Beatle Ringo Starr admits he only likes to be on drums when there is an audience
Ringo Starr has insisted he got by with help from his friends when it comes to drumming.
The Beatle says he didn’t become a top drummer through practice, but simply by constant performing with pals. The Fab Four beat man described prepping moves at his home alone as “boring” and never took lessons.
Ringo, 84, admitted that his work behind the kit improved because he just went out and played shows. And at that started as a teenager working in a school equipment factory playing with pals to workers during lunch breaks. Asked whether he spent hours in his bedroom or having lessons to become so good behind the kit, Ringo confessed: “I didn’t. I hate practicing.
“I hated sitting there. I tried it when I first got the kit upstairs in the back room like in all those movies that were made. And it was the most boring thing ever.
“I did all my learning with other musicians, other bands. I was lucky because there were a lot of us around and we weren’t all great players. We were all learning.
“So I learned everything with everyone else at that time in Liverpool.”
Ringo got lucky by having pals who loved to do jam sessions during lunchtimes at their local factory.
“But I was lucky in the factory. The guy who lived next door to me in the street worked in the factory. He was Eddie Miles, a great
guitarist. He’s just one of those guys, who could play anything. And my best friend Roy had made a tea chest bass and I had a snare
drum and brushes. “And we used to play to the men at lunchtime in the basement. And that’s how I started. And now look at me.”
Ringo recalled to AXS TV in the US how he had a great well respected role as a drummer with a bigger band than The Beatles in the early 1960s.
Ringo did the rhythms for Rory Storm And The Hurricanes, who were Liverpool’s top act with bigger audiences and respect than John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Pete Best.
But Ringo boasted that he adored their work and would always be in the audience cheering them at gig.
“I loved them from Germany where we met really. We were playing as Rory and Hurricanes and the Beatles on the same club. And I loved John, Paul and George. I just loved that front line and I’d be there for the last gig just sitting there watching the front line requesting songs.
“So when they asked me to join I had no hesitation, but people did say, ‘are you going to leave Rory?; I said, ‘yeah, yeah, I’m going to leave and make a step up”
Ringo and his All Starr Band have announced a run of autumn tour dates, built around a six date residency at The Venetian in Las Vegas.
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