Ringo Starr revealed why he refused to write a memoir, even though he’s been asked to pen one many times.
The drummer said the idea bored him because he’d be expected to focus on events starting in 1962 when he joined the Beatles.
“That’s all they want to know,” Starr told USA Today in a recent interview. “That’s why I got fed up. They offered me lots of money over the last many years, and I said, ‘I’m not doing a book because it’d be three volumes before I get to that year.’ … I have just never found interest in it. I don’t want to do Ringo the drummer, because we’re all a bit more than that.”
But Starr was happy to look back at some of his earliest group adventures, recalling the time the Beatles opened for English singer Helen Shapiro. “She had a big band behind her,” he said. “I asked one guy in that band how old he was, and he said 40. And I said, ’40 – get off, and you’re still doing it?’ Well, that’s how you feel when you’re younger.”
He went on to recall the Beatles’ final show on the roof of their Apple Corps headquarters in London in 1969. “I love ‘Get Back,’” he said of one of the songs they played. “I never played to the whole song [in the studio]. Anyway, all the bits we were writing, it was regular rock. Up there on the roof, it was this other pattern. I thought, ‘Why did I get to that? How did I get to that?’”
Starr also discussed celebrating his musical achievements with his All Starr Band, which is currently touring North America with further dates in the fall. Noting he was fortunate to be able to recruit members for the group, he added, “I can’t just do songs with me and my drums.”
Beatles Albums Ranked
From the cheery ‘Please Please Me’ to the kinda dreary ‘Let It Be,’ we rank all of the group’s studio LPs.