The Quiet Beatle Who Wouldn’t Quit
Ringo Starr was the last Beatle hired, almost the first one fired, and the one John Lennon worried about the most. However, against all of the odds—childhood illnesses, blackout benders, near-fatal car crashes, and more—he survived.
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1. He Was The One Lennon Worried About
John Lennon, the Beatles’ co-founder, once said that Ringo was the Beatle he worried about most if the band ever fell apart. To Ringo fans, it seemed like a strange thing to say about the apparently cheerful drummer. But Lennon had watched Ringo up close for nearly a decade—and he had reason to be worried.
2. He Was Born In A Dickensian Slum
Richard Starkey (who rock and roll fans know as Ringo Starr) drummed his first beat on July 7, 1940, in a Liverpool district called the Dingle. His parents were both confectioners, but his neighborhood—one of the oldest, poorest corners of the city—was far from sweet. Biographer Bob Spitz later called the place “a Dickensian chronicle of misfortune”.
He wasn’t wrong.
3. His Father Walked Out Early
Big Ritchie, as everyone called Starr’s father, preferred pubs to parenting. He would vanish for days at a time, drinking and dancing while his wife stayed home with their only child. The marriage collapsed when Starr was three, and the divorce followed within a year. After that, his father visited maybe three times. Total.
Ringo later said he had “no real memories” of him. Thankfully, his mother picked up the slack.
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4. His Mother Held Everything Together
Starr’s mother, Elsie Gleave, was determined to provide for him. Even with her ex-husband’s support payments coming in at 30 shillings a week, it wasn’t enough to feed a child—much less a sickly one. She scrubbed houses, pulled pints, and served as a barmaid all to provide for Starr. Protective as his mother was, however, she couldn’t keep him safe from everything.
5. He Fell Into A Coma
Most children get appendicitis and bounce back in a week. Ringo Starr, however, got appendicitis, then peritonitis, and then slipped into a coma. Starr’s doctors weren’t sure he’d come out of it at all. Then, a few days later, he opened his eyes. Even so, his recovery would take a full year—12 months away from home, his mother, and anything resembling a normal childhood.
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6. He Was Like Lazarus
When young Starr was finally well enough to return home, he got a hero’s (or rockstar’s) welcome. Back at his primary school, his classmates greeted him with a nickname that would prove more fitting than they could have known: Lazarus, after the biblical figure who came back from the grave. However, his time away from school wasn’t without consequence.
By age eight, he still couldn’t read. He didn’t have as much time to catch up as he thought.
7. He Got Sick—Again
Just as Starr was finally catching up to his peers—thanks to twice-weekly tutoring from a neighbor—his body betrayed him again. At 13, he contracted tuberculosis and was shipped off to a sanatorium for two full years. By the time he came home, his schooling was effectively over. At least, his official schooling.
He learned something else in that sanitorium that would change his life.
8. He Banged A Cabinet With A Cotton Bobbin
Hospital staff at the sanatorium tried to keep the children occupied by encouraging them to form a band. Starr’s instrument of choice? The cabinet next to his bed which he would beat with a makeshift mallet—a cotton bobbin wrapped to one end of a stick. And that’s where it all started. “I never wanted anything else from there on,” Starr later said. “Only the drums”.
9. His Stepfather Gave Him A Drum Kit
In 1954, Ringo Starr got a stepfather when his mother married a man named Harry Graves who would encourage his love for music. Graves played big-band records by Dinah Shore and Sarah Vaughan for young Starr. Then, on Christmas Day 1957, he gave Starr a second-hand drum kit with a cymbal made from a rubbish-bin lid.
“He was great,” Starr later said. “I learned gentleness from Harry”.
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10. He Was A Little Drummer Boy
Starr’s drumming obsession had started earlier than anyone even recognized. Every year, in the streets of working-class Liverpool, he would march in the Orange Day parades carrying a tin drum. The little drummer boy proudly beat the batter-head, giving his hometown a preview of the legendary concerts that were soon to come.
