Today is the 80th birthday of Ringo Starr, which does seem to be a bit unreal, at least to me. As he has done since 2008, Ringo is asking people wherever they are on the planet to say the words ‘peace and love’ at noon their local time. He’s also doing a birthday show, but given the global COVID-19 pandemic, things will be a bit different this year. Rather than repeating what I previously said, I let him address it directly. Ringo is much more entertaining than I could ever be, which is one of several reasons why The Beatles wouldn’t have been the same without him.
To join Ringo’s Big Birthday Show later today at 8:00 pm U.S. EDT/5:00 pm U.S. PDT, go to his YouTubechannel. Here’s a little fun teaser what to expect.
I’m also using the occasion to republish a post from exactly three years ago. Coz, why not?
And don’t forget, love and peace!
I feel we need it more than ever, especially in this country these days!
Repost from July 7, 2017
Today, Ringo Starr celebrated his 77th birthday and announced his upcoming 19th studio album. As the Los Angeles Timesreported, Starr and hundreds of fans and fellow musicians gathered at Capitol Records Tower in Hollywood for a “Peace and Love” birthday celebration. The annual event has been conducted since 2008, when Starr was asked about his birthday wish and replied “more peace and love.” Ever since he has asked his fans all over the world to stop at noon their local time and say the words “peace and love” to spread the message.
“The great thing is that it’s continuing to grow,” Starr said in the above LA Times story. “When this started in Chicago in 2008, there were maybe 60 or 100 people…My dream — my fantasy — is that one day in the future everyone on the planet will stop at noon and say, ‘Peace and love.’”
Starr was born as Richard Starkey on July 7, 1940 in Liverpool, England. Of course, he is best known as the drummer of The Beatles, replacing Pete Best in August 1962. Prior to that he had played in Rory Storm and The Hurricanes, which had become one of Liverpool’s leading bands in early 1960. Starr met The Beatles for the first time at Kaiserkeller in Hamburg, Germany on October 1, 1960. Just like The Beatles, The Hurricanes had accepted a residency in the Northern German city.
Only two weeks later after the initial encounter, Starr joined John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison to back up Hurricanes singer Lou Walters during a recording of the George Gershwin tune Summertime. During that time period in Hamburg, Starr also filled in for Best on a few occasions. In August 1962, Lennon asked Starr whether he wanted to join The Beatles. Apparently, George Martin wasn’t very impressed with Best’s drumming. Five months later, the Fab Four recorded their debut studio album Please Please Me, which was released in March 1963.
After the official break-up of The Beatles in early 1970, Starr launched a solo career, which to date has included 18 studio albums. No. 19 is called Give More Love and scheduled for September 15th. Rolling Stone just reported that Paul McCartney appears in two songs on the record: We’re On the Road Again and Show Me the Way. Other guests include Joe Walsh, Edgar Winter, Steve Lukather, Peter Frampton, Richard Marx, Dave Stewart, Don Was and Timothy B. Schmit. The record’s title song, a nice mid-tempo tune, has already been released, and the album is available for pre-order.
In mid-October, Starr and his All-Starr Band will kick off a 19-gig U.S. tour in support of the album. The All-Starr Band, a live rock supergroup, has existed in different configurations since 1989. The upcoming line-up will include Lukather, Todd Rundgren, Gregg Rolie, Richard Page, Warren Ham and Gregg Bissonette.
Following is a selection of songs to celebrate Starr’s birthday:
Octupus’s Garden (The Beatles, Abbey Road, 1969)
It Don’t Come Easy (non-album single, 1971)
Photograph (Ringo, 1973)
Wrack My Brain (Stop and Smell the Roses, 1981; written by George Harrison)
Walk With You (Y Not, 2010; duet with Paul McCartney)
Postcards From Paradise (Postcards From Paradise, 2015)
Sources: Wikipedia; Christian’s Music Musings; Los Angeles Times; Rolling Stone; Ringo Starr web site & YouTube channel; YouTube
After having done more than 50 installments of this recurring feature, I still find it intriguing what turns up when you look at a specific date throughout music history. I’ve said it before and I say it again: It’s a rather arbitrary way to do this. But, hey, at the end of the day, it’s all about great music. Without further ado, let’s see what happened on June 6.
