so fondly put it during an NPR interview -
"My mother, God bless her, she did anything from scrubbing steps to working in a food shop to
working in pubs — anything she could to support us because he forgot that part of the bargain."
Despite its challenges, the drumming legend still has fond memories of his
younger days. According to Live For Live Music, the musician grew up in
close proximity to family members who had no shortage of love to show him. It was all that
care that made Starr into the easygoing man that the world knows him as today.
Growing up, Ringo Starr had quite an unlucky streak with his health. According to Biography
and an NPR interview with Starr, the future Beatle was only six years old
when his appendix burst and he had to go in for an appendectomy. The whole
ordeal ended up with Starr contracting an internal infection called peritonitis,
a particularly dangerous diagnosis that was even more severe back in 1947.
After undergoing surgery to treat the infection, Starr stayed in the children's hospital to
recover. Things were going well for about six months, until the overexcited young boy fell
out of bed. As Starr recalled, it resulted in him ripping the stitches in his stomach,
and he had to spend another six months in the hospital for recovery. Spending all that time
out of school meant the soon-to-be drummer was horrendously behind in his studies. While he
tried to catch up with the help of tutors, his continued health setbacks kept interfering.
Just a few years after getting peritonitis, Ringo Starr had to spend another birthday bedridden by
disease. The Liverpool drummer contracted tuberculosis just before he turned 14. As
he described in his interview with NPR, the rough neighborhood that he lived in was hit particularly
hard by the disease. Fortunately, Starr was lucky to have gotten TB right around the time that the
antibiotic Streptomycin was discovered, and was promptly sent off for treatment in the country.
For the next year, Ringo lived in what he described as a huge greenhouse. Starr and the
other bedridden children were kept entertained with little activities like knitting and craft
projects. What would prove life-changing for Starr was the day that a woman came in with various
instruments and handed Starr a drum. As the Beatle would explain in an interview with France Inter:
"That's all I wanted to play — I didn't want to play piano,
I didn't want to play this, that or the other, I just wanted to play drums."
Short on money, Starr started with a makeshift kit of biscuit tins and
firewood before upgrading to a bass drum when he was 16 and then a full kit at 18 years old.
Despite being one-fourth of one of the most famous and influential bands of all time,
Ringo Starr is not often considered a technically proficient drummer.
Sweetwater reports that even Beatles producer Sir George Martin made this observation, saying:
"He's not a technical drummer. Men like Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa would run rings around him,
but he is a good solid rock drummer with a steady beat,
and he knows how to get the right sound out of his drums."
Known for his distinctive rhythm, the Liverpool native attributes his unique approach to the
fact that he is left-handed. In an interview with Conan O'Brien,
Starr described how his grandmother tried to force the left-handedness out of him
when he was younger, but it didn't stick. While he now writes with his right hand,
he performs most other activities with his left and uses a right-handed drum kit.
This mismatch informs his unconventional rhythm and his intuitive, out-of-the-box
technique. Because he was always so immersed in the music and would just play what felt right,
the Beatle would rarely be able to duplicate a drum track in the studio exactly.
"We'd put the track down and then 'OK, double that
fill' I could never do it because it just came off whenever it came off."
Once Ringo Starr discovered his love for music,
he was ready to follow that passion wherever it took him. According to an interview with Today,
the Beatles drummer nearly moved to Texas when he was around 18 years old. A huge fan
of the music that was being played across the pond, Starr was drawn to the Lone Star State
because he wanted to live next to country blues singer Lightnin' Hopkins in Houston.
At the time, the teen was looking to find work in the factories there. USA
Today reported that he even made a visit to the American consulate to start the
emigration process. Reminiscing on his efforts and why he ultimately
decided not to move, Starr explained - "They gave me a load of forms to fill in. And
I filled those in […] I filled 'em in, took 'em back, and then he gave me more forms. I gave up."
In a meeting between legends, the Beatles and Bob Dylan enjoyed the effects of cannabis
and some cheap wine in addition to each other's company. As reported on Leafly,
it was August 1964 when Dylan first suggested that the group smoke a joint in their hotel suite.
When the Fab Four admitted that they never smoked marijuana before,
Dylan was reportedly confused. He had misheard the line "I can't hide"
from the Beatles' song "I Want To Hold Your Hand" as, quote, "I get high, I get high."
