Home	Ringo Starr Profile, Detailed Biography, Facts	ROCK FASHION SHOP T-Shirt, Clothing, Sweatshirt, Outdoor The Beatles T-Shirts Rock&Roll T-Shirts Music T-Shirt Shop T-Shirts Sweatshirts Long Sleeve T-Shirts Women's T-Shirts POSTER SHOP 2Pac The Beatles The Doors The Grateful Dead Jimi Hendrix Michael Jackson Janis Joplin Led Zeppelin Madonna Nirvana Music Poster Shop Music Styles: Blues Dance / Club Music Jazz Music New Wave Pop Music Rap & Hip Hop R&B & Soul Rock Music Vintage Posters
The Beatles Main Page Biography Discography Group Members Beatles Members as instrumentalists and composers Detailed Infos about Beatles Group Members: John Lennon Biography, Group Career, Solo Career, his death Paul McCartney Biography, Group Career, Solo Career, as Painter George Harrison Biography, Group Career, Solo Career, his death Ringo Starr Biography, Group Career, Solo Career IMAGES: The Beatles Picture Gallery Next: Johnny Cash Previous: Tupac Music Legends: Bob Dylan The Grateful Dead Jimi Hendrix Pink Floyd The Rolling Stones	RINGO STARR Ringo Starr: Rock Musician / Actor / Beatles Group Member Born: 7 July 1940 Birthplace: Liverpool, England Best Known As: One of The Beatles Group Members Richard Starkey, (born July 7, 1940) known by his stage name, Ringo Starr, is a popular British musician, best known as drummer for The Beatles. Ringo is known for his reliable, steady drumming and innovative fills. His everyman personality made him an easy fit with the other Beatles. Starr married Maureen Cox in 1965, and the couple has three children, Zak, Jason, and Lee. He divorced Maureen in 1975, and married actress Barbara Bach (most famous for her role as the "Bond Girl" in The Spy Who Loved Me) in 1977. Ringo Starr was born as Richard Parkin and later became Richard Starkey after his mother divorced and re-married. Richard Starkey was raised in the working class Dingle section of Liverpool. He went through two serious illnesses as a child and spent a total of three years in hospital, thereby falling behind badly in school. After Ringo's last visit to the hospital, at age 15, he could barely read and write. Like the other Beatles, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney, young Ritchie also eventually became caught up in Liverpool's Skiffle craze. After starting his own group with Eddie Miles called The Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group in 1957, he joined The Raving Texans in 1959, a quartet which played while Rory Storm sang. During this time, he got the nickname Ringo, because of the rings he wore, and because it sounded "cowboyish", and the last name Starr so that his drum solos could be billed as "Starr Time". Ringo first met the Beatles in Hamburg, in October 1960, while they were performing with what had become Rory Storm and The Hurricanes. When the Beatles removed Pete Best as their drummer on August 16, 1962, Ringo was their choice to replace him. Although, Rory Storm was magnanimous about the theft of his drummer, Pete Best fans were upset, holding vigils outside Pete's house and rioting at the Cavern Club, shouting "Pete Best forever! Ringo never!" Ringo Starr's Career in The Beatles Although some have tried to downplay his contributions to the band, Starr's drumming style played a major role in the overall sound of The Beatles. This is largely attributable to the fact that Ringo is left-handed yet played a right-handed kit; his tendency to therefore lead with the left hand helped produce his own distinctive drumming style. Many drummers list Starr as a major influence including Max Weinberg of The E Street Band, Liberty DeVitto of Billy Joel's band, Phil Collins, and others. According to Collins, Ringo is "vastly underrated. The drum fills on the video 'A Day in the Life' are very complex things. You could take a great drummer today and say, 'I want it like that.' They wouldn't know what to do." In his extensive survey of The Beatles recording sessions, Mark Lewisohn confirmed that Starr was both proficient, and remarkably reliable and consistent -- according to Lewisohn, there were less than a dozen occasions in the Beatles' eight-year recording career where session 'breakdowns' were caused by Starr making a mistake, while the vast majority of takes were stopped due to mistakes by the other three members. Starr has commented that the most difficult drumming he has ever performed was on the Beatles song "Rain." John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison have all said that Ringo was the best rock and roll drummer in the world, although when asked in an interview once "Is Ringo Starr the best drummer in the world?" Lennon quipped "He's not the best drummer in the Beatles!" This was in reference to the White Album song "Back In The USSR", in which Paul was forced to do the drumming; Ringo had stormed out earlier and didn't return for two weeks. Paul was also on the drums in "The Ballad of John and Yoko" and "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)", since only Lennon and McCartney were available. Ringo's easygoing, everyman personality played a major role in the Beatles' success, combining very effectively, Lennon's wit, McCartney's charm, and Harrison's quiet seriousness. With these qualities The Beatles became the "Fab Four". Ringo generally sang at least one song on each studio album, as part of establishing the vocal personality of all four members. In some cases Lennon or McCartney would write the lyrics and melody especially for him, as Lennon did with "With a Little Help from My Friends", from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and as McCartney did for "Yellow Submarine" from Revolver. Often these melodies would be deliberately limited to take into account Starr's vocal range—most of "With A Little Help From My Friends" is sung within the space of five notes. Of all the Beatles, Ringo did the least songwriting. The Beatles explained that when he would present a song as a contender for an album cut, the song would (to them) be a clear knockoff of another popular song, but Ringo would not recognize the similarities until they pointed it out. He did, however, write "Don't Pass Me By" (on The White Album) and also, "Octopus's Garden" on the album Abbey Road, albeit with quite a bit of help from Harrison. The former continued to show the taste for country music that Ringo had brought into the band on earlier albums, such as on Rubber Soul's co-write "What Goes On." In addition Ringo contributed a number of lyrical ideas and song titles to Lennon and McCartney, although usually unintentionally. One of the most famous examples of this was the title for the band's first motion picture, A Hard Day's Night. Starr had emerged from the studio after a long day of work and commented to the others that it had been a "hard day's..." - before he finished his sentence, Starr noticed that it was now night time and added "night". Lennon and McCartney liked the twisted phrase enough that they decided to use it as the title for the still untitled movie the band had been filming. Another example is the title to "Tomorrow Never Knows." Ringo Starr's Solo Career