1960: Roy Orbison, the rock & roller with an operatic voice, released Only the Lonely, his first big hit peaking at no. 2 in the U.S. and Canada, and topping the charts in Ireland and the U.K. According to Songfacts, it was one of the first tunes Orbison wrote together with Joe Melson. Among others, the two also co-wrote Crying and Blue Bayou. Songfacts also includes the following Orbison told NME in 1980 about writing “sad songs” like Only the Lonely: “I’ve always been very content when I wrote all those songs. By this I’m saying that a lot of people think you have to live through something before you can write it, and that’s true in some cases, but I remember the times that I was unhappy or discontent, and I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t communicate, and I certainly couldn’t write a song, no way. All the songs I wrote that were successful were written when I was in a contented state of mind.”
1962: The Beatles came together for their first artist test recording session at EMI Studios at 3 Abbey Road, St John’s Wood, London. According to The Beatles Bible, the action went down in studio no. 2, where between 7:00 pm and 10:00 pm they recorded four tracks: Besame Mucho, Love Me Do, P.S. I Love You and Ask Me Why. The session was produced by George Martin with assistant Ron Richards and was the only one to feature Pete Best on drums. Initially, Richards was in charge, and Martin was only brought in after engineer Norman Smith was intrigued with Love Me Do. At the end of the session, which was hampered by quality issues due to the poor equipment The Beatles had brought along, Martin called them to the control room to tell them what they would need to do to become professional recording artists. When none of them reacted, Martin said: “Look, I’ve laid into you for quite a time, you haven’t responded. Is there anything you don’t like?” After an awkward pause, George Harrison responded: “Yeah, I don’t like your tie!” That cracked the ice, and the rest is history. While none of the material recorded at the session was used, four months later, The Beatles featuring Ringo Starr on drums re-recorded Love Me Do with George Martin. Backed by P.S. I Love You, it became their first single (not counting My Bonnie they had recorded with Tony Sheridan in June 1961).
1971: After 23 years on the air, CBS aired the last episode of The Ed Sullivan Show. It was a repeat. The last original telecast, episode no. 1,068, had aired on March 28 of the same year. Originally co-created and produced by Marlo Lewis, the show’s initial title was Toast of the Town. On September 25, 1955, it officially became The Ed Sullivan Show. Countless famous artists performed on the program, such as Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones and The Doors. CBS and Sullivan were quite conservative, and there were some “controversial” performances on the show. One of the most notorious appearances were The Doors on September 17, 1967. For the song Light My Fire, Jim Morrison had been told to alter the line Girl, we couldn’t get much higher. He complied during the rehearsal, but when it came to the live performance, he sang the original line – committing the ultimate sin! The Doors were never invited back on the program. Here’s a short clip documenting the horrible transgression!
1982: The Peace Sunday: We Have a Dream concert took place at The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., which attracted a crowd of 85,000 people. The six-hour event to promote nuclear disarmament featured artists like Tom Petty, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks and Jackson Browne. It was partly broadcast on ABC Television’s Entertainment Tonight program on the same day. Here’s a clip of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez performing the Dylan tune With God On Our Side. Dylan first recorded the song for his third studio album The Times They Are a-Changin’ from January 1964.
Sources: Wikipedia; Songfacts: Music History Calendar; Songfacts; The Beatles Bible; YouTube
When it comes to Paul McCartney and his accomplishments, where do you even start? Co-founding member of The Beatles, which in my book was the greatest band of all time; a man who has written hundreds of songs, including timeless classics; multiple award-winning two-time inductee in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame; and great musician who after more than five decades is sill hungry to perform live are some of the highlights that come to mind. This post focuses on something folks outside musician circles may not fully appreciate: McCartney’s significance in pop and rock music as a bassist.
As frequent readers of the blog know, I used to play bass guitar in my late teens and early twenties. As such, the topic should be right up my alley, so what the heck took me so long to write about it? Frankly, I don’t really have a good answer. I included McCartney in a previous post about some of my favorite bassists, and of course I’ve also covered him on other occasions. Still, as one of my all-time music heroes, Macca and his remarkable bass playing certainly deserve more attention.