But first he would have to grind his way to the top.
11. He Just Wanted To Stay Warm
With a spotty education thanks to childhood health problems, Ringo Starr struggled to find work. In fact, he was so hard up that he tried working for British Railways because it came with a warm “employer-issued suit”. Unfortunately, he wasn’t quite up to the job and he was ultimately laid off after failing a physical. While collecting unemployment benefits, he sought other work.
His next job wasn’t much better.
12. He Dodged The Navy
Starr’s next job saw him serving drinks on a day boat that ran from Liverpool to North Wales. However, he got, well, wet feet. The Royal Navy was still conscripting young men, and Starr got it into his head that his seafaring experience would mark him as prime material. So, instead of waiting for a conscription letter, he quit his job.
There was, after all, only one job that he really wanted.
13. He Practiced On Biscuit Tins
By 1956, Ringo Starr had found steady employment as an apprentice machinist with Henry Hunt and Son. There he met Roy Trafford, who introduced him to skiffle—the homemade, washboard-and-tea-chest sound sweeping British youth at the time. They started rehearsing songs in the factory cellar during lunch breaks, with Trafford on guitar and Starr banging biscuit tins and slapping the backs of chairs.
It wasn’t rock and roll—but it did rock.
14. He Got A New Name
Most Beatles fans think that the name “Ringo” comes from Starr’s first name, “Richard”. The truth, however, is that Starr got the name “Ringo” because of all the rings he would wear. With a name like that, however, he needed a better surname. Eventually, he landed on “Starr” because it suggested American country music—a genre he’d always loved.
He could finally promote his drum solos with the line: “Starr Time”.
15. He Was Bigger Than The Beatles…Once
Before he ever joined the Beatles, Ringo Starr was already a working musician. And a better paid one at that. As the drummer for Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, he had top billing at a concert in Hamburg and drew in more ticket revenue than the Beatles. In fact, when the Hurricanes arrived at the Kaiserkeller in 1960, the scrappy young Beatles were the opening act.
All of that, of course, was about to change.
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16. He Almost Stayed In Germany
During those Hamburg nights, another musician saw what the Beatles eventually would. Tony Sheridan, a British singer working the German club circuit, was so impressed by Starr’s drumming that he tried to poach him from the Hurricanes with a cushy residency offer. Starr didn’t bite at Sheridan’s apple, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t take another offer.
If it ever came…
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17. He Was Better Than Best
The summer of 1962 changed everything. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison (the members of the Beatles) had decided their original drummer, Pete Best, wasn’t best after all. But they knew who was: Ringo Starr. A simple phone call on August 14, 1962 was all it took and Starr became a Beatle. Not everyone loved the move.
Two days later, Beatles manager Brian Epstein had the unenviable job of firing Best. "The boys want you out and Ringo in," he told him.
18. He Caused A Riot
Pete Best was popular in Liverpool, and his fans took his ouster from the Beatles personally. To show their support for Best, Beatles fans gathered outside his house chanting “Pete forever! Ringo never!” Then things turned ugly. The mob flattened manager Brian Epstein’s car tires and cornered Harrison outside of a club and left him with a black eye.
Starr had his work cut out for him.
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19. He Did Not Impress
Angry fans weren’t Starr’s only problem. At his first proper recording session, producer George Martin watched Starr trying to play percussion and drums simultaneously. Suffice to say, he wasn’t impressed. When Starr returned for the second session—the one that produced “Love Me Do”—Martin brought in another drummer, Andy White, and demoted Starr to tambourine.
Martin later admitted his fault, saying, “I simply didn’t know what Ringo was like and I wasn’t prepared to take any risks”.
