Where did The Beatles meet Ringo Starr?
It took a while for The Beatles to take form. Their origins are often counted back to the fateful day that Paul McCartney and John Lennon met at a summer fête, forming a friendship that would have them almost immediately start writing the songs the world knows. But if it weren’t for the late addition of Ringo Starr, maybe no one would have ever heard them.
While often brushed off as the least crucial member of the band, with even the other band members making jokes about his talent, Starr is arguably the piece that made the whole puzzle come together.
After Brian Epstein took on the band in their earlier form, featuring Pete Best on drums, the manager was trying and failing to get them any level of support from labels. When he finally got them in the door at EMI and into a session with their future collaborator, George Martin, the producer suggested that a cut had to be made because Best simply wouldn’t cut it.
“They don’t think you’re a good enough drummer, Pete,” Epstein told Best when he got the sack, “And George Martin doesn’t think you’re a good enough drummer.”
However, it wasn’t that they didn’t have a reserve. “The boys want you out and Ringo in,” Epstein told Best straight out as Ringo Starr was already waiting in the wings, ready to complete the lineup into the one the world knows best and the one that would make them world famous.
But when did The Beatles meet Ringo Starr?
The first thing to understand about this question is that all four Beatles were from Liverpool. Despite being a city, places like this often feel more like a village—especially back then, when rock and roll was still a relatively new thing for kids to get into. If there was another music fan who could play an instrument within the city radius, chances were, the rest would know about them.
So, even before the future bandmates officially met, you can pretty much guarantee they knew each other’s names or had at least seen one another around.
Before being in the Beatles, Starr was in Rory Storm and the Hurricanes who were, realistically, above the Beatles in terms of notoriety and scale of gigs. They’d played in the same venues and certainly all crossed paths as there was a scattering of images that seemed to capture a young Starr watching the Beatles in their early form or the Beatles lot in the crowd for a Rory Storm and the Hurricanes show.
But they didn’t officially meet until both bands were out in Hamburg. The Beatles were in the middle of their infamous Hamburg era, cutting their teeth around the clubs there. Starr and his band went over to Hamburg to check out the scene there, too, and on October 1st, 1960, at the Kaiserkeller, the bands shared the same bill, finally bringing all the Beatles together as Ringo Starr officially met the band.
So, when did Ringo Starr join the Beatles?
After that first meeting, Starr was essentially their on-call backup. Not only did they strike up a friendship, routinely hanging out and jamming, but on occasions when Best couldn’t make a show, they’d bring in Starr to replace him. This was when they began noticing that on those nights, they sounded a lot better.
So when George Martin confirmed their own suspicions that Best wasn’t the right fit for the band, they gave him the boot and almost immediately called up Starr. Without hesitation, he quit his own band, dropped everything, and jumped at the chance. He joined as an official member on August 14th, 1962. And as they say, the rest is history.
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