The interesting thing one may sometimes forget is that McCartney not only started out as a guitarist but did not have any initial intention to become a bassist. A long interview with Macca, which Tony Bacon conducted in November 1994 as part of his research for a book about the bass, provides some great insights. It was published by online music gear and news website Reverb in January 2018. I’m relying on this interview for quotes throughout the remainder of the post.
The Beatles’ lineup in 1960 (from left): John Lennon, George Harrison, Pete Best, Paul McCartney and Stuart Sutcliffe
“The bass player was normally a fat guy who stood at the back,” Macca told Bacon. [Note: This bassist was skinny, and while he has developed a little bit of the belly over the years, he’s far from fat. In fact, his dear wife still says he’s pretty handsome!😆] “In our minds it was the fat guy in the group nearly always played the bass, and he stood at the back. None of us wanted that. We wanted to be up front, singing, looking good. That was what we wanted, to pull the birds. There’s no other reason, basically.”
The above photo shows an early lineup of The Beatles. It must have been taken during the second half of 1960, after Pete Best had joined the band as a drummer. Stuart Sutcliffe, a friend of John Lennon from art school, had been added in January that year, after John and Paul had persuaded him to use prize money he had won for art to purchase a Hofner bass guitar. “So, Stu was suddenly there just because he could afford the bass, and none of us could,” Macca said. Ouch…
“The Hofner kind of dwarfed Stu a bit,” Macca further pointed out. “He was a smallish guy. But it looked kind of heroic—he stood a certain way, he had shades, he looked the part—but he wasn’t that good a player. And that was the problem with me and Stu. It was always much reported that we didn’t get along. There were two reasons, really. One, I was very ambitious for the group, and I didn’t actually like anything that might hold us back. There’s enough stuff holding you back anyway, without someone in the group who’s not that good, you know?”
Stuart Sutcliffe with his 1959 Hofner 500/5 semi-hollow bass
In July 1961, after The Beatles had returned from one of their engagements in Hamburg, Germany, Sutcliffe decided to leave the band to pursue painting. “So it was like oh-oh, we haven’t got a bass player. And everyone sort of turned round and looked at me,” Macca recalled. “I was a bit lumbered with it, really. It was like, well, it better be you then. I don’t think you could have caught John doing it—I don’t think he would have done it. ‘No, you’re kidding. I’ve got a nice new Rickenbacker.’ I didn’t have a guitar [at the time], see, so I couldn’t really say, ‘But I want to be a guitarist.’ They’d say, Well get a fucking guitar then—that might be a start! As I say, I’d been playing piano, which was on the stage, and that was quite good for me, gave me a lot of piano practice. I couldn’t really play but I learned. So I was quite glad to get back in the front line.”
Sutcliffe ended up lending McCartney his bass for a short time. “Eventually I saw a bass in the window of a shop in Hamburg, this violin-shaped bass, the Hofner. It was a good price, because my dad, as I say, had always said I shouldn’t do the never-never, but we were earning reasonable money.” And so McCartney essentially became the bassist of The Beatles by, well, accident. “That was it. I had the bass. I was now the bass player in the group, and I kind of took it from there.” Well, he certainly did.
It’s fair to say that McCartney didn’t become a brilliant bassist overnight. He started out largely playing root notes, which probably wasn’t that much different from Sutcliffe. But McCartney liked to push himself forward by experimenting. “The thing with the bass on a lot of this stuff was that you’ll try anything once,” he explained. “So, I’ll try a capo on a bass…I often used to tune ‘em down, too – tune the strings down a tone, so the E would become a D. You’d have to be careful how hard you hit them, but it was kind of interesting. I would just mess around with any experimental effects, just to try it.”
Paul McCartney on the cover of Beat Instrumental magazine, with his Rickenbacker 4001 bass and a capo, together with George Martin and George Harrison
After The Beatles had stopped touring, the studio became a major enabler for experimentation. Advances in technology also allowed the separate recording of instruments. By the time of Sgt. Pepper, Macca would oftentimes record the bass part as one of the last tracks. This allowed him to hear all other instrumental parts and take the bass beyond it’s traditional role of timekeeper to becoming an additional melody-driving instrument. And this is where Macca’s true magic as a bassist happened. From a strictly technical standpoint, his playing is nothing extraordinary, which he himself has stated in various interviews I’ve read over the years.
