Cult portrait: Ringo, the most Starr of the Beatles

On February 9, 1964, the cameras of the “Ed Sullivan Show” threw the Beatles into the arms of America, and vice versa. In less than a quarter of an hour and a handful of songs delivered, as one blows one’s nose in front of the trifle of 73 million viewers, the four Englishmen become the heroes of a generation. And the one who gleans the finest harvest of panicked cries from the audience gathered in the New York studio, when he appears on the screen freshly mocking where his co-religionists smile like first communicants, is called Ringo Starr. The least cute, the least exposed. The drummer.

Since that day and that first visit from the British phenomenon daring to compete – better, conquer! – the historic nation of rock’n’roll, Ringo is king of America. He is the “cool” Beatle, almost normal, devoid of the good British manners of McCartney, the acid cynicism of Lennon and the cerebral arrogance of Harrison. The neighbor across the street, with whom we could start a band in the parental garage. Considering the virtuosity of his three colleagues, he seems to play without arrogance and sing like everyone else. Finally a Beatles we can look like! Nothing could be further from the truth, but this feeling of apparent normality will make Ringo paradoxically unique among the Beatles.

Ringo, president!

In a few months, the Ludwig drum brand, on which he hits, becomes number 1 in the United States – it will remain so for twenty years. “I Love Ringo!” pins sell better than those of Paul, George and John. The young Bonnie Jo Mason, not yet famous under the name of Cher, composes a vibrant “Ringo, I Love You!”, while the Young World Singers call for “Ringo for President”. “Because he is committed to peace,” explains the cover of the Decca 45 rpm as the 1964 electoral campaign begins.

Sixty years later, the re-elected president only shares a rough haircut with the amiable Beatle. No matter, Ringo is still there, still cool. He even released a new album stuck in the style of flat-out country rock, but solid, helped in his work by the highly respected T-Bone Burnett. Ringo is 84 years old, he sings and this is his… 21^e sing alone!

“Look Up” will not revolutionize the music of 2025, neither artistically nor commercially. But it has the merit of putting the spotlight back on the career of Richard Starkey, the Beatle whose life after the group has probably been most easily forgotten. He was even the first of the four to publish a solo album aimed at the general public! In March 1970, a month before the official death of the Beatles and the release of the first McCartney, the drummer turned singer offered “Sentimental Journey”, a catalog of covers from the 1920s largely produced in Los Angeles where he took up residence. Six months later, he does it again with “Beaucoups (sic) of Blues,” recorded in Nashville, the Mecca of country music.

Already, he asserts his taste for American folklore and shows that he has no other ambitions than his pleasure and that, possibly, of his audience. The critics will be merciless, who will hold up these admittedly average albums as definitive proof that, decidedly, Ringo was the least brilliant of the four, that he was very lucky to come across them and that they made him sing the loudest – about “With a Little Help of my Friends”, “with the help of my friends”, CQFD

Ringo won’t care. In the general disarray that followed the acrimonious end of the Beatles, too many people were choosing sides, playing one against the other, amplifying the mischief and betting on the losers. He knew perfectly well his always essential role, that of a binder without which the egos would never have come together, neither musically nor humanly. He was the source of swing, the golden ear, the champion of resourcefulness capable of inventing a fluid roll and transforming into a pop song the complex measures, inspired by Indian music, that George Harrison proposed to him. The bridge of “Here Comes the Sun” owes everything to him.

This “social” talent of Ringo, this pacifist good nature, will be his strength and his weakness. The only member of the Beatles to have never been permanently angry with any other, he collaborated during the decade on their multiple projects. On records and on stage with Harrison for his “Concert for Bangladesh”, in the studio with Lennon and his “Plastic Ono Band” and even on his third personal effort with the hated McCartney, invited to the composition of “Ringo”. Bingo! Of the ex-Beatles, in 1974 he was the one who sold the most records, a million in the United States alone! And will achieve the never again reissued feat of bringing together on the same album (but not at the same time in the studio) the contributions of Paul, John and George. Who remembers it? Not many people.

A hedonist in California

It must be said that this love of partying had a nasty downside. The person concerned, who had learned from an early age to raise his elbow in the pubs of Liverpool, had found in the Californian hedonism of the 70s and 80s something to push the envelope even further. He even founded a club, the Hollywood Vampireswhere Alice Cooper, Keith Moon and John Lennon pointed out. Goal of the game? Drink. As Ringo will admit, “we were no longer musicians dabbling in alcohol and drugs but junkies trying to make music. I lost years of my life in a blackout.”

After 1974, Ringo’s music was only as good as the covers of his records, which were totally creepy. Flashy soft rock, sad disco, soft soul… The millionaire chooses his studios according to their locations, if possible in the Bahamas, and his musicians according to their endurance to follow him at the end of the night. That said, the drummer-singer’s production is no less irrelevant than his former comrades at that time – punk and new wave made “old” rockers not yet in their forties obsolete, up until the Who and the Rolling. Stones…

At Yoko Ono’s bedside

And then, John Lennon was assassinated in December 1980. Ringo would be the only Beatle to jump on a plane to go to Yoko Ono’s bedside. But the shock will not help him to surface: it will be necessary to wait until the end of the decade for him and his wife to join a detoxification center. In 1992, remembering that he was never as good as a conductor and showman, he created his All Starr Band for tours that included Montreux Jazz – he even released an official recording. Produced by Don Was, “Time Takes Time” returned to great success that year.

His following albums will be collective, inviting popular voices of the moment or niche artists happy to rub shoulders with the cult of Ringo. “Look Up” thus invites Alison Krauss, a big contemporary name in quite urban folk having played with Robert Plant, but also Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle, 100% bluegrass that sticks to the sole. No doubt the old kid from Liverpool finds there the distant echoes of skiffle that his stepfather played with him on Sundays, this broke version of country that little English people invented while dreaming of America.

What to do when you’ve conquered it at the age of 24? Replay your memories. Have fun. Give some. Ringo for President!

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