United Press International, photographer unknown, Wikimedia Commons
20. He Thought He Was Done
Sitting in the recording studio with a tambourine in his hand, Ringo Starr could only think one thing: “That’s the end. They’re doing a Pete Best on me”. He had been with the band for weeks, and already he was getting the feeling that he would be busking on a London street corner before the next album was out. He could not have been more wrong.
21. He Lived In Nightclubs For Three Years
“I lived in nightclubs for three years. It used to be a non-stop party”. That was Starr’s own summary of the early Beatlemania era. He had inherited his parents’ love of dancing—both Elsie and Big Ritchie had been ballroom regulars before their split—and he made the most of it. But, even if he was living like a rockstar, he was still just a drummer boy from the Dingle.
And proud of it.
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22. He Demanded His Wages In Cash
Even at the height of Beatlemania, with millions of fans screaming his name and millions of pounds flowing through his multiple bank accounts, Ringo Starr never forgot where he came from. And, more importantly, all of the lessons he had learned there. Even as one of the most famous rockstars in the world, Starr still collected his pay in a brown envelope at the end of every week.
Not all of his childhood habits were good.
23. He Had A Hard Day’s Night
When the Beatles made their film debut in A Hard Day’s Night, audiences expected four pretty boys mugging their way through a teen flick. Instead, what they got was Ringo Starr delivering rib-busting “deadpan one-liners” and a surprisingly nuanced and subtle performance. Starr, however, had fooled the critics. Or, at least, the film’s director had.
24. He Couldn’t Get Through His Lines
Critics and audiences alike raved about Starr’s performance in A Hard Day’s Night in particular. However, it had all been a camera trick. The films’ director Richard Lester later confessed that he had to shoot most of Starr’s evocative non-speaking sequences because Starr couldn’t act. “I’d been drinking all night,” Starr later revealed. “I was incapable of saying a line”.
He was never shy with having a good time.
25. He Was The First Beatle To Get High
While staying in New York, the Beatles met Bob Dylan for the first time—and Dylan came bearing gifts. Specifically, the herbal kind. Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison hesitated before taking the weed. Ringo Starr, on the other hand, eagerly accepted, making him the first Beatle to ever take a puff of the old Peruvian parsley.
His health was about to let him down again anyway.
Rowland Scherman, Wikimedia Commons
26. His Tonsils Took Him Out
In mid-1964, just before the Beatles were set to start a worldwide tour, Starr’s health took a drastic turn. He fell ill with a high fever, pharyngitis, and tonsillitis—all at once. While he recovered, a 24-year-old session drummer named Jimmie Nicol stepped in for five shows. Starr watched from his sickbed, gripped by an old fear that the Beatles would drum on without him.
He had every reason to be afraid.
27. He Hid Behind His Drums
In 1965, just before a Beatles concert in Montreal, Starr’s phone rang. The voice on the other end issued a chilling promise: he was going to be cut down on stage. Most performers would have canceled the show. Starr, however, opted for a more creative solution. He repositioned his cymbals vertically around his kit—hoping the brass might block whatever was coming. Fortunately, nothing did.
Vern Barchard, Wikimedia Commons
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28. He Had A Number One Hit
Ringo Starr still feared that the Beatles would, one day, replace him. But, without him, they wouldn’t have had some of their most iconic hits. “Yellow Submarine”, the whimsical sing-along off 1966’s Revolver, featured Starr as the lead vocalist. In fact, it might have been that small taste of frontman glory that made Starr do something he never thought he would.
29. He Quit The Band First
Ironically, Starr was the first Beatle to officially quit the band. By 1968, recording sessions for the White Album had become unbearable. McCartney had grown increasingly critical of his drumming. Lennon was inattentive…Yoko Ono was always present. After one particularly bruising session in which McCartney harshly criticized his playing, Starr did what no one expected the cheerful one to do—he walked out.
It was the best thing for him at the time.