When after the breakup of The Beatles Macca formed Wings, many things changed, including his bass playing. Not only did he now consistently use his Rickenbacker 4001S he had been given by Mr. Rickenbacker himself as a freebie during The Beatles’ 1965 U.S. tour, but his playing became more traditional again. Asked about it, he said, “I think it was OK, but I think I never quite had the interest that I had during that sort of dream period around Sgt. Pepper and Rubber Soul, when I was doing something.”
Paul McCartney with his two signature bass guitars, a Hofner 500/1 violin bass and a Rickenbacker 4001S
“See, with Wings, I was now the band leader, the business manager, the this, the that, the this,” he went on. “We didn’t have Apple, we didn’t have Epstein, we didn’t have anything. It was me doing it all. That was the biggest headache – that’s difficult. In The Beatles, I’d been free of all of that. We had a manager, we had three other great guys.” Macca also could have added that unlike The Beatles in their later stage, Wings was not set up as a studio band.
Asked about his influences for the bass, McCartney said, “Mainly as time went on it was Motown, James Jamerson—who became just my hero, really. I didn’t actually know his name until quite recently. James was very melodic, and that got me more interested. Actually he and Brian Wilson [from The Beach Boys] were my two biggest influences: James just because he was so good and melodic. Brian because he went to very unusual places. Brian would use, if you were playing in C, he might stay on the G a lot just to hold it all back, and I started to realize the power you had within the band.”
I’d like to wrap up this post by highlighting some of McCartney’s great basslines during his time with The Beatles. I apologize to the non-musicians, who may find the following clips a bit geeky. I think the best way to hear Macca in action, especially on a computer or other non hi-fi device, is to listen to his isolated bass parts. First up: Rain, the B-side from the non-album single Paperback Writer, released in May 1966. The song was written by Lennon and, as usually, credited to Lennon-McCartney. This is quite a busy bassline that provides a nice complementary melody to the tune. Since I couldn’t find a YouTube clip with the original isolated part, I’m relying on a chap called Norby Hofner, who does a pretty decent job.
With A Little Help From My Friends from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is an example of a melodic bassline where McCartney nicely varies between sparing and busy playing. The tune wasn’t only credited to Lennon-McCartney but was also written collaboratively.
Another great example of a busy Macca bassline is Hey Bulldog, a song off the Yellow Submarine album, primarily written by Lennon and again credited to Lennon-McCartney. I dig how the bass is pushing the tune forward.
The last bassline I’d like to call out is one of my all-time favorites by Macca: Something. Should I ever go back to playing the bass, this would be on top of my list to learn. This bass part represents such great melodic playing that one can easily enjoy listening to it all by itself. I also think that Something, which appeared on Abbey Road, is one of George Harrison’s best compositions.
Earlier today, fellow bloggers Intogroove and Slicethelife reminded me of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s sophomore album Bayou Country, which was released today 50 years ago. Then I spotted a Rolling Stonestory about Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., the Bruce Springsteen debut, which appeared on January 5, 1973. Last but not least, Ultimate Classic Rockwrote about the 40th anniversary of Look Sharp!, Joe Jackson’s first record – three great reasons to do another installment of my music history series, and there’s more!
1962: English rock & roll singer Tony Sheridan released his debut album My Bonnie as Tony Sheridan and The Beat Brothers. The Beat Brothers, Sheridan’s backing band at the time, actually were an early incarnation of The Beatles. Their line-up included John Lennon (guitar), Paul McCartney (guitar), George Harrison (guitar), Stuart Sutcliffe (bass) and Pete Best (drums). While there are different versions of the story, the release of the album’s title track as a single appears to have played a role in getting The Beatles on the radar screen of a man who at the time ran the record department of the family’s music store NEMS. His name? Brian Epstein.
