Listen to early recordings of Ringo Starr’s first band
The legacy of The Beatles seems to transcend mere music. The band was lucky enough to reach full stride just as the globalisation of showbiz allowed for icon worship that would perhaps eclipse Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. With America’s Hollywood and rock ‘n’ roll spheres pervading the youth of post-war Britain, it was an unforeseen inevitability that a band would spearhead a British invasion of the US charts. With perfect talent, timing and promotion, The Beatles did everything right to put their stamp on history.
As icons of the 1960s countercultural revolution, it’s hard for people born post-Beatlemania to picture a world without the Fab Four, just as one might struggle to picture the Beatles without their drummer, Ringo Starr. When, as a child, I first saw a photograph of The Beatles as a five-piece, with Pete Best as the drummer and Stuart Sutcliffe on bass, I couldn’t help seeing these two misfits as imposters, so ingrained is the image of the four we came to know so well.
As I gathered later, The Beatles were the butterfly to the pupa of John Lennon’s original skiffle group formed alongside friends at Quarry Bank High School in Liverpool. Paul McCartney was inducted after meeting Lennon at a village fete in 1957, and he duly introduced his younger friend George Harrison.
Under the Beatles handle, the band became a stable five-piece in 1960 after hiring Best. Concurrently, Ringo Starr, or Ritchie Starkey as he was then known, had just joined his formative band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. The group first achieved acclaim in the Liverpool music scene after achieving second place in Carrol Levis’ ‘Search for Stars’ competition, ahead of 150 other acts.
Rory Storm and the Hurricanes were instrumental in the introduction of rock ‘n’ roll to the clubs of Liverpool and famously caused a stir at the Cavern Club. The club, now famed as a starting point for The Beatles, was one of the latecomers to the rock ‘n’ roll explosion in the late 1950s and had been primarily a haven for jazz fanatics.
Starr and his band performed at the Cavern for the first time in January 1960 at a jazz festival alongside Micky Ashman’s Jazz Band and the Swinging Blue Jeans. As Rory Storm and the Hurricanes stepped onto the stage dressed like the late Buddy Holly, they began their set with ‘Cumberland Gap’, a skiffle song by Lonnie Donegan. As the set unfolded, they played Jerry Lee Lewis’ ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin On’ as vocal derision from the audience grew louder and louder, and pennies scattered the stage.
The band had been commissioned on the condition that they stuck to skiffle or country music, and since rock ‘n’ roll was banned from the club at the time, they were fined six shillings by the Cavern’s manager, Ray McFall. Fortunately, the pennies collected from the stage were more than enough to cover the penalty.
Over the next two years, before Starr left to join The Beatles, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes became one of the leading Merseybeat bands of the era. Below, you can hear an extensive recording taken during a 1960 performance at Jive Hive, the name adopted by St Luke’s Church Hall in Crosby, seven miles north of Liverpool.
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