Ringo Starr explains why he refuses to write a memoir
In a new interview, Beatles drummer Ringo Starr has revealed why he refused to write a memoir, although the demand is there. The drummer maintains that the idea bores him because he’d be expected to focus on a specific period, starting with him joining the Liverpool group in 1962.
“That’s all they want to know,” Starr told USA Today. “That’s why I got fed up. They offered me lots of money over the last many years, and I said, ‘I’m not doing a book because it’d be three volumes before I get to that year.’… I have just never found interest in it. I don’t want to do Ringo the drummer, because we’re all a bit more than that.”
However, Starr was happy to reminisce about some of his earliest memories of the band, including when they opened for successful British singer Helen Shapiro. “She had a big band behind her,” he said. “I asked one guy in that band how old he was, and he said 40. And I said, ’40 – get off, and you’re still doing it?’ Well, that’s how you feel when you’re younger.”
Starr also reflected on The Beatles’ final show on the roof of the Apple Corps London headquarters in 1969. “I love ‘Get Back,'” he said of one of the songs they performed. “I never played to the whole song [in the studio]. Anyway, all the bits we were writing, it was regular rock. Up there on the roof, it was this other pattern. I thought, ‘Why did I get to that? How did I get to that?'”
Elsewhere, Starr discussed the current North American tour with his All Starr Band. He acknowledged that he is fortunate to recruit band members, saying: “I can’t just do songs with me and my drums.”
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