The Beatles Very Own Movie 'Starr'
Ringo Starr, The World's Most Famous Drummer, as a Movie Star
Jul 7, 2007
Ringo Starr: the Beatle's Drummer
Everyone knows Ringo Starr. He was the quiet one who sat behind the other Beatles and played drums as they redefined pop music and helped introduce the world to Merseybeat. They (the other Beatles) wrote a song for him to sing on each album. The best known are probably, ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’", from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and ‘Yellow Submarine’ from Magical Mystery Tour. One of the songs he sang included the prophetic lines, 'They're gonna put me in the movies. They're gonna make a big star out of me.'
He was, of course, a very good drummer, although once, when an interviewer asked the Beatles, ‘Is Ringo Starr the best drummer in the world?’, John Lennon answered ‘He's not the best drummer in the Beatles.’ In fact, he introduced what is known as the ‘matched grip’ for holding drumsticks, a style that has now been adopted by the majority of rock drummers. This new style of holding the sticks like a hammer, gave the rock drummer more powerful in terms of their ability to strike the drum-skins. Ringo also had an exceptionally good sense of tempo.
Ringo Starr: Film Star
In addition to drumming for The Beatles and as a solo artist in his own right, Ringo also had a film career spanning 15 years. Starting, of course, with the two Beatles’ films ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and ‘Help’ (1965), his next two outing on the silver screen were ‘Candy’ (1968) and ‘The Magic Christian’ (1969) Both of these involved Terry Southern (he adapted the first and wrote the second) , writer of Lolita.
In 1970, Ringo appeared in ‘Blindman’, a spaghetti western, and a year later in Frank Zappa’s ambitious, is misguided, ‘200 Motels’. 1973 saw him back in the rock ‘n’ roll era appearing alongside David Essex in the film that made him a star, ‘That’ll be the Day’. ‘Sons of Dracula’ followed in 1974, a film described on one internet review site as ‘an indulgent vanity project’, featuring, as it did, Harry Nilsson, Keith Moon and John Bonham.
His next foray was for Director Ken Russell where he played the Norse God of Thunder in ‘Lisztomania’ (1976), and two years later where he had a cameo in Mae West’s final movie, ‘Sextette’. (Those with good memories will remember that Mae West appeared on the cover of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album.)
A Happy Ending
Ringo’s final appearance (to date) was as a caveman in the apprpriately named 1980 movie ‘Caveman’, financed by fellow-Beatle George Harrison, but this film did not have the artistic success of some of the earlier ones. Starr did, however, meet his future wife, Barbara Bach on the set of the film. So perhaps, this was one story that really did have a happy ending!
(The July 2007 edition of UNCUT magazine includes a ‘booklet of facts’ from which some of the above is drawn.)