1969: Bayou Country, the sophomore album by Creedence Clearwater Revival, came out, the first of three records the band released that year. Unlike their debut, which included three covers, all except one tune on Bayou Country were written by John Fogerty. Looking at the band’s sudden success with Proud Mary and the rapid succession of additional records, one could forget they had actually struggled for a decade, initially performing as the Blue Velvets and then the Golliwogs before adopting the name Creedence Clearwater Revival in January 1968 ahead of the release of their eponymous debut album in May that year. Here’s Bayou Country’s strong opener Born On The Bayou.
1973:Bruce Springsteen released his debut Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. As the above Rolling Stone story notes, while the album wasn’t a huge commercial success, it included various tunes that would become staples during Springsteen’s live performances. One of them is the only Springsteen song that ever topped the Billboard Hot 100, though not in its original version: Blinded By The Light, which Manfred Mann’s Earthband turned into a major chart success in 1976. The record also featured five musicians who eventually became part of the E Street Band: Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez (drums), Garry Tallent (bass), David Sancious (keyboards) and Clarence Clemons (saxophone). Initially, Blinded By The Light and Spirit In The Night weren’t part of the record that was submitted to Columbia. At the insistence of label president Clive Davis, who felt the album lacked a hit, Springsteen wrote both songs. Here’s Spirit In The Night, another tune that was also covered by Manfred Mann.
1979:Joe Jackson made his studio debut with Look Sharp! Jackson was remarkably successful right out of the gate, with the record peaking at no. 20 on the Billboard 200 and climbing to no. 40 on the UK Albums Chart. The lead single and one of his signature tunes Is She Really Going Out With Him? climbed to no. 13 on the UK Singles Chart and reached no. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100. I think the above UCR story put it nicely: “Thin and balding, Jackson wasn’t exactly born for the looming video revolution, but he had an impeccable sense of style reflected by the distinctive Look Sharp! album cover, graced with a striking shot of white dress shoes shining in a beam of light on a city sidewalk. Simple and elegant, it summed up Jackson’s early recordings perfectly, evoking all the sleek musical lines and bracing urban wit throughout the album’s 36-minute running time.” Here’s the great opener One More Time, which like all other tracks on the album was written by Jackson.
Sources: Wikipedia, Rolling Stone, Ultimate Classic Rock, This Day In Rock, This Day In Music, YouTube
What could possibly happen on a January 1st when it’s safe to assume many folks are recovering from celebrating the New Year? Well, it turns out quite a bit!
1956:Carl Perkins released Blue Suede Shoes as a single on Sun Records. Written by him, it is considered to be one of the first rockabilly tunes. The song spent 16 weeks on the Best Selling Singles chart from music industry publication Cash Box, a competitor to Billboard at the time, peaking at no. 2. The song was also covered by many other artists, including Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran and Elvis Presley.
1959:Johnny Cash performed one of his first prison shows at San Quentin prison in San Rafael, Calif. Among the audience members was future country artist Merle Haggard who was serving a sentence for burglary. According to Songfacts, the performance captivated the then 19-year-old who later credited Cash for his “outlaw sound.” About 10 years later, the two men ended up performing together on the TV series The Johnny Cash Show. In February 1969, Cash recorded a live album at that prison, Johnny Cash At San Quentin. Here’s a clip of I Walk The Line, one of the tunes Cash likely also performed during the 1959 gig.
1962:Decca Records Head of A&R (singles) Dick Rowe became the record company executive who rejected The Beatles after A&R representative Mike Smith recorded a session with them at Decca’s studios in West Hampstead, London. At the time, the band’s line-up consisted of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Pete Best. While manager Brian Epstein and The Beatles were confident Decca would sign them, instead they went with Brian Poole and The Tremeloes, a local band. According to the Beatles Bible, Rowe thought it would be easier to work with them than a band from Liverpool. The official reason given to Epstein: “Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein.” While it is safe to assume Rowe bitterly regretted his decision, he did sign up The Rolling Stones, ironically following Harrison’s recommendation.
1964: The television music program Top of the Pops (TOTP) debuted on the BBC. The inaugural of the show that aired weekly until July 2006 featured The Rolling Stones (I Wanna Be Your Man), Dusty Springfield (I Only Want To Be With You), The Dave Clark Five (Glad All Over),The Hollies (Stay), The Swinging Blues Jeans (Hippy Hippy Shake) and The Beatles (I Want To Hold Your Hand). Thanks to its large viewing audience, TOTP became a significant part of British pop culture, according to Wikipedia.
