RINGO STARR

Richard Starkey was born July 7, 1940 and is best known by his stage name, Ringo Starr, the drummer for The Beatles from 1962, when he replaced Pete Best, until their breakup in 1970. Ringo had a reliable, steady drumming and innovative fills. His easygoing personality made him a great addition with the other Beatles.

Prior to joining the Beatles, he was the drummer for the Liverpool band Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, from 1959 to 1962. His musical talents were primarily confined to drumming, rather than singing or songwriting. Of all the Beatles, he did the least songwriting. The Beatles explained that when he would present a song as a contender for an album cut, the song would be a clear knockoff of another popular song, but Ringo would not recognize the similarities until they pointed it out. Ringo did, however, write "Octopus's Garden" on the album, " Abbey Road" and "Don't Pass Me By", on " The White Album", as well as a few others. Ringo generally sang at least one song on each album. In most cases, John Lennon or Paul McCartney would write the lyrics and melody especially for him. Lennon helped with "With a Little Help from My Friends", from " Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". Often these melodies would be 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.

Starr did contribute a number of lyric ideas and song titles to Lennon and McCartney. 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 how it had been a hard day's work. But 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".

Although some have tried to downplay his contributions to the band, Starr's unique drumming style played a major role in the overall sound of The Beatles. To this day, 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, Andy Sturmer of Jellyfish, and others. According to Collins, Ringo is vastly underrated. The drum fills on "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." Lennon, McCartney and Harrison have all said that Ringo was the best rock and roll drummer in the world.

In 1972, after the breakup of the Beatles, Starr's solo recording of "Photograph", topped the Billboard charts. His other hits included the partly Harrison-penned, "It Don't Come Easy", "Back Off Boogaloo", "You're Sixteen", "Oh My My", "Only You" and "No No Song." He also did session work with each of the former Beatles, plus Harry Nilsson and Stephen Stills. Ringo's albums faded from public view toward the end of the '70s, but his career was resurrected through clever "All-Starr" touring packages that banded Ringo with talented warhorses like Joe Walsh, Mark Hudson, Peter Frampton, Jack Bruce, Gary Brooker and Simon Kirke. His 1998 album, " Vertical Man", featured guest appearances by his former bandmates McCartney and Harrison, and well as Alanis Morissette, Scott Weiland and Tom Petty. He acted in several films, "Candy" (1968), " The Magic Christian (1969), " Son of Dracula" (1974), and " Caveman" (1980). He also worked on the children's television series Shining Time Station, it's Christmas special Shining Time Station: 'Tis A Gift and Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. He appeared as himself on the cartoon The Simpsons. Ringo is married to Barbara Bach.