Ringo Starr

Richard Starkey made it to the movies before he understood how a professional shoot worked. In March 1964, Richard Lester let him loose along the banks of the Thames with a hidden camera, pretending to be bored and dragging his feet in a coat three sizes too big. That melancholy walk in A Hard Day’s Night defined his public image for the next six decades: the ordinary man overwhelmed by circumstances, yet never losing his composure in front of the camera.

No pretending was needed.

His entry into The Beatles in August 1962, after the abrupt firing of Pete Best, sparked riots at The Cavern. Brian Epstein and George Martin doubted his power, to the point of bringing in session drummer Andy White for the studio recording of Love Me Do. Ringo was relegated to the tambourine. That technical humiliation shaped his signature style on the sticks. Being left-handed on a kit set up for right-handers, he attacked the toms starting with his left hand, which produced a laid-back, mathematical groove that the virtuosos of the era could not replicate.

And while John Lennon and Paul McCartney dominated press conferences with their verbal wit, British film critics turned their eyes to the drummer. His sullen face channeled the comedic tradition of British silent film, directly linked to Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin. Lester used him in Help! in 1965, making him the absolute focus of a plot centered on a sacrificial ring.

The psychedelic vaudeville escape

As the 1960 decade came to an end, his artistic ambitions turned toward independent film sets. He escaped the mold of a teen pop star to join offbeat, mid-budget productions. In 1968 he took on the role of a Mexican gardener in Candy, a satire directed by Christian Marquand. A year later he shared top billing with Peter Sellers in The Magic Christian, an adaptation of Terry Southern’s novel in which he played a tramp adopted by a nihilistic billionaire.

No one in London expected him to take the movies so seriously.

During this experimental phase, he took on any role that came his way. In 1971 he played Larry the Dwarf in 200 Motels under the direct direction of Frank Zappa. That same year he traveled to Almería to shoot the violent spaghetti western Blindman, directed by Ferdinando Baldi. There he played a dirty, ruthless bandit, completely removed from the kindly aura of British pop.

The technical experience he gained behind the spotlights led him to direct. In 1972 he directed Born to Boogie, a feature-length documentary centered on Marc Bolan and his band T. Rex. Starr helped finance the project through Apple Films, staging massive concerts at Wembley’s Empire Pool with dreamlike sequences in the gardens of John Lennon. The film brought in impressive numbers at the British box office, although music critics rejected its chaotic style.

While filming the prehistoric comedy Caveman in 1981, he met Barbara Bach. The project was a resounding critical failure, but it cemented their lasting romance after his divorce from Maureen Cox. At that point, his personal life was starting to derail due to severe addictions.

Surviving the myth without nostalgia

The creative slump of the mid-1980s coincided with excessive brandy drinking that nearly ended his career. Ringo and Bach checked into a detox clinic in Tucson together in the fall of 1988. They came out sober and without any major record deals.

So he invented a stage business model that no one had tried in corporate rock. In 1989 he founded Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band, a traveling cooperative where musicians from established bands shared the spotlight on stage. The format spared him from carrying two hours of solo vocal performance. The formula ran continuously for four decades.

At the same time, he lent his deep, raspy voice to the first two seasons of the British children's series Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends. There were 52 episodes recorded with a single static microphone. Those homey narrations introduced him to an entire generation that had never seen the Abbey Road album covers.

His long-standing love of American roots music resurfaced, fully intact, decades later. After the pioneering effort that was Beaucoups of Blues in Nashville in 1970, Starr went back in search of the deep South sound. In 2025 he released Look Up, produced entirely by T Bone Burnett, which hit No. 1 on the UK official country charts. His partnership with Burnett carried straight on into the album Long Long Road, recorded at the end of 2025 and released in April 2026 with ten live cuts recorded on analog tape.

The album features collaborations with Molly Tuttle and Billy Strings alongside a dry take on I Don’t See Me in Your Eyes Anymore, a song originally recorded by Carl Perkins in 1959. The session wrapped up at studios in Los Angeles with no digital clicks, completing the final vocal take in just forty minutes. Ringo Starr set down the sticks on the snare drum, collected the corresponding publishing royalties and switched off the tube amplifiers.