“Incredible human being”: the musician Ringo Starr called his last best friend
In all the years people have spent trying to understand the power of The Beatles and how it happened that those four unlikely lads from Liverpool got as famous as they did, the findings always seem to boil down to one thing: friendship.
At the heart of The Beatles was a deep and genuine care for one another. In the early days, especially, that closeness was built on simply wanting to spend as much time together as possible. Many of their earliest songs began with John Lennon and Paul McCartney sitting in one of their houses, talking and working ideas out side by side. That openness shaped the emotional warmth in their music. It allowed them to share personal experiences with each other, including their grief after both losing a parent, and that honesty often found its way into the songs.
Then, as a wider unit, as the Fab Four, the brotherhood was undeniably. Once Ringo Starr joined the band as the final and perfect piece of the puzzle, the energy was nailed. It’s the same energy that jumps off the screen in their movies or in any footage of the band with their infamous and easy banter.
It’s no coincidence that the band only died when the core friendships did, and clearly, Starr noticed that and learnt that lesson.
If there’s one thing he’s carried forward into his solo projects, it’s that at the end of the day, the band has to be friends. It makes him all the more careful about how he’s called in to play for him, wanting to make sure that the chemistry is there are people just as much as it is as musicians.
At the same time, that means cutting people loose if it’s not working. “Just to change it up, years ago, some people were asked to leave, and others brought it. Like [Steve] Lukather was brought in. This time… we have Colin [Hay], who is great and has hits, and Hamish [Stuart] I had in one of the other All-Starr Bands, and he came back,” Starr said of the ins and outs of his All-Star live band.
However, there is one person who is locked in forever to both Starr’s band and his life. “Luke, I’ll never get rid of Luke,” he said, referring to Steve Lukather by his nickname.
Lukather, the guitarist of Toto, joined the band in 2012, saying in an interview, “This is the third Beatle I’ve had the honour to play with!” But the decision to join Starr wasn’t so much a professional one as a personal one, as the pair were already close friends.
In fact, Starr himself would say they’re best friends. “He’s my last best friend. You need time to make best friends,” he said, adding, “He’s an incredibly good musician and an incredible human being.” For those reasons, he declared that Lukather “has a lifelong ticket” – he’ll be in the band for as long as he wants to be, with hopes from Starr that that’ll be forever.
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