{"id":172588,"date":"2025-09-27T10:49:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T10:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/172588\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T10:49:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T10:49:09","slug":"the-beatles-are-still-selling-records-we-do-billions-of-streams-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/172588\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Beatles are still selling records \u2014 we do billions of streams a year!\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his mind, Ringo Starr never stopped being 24. When his second son Jason was fretting about turning 40 in 2007, telling his dad that he felt like he was 27, the world\u2019s most famous drummer was compelled to administer a gentle parental put-down. \u201cI said you can\u2019t be 27, I\u2019m only 24,\u201d he tells me, speaking by video call from his home in Los Angeles. He chuckles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His actual age is\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009well, Ringo doesn\u2019t really like seeing it in the cold glare of print. Suffice to say he first turned 24 in 1964, the year of the \u201cBritish Invasion\u201d, when the US fell hard for The Beatles and \u201cI Love Ringo\u201d badges were all the rage. In the book The Beatles Anthology, he described this as the moment when, having been the last to join the group, he felt fully accepted: \u201cSuddenly we were equal.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The perpetual 24-year-old certainly looks trim and fit. There\u2019s no trace of grey in his wavy dark hair and beard. He wears tinted glasses and a necklace with a peace sign symbol. The collar of his denim jacket is upturned in classic rock \u2019n\u2019 roll style. He speaks from his recording studio in the Beverly Hills house where he and his wife Barbara Bach live.<\/p>\n

\"ARingo Starr in 1963, in the early years of The Beatles \u00a9 Bettmann Archive<\/p>\n

Ringo \u2014 Sir Richard Starkey for official purposes \u2014 recently finished recording the vocal and drum parts for a follow-up to the country album he released earlier this year, Look Up. An electric guitar hangs on the wall behind him, covered with stars: a present from one of his sons. A star-shaped abstract painting with vivid streaks of colour is propped next to it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I just go to the canvas and start\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009And then you realise you\u2019ve been there two hours. I\u2019m always shocked. What, it\u2019s like 4pm already?<\/p>\n

This is an original Starr artwork. Like his fellow surviving Beatle, Paul McCartney, Ringo is a part-time artist. But whereas Macca\u2019s brightly hued figures and landscapes have been exhibited in establishment spaces such as the Walker Art Gallery in the pair\u2019s home city of Liverpool, Ringo\u2019s similarly colourful output is less well-known.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pleasure is if I get off my arse and walk over here to do it. Some days I do, and some weeks I don\u2019t,\u201d he says of his painting and printmaking. His voice is comfortingly familiar, a deep burr of Liverpudlian with transatlantic inflections.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI just go to the canvas and start\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009And then you realise you\u2019ve been there two hours. I\u2019m always shocked. What, it\u2019s like 4pm already? I just love it. And then I can have a cup of tea with Barbara or I can give the dog a biscuit. It\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ringo\u2018I always wanted to get somewhere in the light. As soon as I could make enough money to do so, I moved\u2019 \u00a9 Photographed for the FT by Sinna Nasseri\"RingoRingo Starr and team at The Sunset Marquis hotel, Los Angeles \u00a9 Sinna Nasseri<\/p>\n

He currently has an exhibition in Las Vegas. It\u2019s showing at the Animazing Gallery<\/a> in the Grand Canal Shoppes, an only-in-Vegas mock-up of Venice that doubles as a ritzy shopping mall. The show has coincided with Ringo\u2019s visit to the desert resort for six gigs with his All Starr Band at the Venetian hotel and casino this month.<\/p>\n

The gallery\u2019s walls are lined with Warhol-style prints showing a younger Ringo in a bandanna and surreal pop art depictions of the four Beatles as wooden men. Cartoonish faces with giant eyes and big grins beam from frames. \u201cI can\u2019t paint you looking like you,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t have that skill.\u201d<\/p>\n

The works on show are for sale. Prints cost between $2,000 and $10,000. Original paintings range from $50,000 to $200,000. The proceeds are going to the Lotus Foundation, the charity that Ringo founded with his wife, whose aims include helping people with addiction problems. (Both he and Bach went sober after a rehab programme in 1988.)<\/p>\n

