Ringo Starr returns to Australia to recapture a golden age

 

ALMOST 50 years after The Beatles flew out of Australia for the final time, leaving thousands of screaming fans in their wake, Ringo Starr is coming back.

He's been an occasional visitor, a well-preserved 72-year-old Englishman slipping through Customs mostly unrecognised on his British passport with the name Richard Starkey.
But he hasn't performed here since that last Beatles' show at the Brisbane Festival Hall on June 30, 1964.
"Barb (Barbara Bach, the actor and former Bond girl, Ringo's second wife) and I used to like to go to Fiji," Starr tells Insider from Los Angeles.
"We had a lot of friends in Sydney so we'd always spend a few days and then we'd head home."
In February, Starr's back with another All-Starr line-up, the 12th, of household names most of whom might be unknown but for the musical revolution The Beatles unleashed on the world with an unremarkable 1962 single, Love Me Do.
There have been 45 rock legends in his All-Starr line-ups since 1989, including Eagles Joe Walsh and Timothy B Schmit, Nils Lofgren, Sheila E, Dave Edmunds, Jack Bruce, Eric Carmen, Edgar Winter and our own Colin Hay.
On the Australian tour we'll see Todd Rundgren, Toto's Steve Lukather, Santana's Gregg Rolie, rock super drummer Gregg Bissonnette, Mr Mister's Richard Page and Mark Rivera who has played horns for John Lennon, Simon and Garfunkel and is familiar as the sax player on Peter Gabriel's hugely successful hit, Sledgehammer.
"I've had a lot of people in the band. Every couple of years I like to change the band and keep touring," Starr says. "It's a way for me to play with all these other great players."
Starr describes Page as "the voice of our show".
"He has great pitch and he has great songs from Mr Mister. I'm lucky with this band, everyone is supportive and, of course, we have Todd Rundgren on stage with us, so there's always a childish aspect."
He described the rehearsals for the All-Starr band as "pretty weird".
"We have to learn the songs. We have a lot of work to do, then we have to get to know each other's little jokes and that," he says.
"I am a hard task master. The better we know each other's songs the better we perform as a band and the better we can entertain the audience."
Despite being ranked the fifth-best drummer of all time by the readers of Rolling Stone magazine, Starr is modest about his extraordinary life and years as a Beatle.
"I started playing in Liverpool. I started playing any gig we could get. I ended up playing the clubs, joined The Beatles - things got a little bigger.
"And what I do, I'm still doing it. I'm doing it with great players, as you'll see when we get over to your part of the world. The beat goes on."

Source: http://www.heraldsun.com.au