No one has ever looked cooler in front of a beach background on Zoom than Ringo Starr.
He has it all: The gold-rimmed, double-bridged sunglasses. The unbuttoned denim long-sleeve over a black T-shirt. The shaped black beard, gold earring and soul patch. The single strand of hair that droops down on his forehead, almost reminiscent of Christopher Reeve’s Superman.
And perhaps no one has ever sounded cooler talking about broccoli — yes, broccoli — than Starr, the rhythmic backbone of the most successful band ever assembled.
“I still just eat broccoli,” he says wryly through his Scouse accent of the vegetable that he once guessed made up 99 percent of his physical being. “If it comes with the meal, whatever the meal is — I had a risotto last night with mushrooms, and on the side was broccoli.”
He pauses for comedic effect: “Which I ate.”
And this is my formal introduction, in a video interview in early September, to Sir Richard Starkey, my father’s favorite drummer and my second-favorite Mr. Conductor on “Shining Time Station.”
At 86, life remains good for Starr, whose career is nothing short of an unimaginable stretch of “one of” after “one of.”
One of the most influential and celebrated drummers in rock history.
One of the most analyzed, scrutinized and imitated musicians over the last 60 years.
And, of course, one of the Beatles.
He has pushed “Peace and Love,” a personal mantra steeped in the hope for less violence and a nostalgia for a more optimistic time, during a period of deep division in America. “I can only do this,” he says, holding up two fingers to make the peace sign. “I can’t force you to do it, or anyone else. ‘Peace’ is a great word for me. I love it.”
Starr has also overcome ridicule, loss and addiction, and come out the other side as amiable and accessible as he was when he first earned first-name-only status.
“There’s all the drummers you’ve ever heard of, and then there’s Ringo. You don’t even need a last name,” says Max Weinberg, the longtime drummer for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band who befriended Starr, his childhood hero, more than 45 years ago. “There’s only one Ringo.”
Steve Lukather, a founding member of Toto who has played guitar with Starr since 2012, adds, “He’s our George Burns in many ways. The guy’s gonna live to be 200 years old and still be as funny and together as he’s always been.”
Starr’s days are still consumed by writing and recording new music. When he turns it on in front of an audience, he playfully runs onstage like a man in his 30s, lifting his knees high with each stride, dancing to the delight of the crowd. In the process, he’s still growing the range and reach of a catalogue of music that’s already touched an unfathomable number of people on Earth.
“I keep going because I keep going,” he says, crediting his vegetarian diet and a strict fitness regimen and figuring out how to “lift a weight or two” so that he can keep jumping around the stage. “I’m never going to be Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I do keep moving and walking whenever I can.”
At a time when more of his contemporaries are beginning to show their age onstage or are leaving this world altogether, there is no such sign of slowing down for Starr, who, unlike the lyric in “Photograph,” doesn’t feel old (thank you, diet and exercise) or look gray (thank you, hair dye). Instead, he is back on the road to lead Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band, the supergroup he formed nearly four decades ago. Starr, who has now played with the All-Starr Band for almost four times longer than he did with the Beatles, returns to Washington for a performance at the Anthem on Sept. 28. The show in D.C., where the Fab Four played their first U.S. concert more than 62 years ago, is part of a 10-date fall tour following the spring release of “Long Long Road,” the 22nd studio album from Starr.
So, even after more than a half-century as the world’s most famous drummer, what’s still driving him? It’s not about the money for the millionaire nor the Beatlemania that endures.
“He just likes the comfort of looking around the stage, knowing who everybody is, and feeling comfortable,” Lukather says. “He just does this for fun.”
As the virtual palm trees wave in the background, Starr acknowledges what he needs now is the same as it was then: a little help from his friends.
“I need a band. I can’t just go on with a kit of drums doing ‘Yesterday’ or ‘Photograph,’” Starr says, chuckling. “It’s what I dreamed of doing at 13, and I’m still doing it. And I still love doing it.”
There isn’t much Starr would tell his 13-year-old self about what he should do differently in life. This is, after all, the same person who was once asked whether fame and fortune had changed his life, and he responded, “No, it’s just brought me fame and fortune.”
Yet for nearly 70 years, Starr has been chasing the sound that he gave away as a teen.
His stepfather, Harry Graves, gifted him his first drum kit one Christmas, which Graves bought secondhand. The problem for the teen, Starr says now, was that “these were dirty, messy drums, and I wanted AJAX,” the British drum brand from Boosey & Hawkes known for its unique hardware. He eventually got his wish, which, in his mind, was a big mistake.
“That’s the worst decision I’ve ever made, musically, because I’ve tried for the rest of my life to get that kit back,” he remembers about what could have been. “We had a lot more depth in those days, and that’s what I always tried on my drums. That’s why I put the towels on them to get them deeper [in pitch].” He adds, “But you make some silly decisions when you’re 17.”
It would be one of the last times he made a silly decision related to music. Five years later, he left another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, to join another band called the Beatles, replacing Pete Best on drums. Months later, he was on drums for the band’s debut single, “Love Me Do.” A few years after that came the first performance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” which, amid the chaos from the screaming girls and women inside Studio 50 in Midtown Manhattan, featured the camera zooming in on Starr on his elevated drum riser.