\"Ringo\u2018Paul and I are still doing what we were doing then. We\u2019re on the road, we\u2019re making records\u2019 \u00a9 Sinna Nasseri<\/p>\n

Ringo had the toughest upbringing of the four Beatles. When he mapped his genealogy in later life, he struggled to trace his antecedents back more than two generations. \u201cYou think there\u2019s going to be a couple of princes or princesses, or an Egyptian queen, but no: we had nothing. Just a lot of soldiers and tramps.\u201d<\/p>\n

Art hardly featured in his childhood. \u201cWe lived in a very tight little house,\u201d he says. \u201cBecause my dad left when I was three, we became lower working-class. My mum had to work her arse off, day and night, to pay the rent and feed us. And she was helped by my grandparents. I was brought up by three of them: mum, my nan and my granddad.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019re still selling records. We do billions of streams a year! It\u2019s far out. I know why. The music was great, the songs were great<\/p>\n

A high wall and tenement block opposite blotted out any sunshine. \u201cI always wanted to get somewhere in the light,\u201d Ringo says emphatically. \u201cAs soon as I could make enough money to do so, I moved.\u201d<\/p>\n

He first got an eye for art in his late twenties or thirties during sojourns in Amsterdam. \u201cThat\u2019s when it really started to kick in. Marijuana had something to do with it. Make up a joint, go to the art gallery and\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009\u201d \u2014 he mimes being giddily stoned. \u201cBut I\u2019m not on that anymore.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rembrandt is his favourite painter. \u201cA lot of grey because that\u2019s what Amsterdam is. You can sit there for a week looking at \u2018The Night Watch\u2019,\u201d he says of Rembrandt\u2019s colossal masterpiece, which hangs in the Rijksmuseum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of his first paintings was a big canvas of \u201clike, a crazy tree\u201d. He daubed it after moving to Monaco in 1975. There was no grey waiting for him there, just Mediterranean sun and sparkling blue sea, the European mirror image of his life in California. \u201cAnywhere I go, I love the ocean,\u201d he says. \u201cHow big are you? Look at the ocean.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AFrom left: Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison and John Lennon in 1965 during the filming of \u2018Help!\u2019 \u00a9 Bridgeman Images<\/p>\n

The Beatles had numerous links with visual art, including John Lennon\u2019s art school training and Yoko Ono\u2019s concept art career. With Peter Blake\u2019s design for Sgt Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band, they created an iconic example of the album sleeve as artwork.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s nearly as famous as Abbey Road,\u201d Ringo says. \u201cI love the story of Abbey Road because we\u2019re all sat around in a circle talking about how we\u2019ve got this album, let\u2019s go to India and do it, let\u2019s go to Everest, let\u2019s go to the Pyramids \u2014 or let\u2019s just walk across the road. And that\u2019s just what we did! A lot of times The Beatles just sat around talking about expansive things, but ah, let\u2019s just go across the zebra crossing. And it worked out really well.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s still working out well. The Beatles are having a productive 2020s, including the television series Get Back and last year\u2019s reactivated single \u201cNow and Then\u201d. The Beatles Anthology (not the book but its accompanying documentary series, first shown in 1995) returns in a remastered version in November, with a new episode.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Ringo\u2018Listen, man, it\u2019s been cool. Peace and love\u2019 \u00a9 Sinna Nasseri<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery generation, if they\u2019re into music, listens to us,\u201d Ringo says. \u201cAnd you know, we\u2019re still selling records. We do billions of streams a year! It\u2019s far out. I know why. The music was great, the songs were great, the attitude was great. Paul and I are still doing what we were doing then. We\u2019re on the road, we\u2019re making records.\u201d<\/p>\n

We speak during a two-day break in his current tour. He talks with undimmed enthusiasm about the current line-up of the All Starr Band and audiences being \u201con their feet, having a good time\u201d. The word \u201ctime\u201d is drawled, as if stretched as far as it will go. \u201cListen, man, it\u2019s been cool,\u201d Ringo says as my own time in his company draws to a close. \u201cPeace and love.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Starr Art\u2019, Animazing Gallery, Las Vegas, until October 15, animazing.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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