1966:The Sound Of Silence (originally called The Sounds Of Silence) by Simon & Garfunkel reached no. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Written by Paul Simon, the duo initially recorded it in March 1964 for their studio debut Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. But the record bombed and they broke up. After the song had received growing radio play during the spring of 1965, producer Tom Wilson decided to remix the track and release it in September that year. Simon & Garfunkel were only informed about this after the fact. The song’s chart success led them to reunite and record their second album, Sounds Of Silence. On that record, the tune appeared as The Sound Of Silence.
1972:Carole King’s third studio album Music, which had been released in December 1971, reached no. 1 on the Billboard 200. The follow-up to King’s iconic 1971 record Tapestry from maintained that position for three consecutive weeks. In fact, both albums were simultaneously in the top 10 for many weeks. Here is a clip of Sweet Seasons, which was co-written by King and Toni Stern and also released separately as a single.
Sources: This Day In Music.com, Songfacts Music History Calendar, The Beatles Bible, Wikipedia, YouTube
Today, Ringo Starr celebrated his 77th birthday and announced his upcoming 19th studio album. As the Los Angeles Timesreported, Starr and hundreds of fans and fellow musicians gathered at Capitol Records Tower in Hollywood for a “Peace and Love” birthday celebration. The annual event has been conducted since 2008, when Starr was asked about his birthday wish and replied “more peace and love.” Ever since he has asked his fans all over the world to stop at noon their local time and say the words “peace and love” to spread the message.
“The great thing is that it’s continuing to grow,” Starr said in the above LA Times story. “When this started in Chicago in 2008, there were maybe 60 or 100 people…My dream — my fantasy — is that one day in the future everyone on the planet will stop at noon and say, ‘Peace and love.’”
Starr was born as Richard Starkey on July 7, 1940 in Liverpool, England. Of course, he is best known as the drummer of The Beatles, replacing Pete Best in August 1962. Prior to that he had played in Rory Storm and The Hurricanes, which had become one of Liverpool’s leading bands in early 1960. Starr met The Beatles for the first time at Kaiserkeller in Hamburg, Germany on October 1, 1960. Just like The Beatles, The Hurricanes had accepted a residency in the Northern German city.
Only two weeks later after the initial encounter, Starr joined John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison to back up Hurricanes singer Lou Walters during a recording of the George Gershwin tune Summertime. During that time period in Hamburg, Starr also filled in for Best on a few occasions. In August 1962, Lennon asked Starr whether he wanted to join The Beatles. Apparently, George Martin wasn’t very impressed with Best’s drumming. Five months later, The Fab Four recorded their debut studio album Please Please Me, which was released in March 1963.
After the official break-up of The Beatles in early 1970, Starr launched a solo career, which to date has included 18 studio albums. No. 19 is called Give More Love and scheduled for September 15th. Rolling Stone just reported that Paul McCartney appears in two songs on the record: We’re On the Road Again and Show Me the Way. Other guests include Joe Walsh, Edgar Winter, Steve Lukather, Peter Frampton, Richard Marx, Dave Stewart, Don Was and Timothy B. Schmit. The record’s title song, a nice mid-tempo tune, has already been released, and the album is available for pre-order.
In mid-October, Starr and his All-Starr Band will kick off a 19-gig U.S. tour in support of the album. The All-Starr Band, a live rock supergroup, has existed in different configurations since 1989. The upcoming line-up will include Lukather, Todd Rundgren, Gregg Rollie, Richard Page, Warren Ham and Gregg Bissonette.
Following is a selection of songs to celebrate Starr’s birthday:
Octupus’s Garden (The Beatles, Abbey Road, 1969)
It Don’t Come Easy (non-album single, 1971)
Photograph (Ringo, 1973)
Wrack My Brain (Stop and Smell the Roses, 1981; written by George Harrison)
Walk With You (Y Not, 2010; duet with Paul McCartney)
Postcards From Paradise (Postcards From Paradise, 2015)
Sources: Wikipedia; Los Angeles Times; Rolling Stone; Ringo Starr website; YouTube
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