30. He Played For His Food
Fresh out of the Beatles, Ringo Starr took his family to Sardinia and stayed on a boat that actor Peter Sellers had loaned him. But it wasn’t all blue waters and seashells. When the chef served octopus, Starr politely refused to eat it. Instead of getting upset, the ship’s captain saw an opportunity. He was about to inspire a groundbreaking song in rock and roll.
31. He Got Touchy Over Tentacles
Seeing as though Starr wouldn’t eat the octopus, the captain decided to tell him about how octopi gather shiny objects from the seabed to decorate small gardens around their dens. Starr was enchanted. By the end of that Mediterranean afternoon, he had written most of “Octopus's Garden” on a guitar, somewhere off the coast of Sardinia.
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32. He Made Nice With His Bandmates
Two weeks after he stormed out, Starr decided to return. When he walked back into the studio, he found his drum kit transformed. Harrison had covered the entire setup in flowers—an extravagant peace offering from a band that, for all its dysfunction, had clearly missed him more than they had let on. And that song he wrote in his two-week hiatus? It landed on the Beatles’ Abbey Road.
33. He Got Kicked Off A Farm
In the spring of 1970, the Beatles were on the rocks and a permanent break up seemed inevitable. In an effort to save the band, Starr’s bandmates sent him north to Scotland to plead with McCartney to rejoin. Starr flew out to the pastoral locale, sat down with McCartney, and tried his best to make his case. For his part, McCartney listened politely.
Then he kicked Starr off the farm.
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34. He Was The Breakout Star
When the Beatles first broke up, in the early 1970s, it looked like Ringo Starr would be the breakout, well, star. His 1973 album Ringo spawned two American number-one singles: “Photograph”, which he co-wrote with Harrison, and a cover called “You’re Sixteen”. In addition to that, he racked up seven consecutive top-ten hits.
But he couldn’t keep the beat forever.
35. He Couldn’t Get Signed
With each of the Beatles going off on their own, they had to prove that they could sell records with only their name on the cover. At first, Starr recorded a string of hits—but it wasn’t enough to prove his solo-act worthiness. Despite his success, EMI Records—the label that had launched the Beatles—became the first record company to reject a solo Beatle when they showed Starr the door.
Then he fell in with the wrong crowd.
36. He Was A Hollywood Vampire
By the mid-1970s, Ringo Starr had fallen in with a loose drinking society in Los Angeles that called itself the Hollywood Vampires. The membership roster read the Hall of Fame: Harry Nilsson, Keith Moon, and even John Lennon during his “lost weekend” period. They met. They drank. They mostly didn’t make music. As Starr later put it: “We weren't musicians dabbling in [junk]. Now we were junkies dabbling in music”.
37. He Was Always In Glasses
Of all the spirits Starr and his fellow Vampires worked through in the 1970s, one became their signature: the Brandy Alexander. And the benders were legendary. Photographs from the period show Starr in dark glasses so heavily tinted that they seemed welded to his face—a permanent shield for his bloodshot eyes and morning light.
It blinded him to what came next.
38. His Marriage Couldn’t Survive Him
Ringo Starr had married his first wife, Maureen Cox, before he became a famous Beatle. She had been a teenage hairdresser from Liverpool when he was just a cheerful drummer from the Dingle. But, by 1975, after a decade of benders, blackouts, and infidelities, Cox had had enough and filed for divorce. Not even he wanted to be around himself.
39. He Said The Worst Things About Himself
In the years that followed, Starr didn’t bother sugar-coating his behavior toward Cox. He described himself, bluntly and without qualification, as a heavy drinker, a man who mistreated his wife, and a father who wasn’t there. He wasn't asking for forgiveness. He was just telling the truth. And the truth hurt.
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40. His Sons Resented Him
Two of Starr’s sons, Zak and Jason, followed their father into drumming. Zak even picked up sticks for The Who. But neither was particularly grateful for the inheritance. Jason once put it plainly: “Being Ringo’s son is the biggest drag in my life. It’s a total pain”. The cycle of Big Ritchie was repeating itself, one generation later.