In the roughly 16 seconds where it’s just the 23-year-old on-screen in front of a broadcast audience of more than 73 million people, the left-handed drummer with the moptop haircut — his head perpetually tilted to the left — introduced himself to the world on that right-handed Ludwig Drums kit. There was the elite swing. There were the crisp snare cracks necessary to hear “I Want to Hold Your Hand” over the bedlam. And there was the gentle, understated grin plastered across his face in what was the most important performance of his life to that point.
“His personality was so tied up in the beat that he was the great groove that held the Beatles together,” says Weinberg, who credited Starr for counseling him about finding himself as an artist when Springsteen disbanded the E Street Band for a decade. “His drumming was so crisp and so on the mark and so present that Ringo became the leader of where rock drumming was going and eventually went. He was the Big Bang.”
When the conversation veers into his approach to drumming decades later, Starr espouses a sophisticated simplicity that’s as philosophical as it is technical.
“I play with the song and with the singer. I don’t go doing fills. That is what I’m here for: to keep it in time and to fill where I think [it needs it], but not when the singer is being emotional,” he says. “That just came out of the blue for me. That’s what I do.”
On this day, on his Zoom screen with a Dominican beach in the background, Starr is in a reflective mood. He again brings up Graves — “the best stepdad in the world” — and his stepfather’s love of ‘50s straight rockers like Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly. Starr could never do that, but there was comfort in knowing from a young age he would be different on the drums.
“With straight rock, it’s bat-bat, but I can’t do that. I’m sort of like det-det-det-det — It’s got like a mini swing to it. That’s just how I play, and it’s a normal way for me to play,” he says. “I think that makes a little difference with how I play to people.”
From all his nights on the road with the All-Starr Band, Lukather has settled on a favorite part of the show: looking out at the crowd to see if Starr’s springy energy onstage after singing and bopping away at the drums has left any women feeling disappointed in their husbands and their physical shortcomings.
“After two hours onstage, he’s doing jumping jacks at the end. And you see these older women looking at their husbands like, ‘What’s your excuse, pal?’” Lukather cackles.
When the question is brought up about how much longer Starr can keep putting out new music and touring across the globe, Lukather smirks. “And do what?” he replies, noting that Starr’s wife, Barbara Bach, recognizes that the drummer is happiest when there’s something to look forward to — the next song, the next album, the next show. “He’s doing his vocal warm-ups. He’s practicing on the drums. He’s doing advanced Sudoku and … running on a treadmill for 45 minutes every day,” Lukather adds.
The past and present are always colliding for Starr. He has stretched himself by putting out two well-received country albums in the last two years, but also knows that some of the biggest pops any time he goes onstage with the All-Starr Band are reserved for “Yellow Submarine” and “Octopus’s Garden,” two of the Beatles’ hits featuring him on lead vocals. This doesn’t bother Starr, who understands how important it is to preserve bonds that people have to him and the music that spans several generations.
“A lot of my show is that I’m sort of looking at people in the audience and having a chat, and sometimes I’m so busy with what I’m doing with the person in the audience that I forget to come in on the song,” he admits. “The audience knows I love them, and I know they love me.”
He has recorded and released more than 260 songs across nearly two dozen studio albums since 1970, but not one of them had been a duet with Paul McCartney, his surviving bandmate. But about two years after Starr had an impromptu jam session on drums in 2024 with producer Andrew Watt, McCartney heard the recording and believed it had to be a song. Starr started to record the choruses for “Home to Us,” because, well, that’s what he had always done in the past. Not this time.
When the single was released last May on McCartney’s album “The Boys of Dungeon Lane,” it marked the first time the two living Beatles performed the full vocals on a song as a duo.
“[McCartney] said, ‘Oh, man, you’re sounding great. Why don’t you sing it all? We’ll do it as a double.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, OK, that’ll be a change!’” Starr says, guffawing. “With Paul and I, it’s never been like that before. It’s always been that he comes over and plays bass for me, like he has several times over the last 50 years.
“We still talk to each other, still say, ‘Love you, man,’ and we’re pals when we’re in the same country.”
Before Starr has to get back to recording a couple songs for the day and eating some more broccoli, my last question has to be about the first time I saw him play.
It was July 7, 2010, and my parents took me to see Starr celebrate his 70th birthday at Radio City Music Hall. When the house lights didn’t immediately come on at the end of the show, Starr wanted to get back to his dressing room, but his wife urged him to stay offstage for a minute. McCartney, in a full suit and skinny tie, ran onstage to perform “Birthday,” Starr found his sticks and jumped back on the drums just in time, not wanting to miss out on the fun.
Even through his sunglasses, his eyes light up at the mention of a story that’s been repeatedly shared in my family for the last 16 years. That moment mattered to Starr. It always mattered.
“It was a beautiful thing, but it was so crazy because the band didn’t tell me, none of the crew told me,” he recalls of the surprise. “And then, I just let all of that go.”
When the encore was complete, McCartney embraced the birthday boy. With a smile that stretched across Radio City Music Hall, Starr saluted the crowd with peace signs and told him he loved them, like he would for many years to come. He then quietly said a few words to himself as he was finally done for the night.
“Thank you, Lord. That was great.”
The post Why is Ringo Starr still performing at 86? Because he can. appeared first on Washington Post.
