This spring, as he has done annually since 1989, save for a two-year interruption because of the pandemic, Ringo Starr will play live shows, starting with a brief run of dates that includes a stop at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga, plus another run of shows in the fall, generally playing six shows a week. For a drummer/singer who is now 83, that might seem like a demanding workload.
But this is exactly how Starr likes it. Speaking during a pair of recent press conferences with the other members of his All Starr Band, Starr, who has just released a four-song EP called Crooked Boy, said he sometimes feels his initial tour routings have too many off days.
“If I’m on the road, I want to play,” Starr said during a recent video conference. “I don’t want to sit in a hotel and relax for three days. I want to get out there and play. It’s just how I am. I just love to do it. I mean, with this band it’s great because everybody takes the weight.”
This band includes six other stars in their own right—Edgar Winter on keyboards and saxophone, Steve Lukather (from Toto) on guitars, Hamish Stuart (an original member of the Average White Band) on bass, Colin Hay (of Men At Work fame) on guitar, horn player Warren Ham and drummer Gregg Bissonette.
It’s the latest edition of what has been a rotating unit—although this lineup of the All Starr Band has been mostly intact since 2018—since the former Beatle assembled the first All Starr Band in 1989. Each show features a cross section of hits from Starr’s solo catalog and his time in the Beatles, while each member of the band plays a hit or two from their respective careers. Several band members agreed that the chance to play such a variety of songs is part of what makes the tours so fun.
For Starr, the All Starr Band tours enable him to do what he’s loved for some 65 years: play drums, sing and perform for audiences.
“I was inspired at 13 and that has never left me, the dream and the joy,” Starr said. “I only ever wanted to be a drummer from 13 and then I got a kit of drums. And I was in a couple of really good bands. … And it’s still there. I love to play.”
Starr didn’t specify his inspiration to pick up the sticks, and in 1957 he broke into music when he helped form the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, which, he said, he wished had been captured on film like The Beatles’ Let It Be recording sessions that became the recent documentary Get Back.
Speaking of Get Back, Starr gave Peter Jackson’s six-hour documentary, now streaming on Disney+, his full endorsement, saying it’s a much more representative look at the Beatles putting together Let It Be than was Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s Let It Be, the 1970 documentary that, during its filming, provided the footage Jackson assembled into the new film.
“The original documentary, I never liked it,” he said. “It was so narrow. It was on one point of an argument and all these down parts. We were laughing and we were having fun as well and we played great and we did all this in a month. Michael Lindsey Hogg’s, I felt, was just too down. I spoke to Peter (and said) ‘I was there. It was lots of fun as well.’ He certainly brought that up. I’m ever grateful to Peter for doing such a great job.”
Although it was recorded before the Abbey Road album, Let It Be became the final Beatles album, released in May 1970, months before the band broke up. The Beatles, Starr said, had run their course.
“We were lads when we started, and as it went on, we had wives and children,” he said. “And we stopped touring and made great records. But we didn’t make good records while we were touring. We played well together and we got on with each other. That’s just how it was. We came to a point, eight years later—it blows me away that we did all that in eight years—that it was time to leave.”
If all goes as Starr hopes, the All Starr Band could have a gig for years to come. Starr, who spent the pandemic going to the gym, painting and making spin art, also continues to make new music at a steady pace. He has two more EPs in the works: One will be produced by noted songwriter/producer Linda Perry; for the other, Starr is planning to do a third EP of country songs, a project that will be an outgrowth of a song written for him by T Bone Burnett.
Clearly, Starr doesn’t plan to slow down any time soon—in the studio or on the road.
“People are saying, ‘What about retirement?’,” Starr said. “Well, I’m a musician. I don’t have to retire. As long as I can pick up those sticks, I got a gig.”
Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band play May 24 at 7:30pm at the Mountain Winery. Tickets start at $125. mountainwinery.com