41. His Health Failed Him Again
In April 1979, Ringo Starr collapsed in agony. The peritonitis that had nearly ended him at six was back—only this time, more than three decades later, several feet of his intestine were beyond saving. Doctors at the Princess Grace Hospital in Monte Carlo operated on April 28. They cut out what was destroyed, sewed him back together, and hoped for the best.
He still had a life to live.
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42. He Met A Bond Girl
Following his health scare, Starr was determined to get back on the silver screen. He signed on for a prehistoric comedy called Caveman—a film widely considered one of his worst career decisions. The movie itself was indefensible. However, it was where he met Barbara Bach, a former Bond girl who had played opposite Roger Moore in The Spy Who Loved Me.
Their relationship almost ended before it began.
43. He Survived A Crash
On May 19, 1980, just months into their relationship, Starr and Bach had a dangerous brush with destiny. While driving in Surrey, England, they were in a horrific car crash. The wreckage looked unsurvivable yet, somehow, both walked away. If Starr thought that he had hit rock bottom, he was sorely mistaken. Fate had an unforeseeable twist in store for him.
44. He Hit Rock Bottom
The lowest point arrived in the late 1980s. Starr woke up one Friday afternoon with no memory of the previous days. The household staff filled him in: he had torn the house apart so badly that they thought intruders had broken in. That wasn’t the worst part. He had hurt Bach so badly that the staff thought she was beyond saving.
It was, in his own words, the moment that changed everything.
45. He Got Sober
Starr held true to his word. Following his blackout incident, he and Bach checked themselves into a treatment facility in Tucson, Arizona. They spent six weeks there and cleaned up their act. In fact, Starr has confirmed that he hasn’t had a drink since. “Years I’ve lost,” he later said. “Absolute years. I’ve no idea what happened. I lived in a blackout”.
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46. He Toured His Way Back
On July 23, 1989—less than a year out of rehab—Starr walked onstage in Dallas, Texas, in front of 10,000 fans, with a band he had assembled himself. He called it the All-Starr Band, and its lineup rotated with each tour: Joe Walsh, Nils Lofgren, Billy Preston, John Entwistle, and even his own son Zak on second drums.
47. He Was With His Ex-Wife In The End
In late 1995, Starr’s first wife, Maureen Cox, landed in the hospital in Seattle with leukemia. A bone marrow transplant from their son Zak had, sadly, failed to save her, and she had only days left. When the end finally came, Starr, along with Cox’s new husband, was right by her side. It wasn’t the same as putting the Beatles back together, but it gave Starr the closure he needed.
48. He Made It Into The Hall Of Fame
In January 1988, the Beatles were finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Starr flew to New York with Harrison and Yoko Ono to accept on behalf of the band. Lennon, of course, was no longer around to share the moment. Starr stood on the stage and accepted the honor for all four of them. His own moment in the spotlight was yet to come.
49. He Made It In A Second Time
Nearly 30 years later, Starr was right back at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But he wasn’t there for the Beatles. This time, he was accepting his induction into the Hall of Fame as a solo artist. Very few musicians in the history of the institution have ever managed both. He was a long way from tambourines—and he still had honors to earn.
50. He Became A Knight
In the 2018 New Year Honours, the British government called the name of Richard Starkey—the boy who had left primary school barely able to read—for services to music. He arrived at Buckingham Palace, knelt before the throne, and arose as Sir Richard Starkey, Knight Bachelor of the realm (of rock and roll). All of his accomplishments, however, were bittersweet.
51. He’s One Of The Last
Lennon was struck down in December of 1980. Harrison succumbed to cancer in November of 2001. McCartney is still here, and so too, against every prediction anyone ever made about him, is Ringo Starr. Despite Lennon’s worries—and a lifetime of near misses with the Grim Reaper—Starr has never stopped marching to the beat of his own (legendary) drumming.
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