As far as which bandmate was the first to try their hand at cannabis,
Ringo Starr confirmed in a 2012 interview on Conan that he was the first member to partake.
"We got high and we laughed our a---- off."
When it came to maintaining relationships through the craze of Beatlemania, things got
complicated to say the least. According to an interview with biographer Michael Seth Starr,
while infidelity was rampant among the band and their partners, possibly the most complicated
entanglement was the affair between Ringo Starr's first wife, Maureen Cox, and Beatles guitarist
George Harrison. In an interview with Starts at 60, Harrison's then-wife Pattie Boyd, recalled,
"I became aware [of the affair] when she would turn up at midnight and she'd still
be there the next day. I'd have to be pretty stupid not to notice!"
In the long run, though, the affair wasn't something that resulted in lifelong grudges,
likely because Starr had his own streak of unfaithfulness as well. The drummer
and guitarist eventually reconciled and stayed on good terms. As the mother of his children,
Cox would stay intertwined with Starr and, in 1994,
the Beatle was at her bedside when she died due to complications from leukemia.
It's no surprise that tensions were high among all of the Beatles members by the time they decided
to break up. In fact, according to The Beatles Bible, pretty much every band member had their
own "I quit" moment. While George Harrison's departure during the Let it Be sessions is
probably the most well-renowned, Starr was actually the first to walk away in 1968.
The Beatles were in the middle of recording The White Album,
but Starr was discontented with his playing and frustrated with being left out. This feeling
of tension was apparently widespread among the band. In an interview with Howard Stern,
the drummer recalls going to both McCartney and John Lennon to explain that he felt the other
three members had bonded without him, only to be told they each of them had thought the reverse.
"'I don't feel part of this,
I feel you three are so close' and he goes - 'I thought it was you three!'"
"Right."
So I said, 'F--- it, I'm off."
As described in Far Out Magazine, the Liverpool native promptly walked out,
taking his family to stay on a yacht in Sardinia. It was on this two-week
break that Starr wrote "Octopus's Garden," before receiving a telegram from his mates
expressing their appreciation for him and asking him to come back. Ultimately he did,
and when he returned to the studio his drum set was decked out in flowers by George Harrison.
With her presence long rumored as a major point of tension among the band members,
Yoko Ono has been the easy scapegoat for why the Beatles broke up. According to
biographer Michael Seth Starr, while Paul McCartney and George Harrison may not have
liked John Lennon bringing her along to the studio, Ringo Starr never really had
anything against Ono. In an interview with Parade, the drummer explained:
"I remember, she was in bed in the studio when we got to work and it was weird [...] [But they]
wanted to be in each other's company. And that was fine by me, once you knew what the situation was."
TIME reported that Starr's empathy for Ono also meant that he was the
only Beatle to fly to her immediately after Lennon's assassination in 1980.
"I said to her 'You know how - you know I know how you feel.'
And the woman straight as a die in all honesty said 'No you don't.'"
As decades passed, the two would establish a warm relationship based on mutual respect.
Rolling Stone reports that Ono described Starr as someone who, quote, "embodies peace and love" when
she attended the legendary drummer's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.
It was a few years after the Beatles broke up that Ringo Starr's alcoholism
and drug abuse really took hold, according to VC Reporter. From the mid-1970s to the late 1980s,
Starr spent much of his time under the influence. Blackouts were common,
with the drummer being unable to remember countless events, saying -
"I've got photographs of me playing all over the world, but I've absolutely no memory of it. I
played Washington with the Beach Boys — or so they tell me. But there's only a photo to prove it."
When he married Barbara Bach, the young actress also fell into that lifestyle. As
told by the New Zealand Herald, Starr at one point was drinking 16 bottles of wine a day,
and both he and Bach were snorting coke on a daily basis. In their own words,
the couple described the situation, saying -
"We used to go on long plane journeys, rent huge villas, stock up the bars, hide and get deranged."
In October 1988, the two made the decision to get help. They checked
into a rehab clinic in Arizona for five weeks. Talking to People, Bach said -
"We went into rehab because we needed desperately a change. I got used to
living at the bottom. But you get to a point where you realize, 'This isn't living.'"
Those weeks resulted in long-lasting life changes. Starr and Bach have remained sober ever since.