Ringo Starr

Ringo Starr anchored the Beatles with a smile and a thundering backbeat, qualities he'd never lose during the group's heyday and has held onto throughout his long solo career. As a drummer, his unconventional parts were a defining compositional feature of the band's sound and his laid-back charisma endeared him to fans, especially during their early days. While John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and to a lesser extent, George Harrison, served as the band's frontmen, Starr enjoyed his share of the spotlight. A natural acting ability helped him steal scenes in their feature films A Hard Day's Night and Help!, and he sang lead on mid-'60s Beatles classics like "Yellow Submarine" and "With a Little Help from My Friends." It wasn't until their final years that he began writing his own material, penning "Don't Pass Me By" for The Beatles and "Octopus's Garden" for Abbey Road. Following the band's breakup in 1970, he notched a bevy of solo hits like "It Don't Come Easy," "Back Off Boogaloo," and "Photograph," the latter of which, co-written by Harrison, became one of his signature solo songs. His albums were often characterized by a collaborative approach made up of covers, originals, and songs given to him by a wide circle of friends, colleagues, and admirers. He would come to rely on this group in the third act of his career, when he formed Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band in 1989. Over the years, the All-Starr Band would include a who's-who of well-known members (Joe Walsh, Todd Rundgren, Colin Hay, and Levon Helm among many others), but the group remained a constant for Starr, allowing him to tour the world on a regular basis with a coterie of talented and trusted friends. Ringo revived his solo career with 1992's Time Takes Time, an album that performed a similar function in the studio as the All-Starr Band did on-stage: it opened the door to steady work as a performer. Amid occasional fan-serving collaborations with McCartney, Starr moved into the 21st century touring with different iterations of his band while releasing a steady flow of live releases and solo albums like 2010's Y Not and 2015's Postcards from Paradise. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice, once as a Beatle and later as a solo artist. In the early 2020s, he issued a prolific run of EPs including 2024's Crooked Boy, and in 2025 he indulged his longtime love of country music with 2025's Look Up, created with help from producer and songwriter T-Bone Burnett.

From 🇬🇧 United Kingdom