Dear Ringo,
Congratulations on the 50th anniversary of your appearance with the lads on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” I know you’re aware of the media din surrounding Sunday night’s CBS special commemorating the event. They’re calling it “The Night That Changed America,” since we all know how Feb. 9, 1964 not only impacted the Baby Boomer generation but the entire pop-culture landscape. You were a huge part of that seismic sociological shift.
And, hey, with you and Paul “reuniting” for the telecast (we’ll ignore your 2009 and 2010 reunions for now), it’s an exciting night.
So savor the moment. Soak it all in.
After all, you are The World’s Most Famous Drummer.
But people forget that, don’t they?
So I’m here to help set the record straight. Consider it a letter from me to you, from one Starr to another. (Yeah, I know, privately you prefer to be called Richy in deference to your birth name, Richard Starkey.)
Sure, everyone is falling over themselves to praise you — now — but what befalls your status as a “legend” after Sunday night’s celebration? Do the naysayers jump off the nostalgia-fueled bandwagon they’ve been riding for several months now? Do you return to your punch-line status as “The luckiest guy in show business” just because your talent entranced John, Paul and George, who were in the market for a new drummer?
For some Beatles fans, you’re the Fab Four’s version of Joey Bishop, who was lucky to have been plucked from obscurity by Frank (as in Sinatra) to join Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford in the Rat Pack. Or so the story goes. We know differently — talent over circumstance — but perceptions are difficult to change. And that’s unfortunate.
Let’s face it, Ringo, you’re still resented by some Beatles fans who hold a 50-year-plus grudge. It’s that old “Pete Best was a better drummer” nonsense. That’s a barroom argument for losers with nothing better to do. It is what it is. History cannot be changed. It’s not John, Paul, George and Pete we’re still talking about now, is it?
Like it or not, that’s your distinctive drumming on all the immortal Beatles hits, your steady backbeat keeping time on the giddy early hits (“Please Please Me,” “She Loves You” et al.) through “Let It Be” and (almost) everything in-between (notwithstanding several “White Album” songs — when, feeling unloved, you quit the band for a few days — and “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” recorded by John and Paul.)
It was you whose shaking mop top had ’em screaming on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and at Shea Stadium, you who cavorted in “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help” (a movie written around your personality). You who visited the Maharishi in Rishikesh (OK, so you bailed a little early, delicate stomach and all) and you who kept the peace between your bickering bandmates during the “Let It Be” sessions — then gamely thwacked away on your drum kit on that freezing London rooftop amidst the dying embers of Beatlemania.
Not Pete Best. You, Ringo. And the band was better for it.
You didn’t show off, didn’t distract from the songs. You were “The Lovable One,” the unassuming jokester Beatle with the dry Liverpudlian wit, philosophical malapropisms (“Tomorrow never knows”) and croaky, reassuring singing voice. The one who John, Paul and George relied on in good times and bad — and the one with whom the public empathized when your group disbanded. (“What’s Ringo gonna do now?” they asked, before you reeled off “Photograph,” “You’re Sixteen,” “Back Off Boogaloo” and other hits.)
Sure, you haven’t always made it easy for us to admire you. You became surly, drank too much and squandered what could have been a promising movie career. But every time we thought we’d lost you, you reeled us back in. Too much ’70s-era carousing with Harry Nilsson and Keith Moon in LA? No problem. We loved you again when you rushed to the Dakota to console Yoko after that horrible December day.
You always were one of John’s favorites — he knew you had a big heart. Anyone who saw you crying for your slain Beatle brother in that memorable Barbara Walters interview can attest to that.
Too many mediocre albums and bad movies? No worries. You enchanted parents as the conductor on TV’s “Thomas the Tank Engine” while delighting a new generation of children who didn’t know a Beatle from a beetle.
Sniping to British TV host Jonathan Ross that there was “nothing” you missed about Liverpool — then scolding your fans in telling them you would no longer sign their memorabilia? OK, it was a little tougher to get past those roadblocks — what happened to lovable Ringo? — but all was eventually forgiven.
So, remember all of this Sunday night, Ringo, when CBS plays some clips of The Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” and we all flash back to that magical night in February 1964 when you, John, Paul and George did, indeed, change America — and the world.
John and George left us way too early. It’s fallen to you and Paul to be the standard-bearers for a generation.
Embrace it. Covet it.
To quote you, Ringo, “Peace & Love.”
Post TV Editor Michael Starr’s biography of Ringo Starr, “It Don’t Come Easy,” will be published in 2015.