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October 25th, 2026 · 6:04pm GMT
Seeing one artist 100 times in concert feels excessive, no matter the circumstances. However, in fairness, Ringo Starr has been around the sun 85 times, and in that context, getting to triple digits is fairly achievable.
The art of following a particular artist has become a lot easier to manage in the digital age, with fans plotting out holidays that align with them following their favourite artists on the road. Whereas, back in the day, all of the information necessary wasn’t available at the click of the button, but that didn’t stop Ringo from watching Bob Dylan whenever he physically could.
By the time Dylan started making the rounds across America, anyone who didn’t know the name Ringo Starr was either old or dead. The Beatles had become one of the biggest sensations in the world, and even if he wasn’t standing out front with his bandmates, Starr couldn’t move for fans hassling him on the streets.
He had a level of fame himself which prevented him from getting starry-eyed about a fellow musician just because they were a star attraction. Instead, it would take something greater to get on his radar, and Dylan, who never tried to play into the sounds of pop music, had him head over heels.
Dylan has always been an artist bent on delivering his message to as many people as possible, and back then, no matter when he played, he would put his heart and soul into every single song.
That’s not to say that there weren’t a few flaws. Anyone who has heard Dylan try his hand at singing knows he has a very distinctive voice, which can occasionally sound like sandpaper to the uninitiated. However, once you start paying attention to his lyrics, this wasn’t just some joker with an acoustic guitar trying his hand at singing… this was a man speaking for you.
Compared to other popular singers at the time, Dylan wanted to make music that documented his time period, either taking politicians to task for their wrongdoing or making universal tales about what it means to treat people with respect and fight for the rights of everyone, regardless of their background. This was rock and roll history, and Starr couldn’t get enough of it.
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When talking about his favourite artists, Starr admitted to obsessively watching Dylan when he came out, telling Howard Stern in 2018, “He was great. I’ve seen Bob 100 times, and you get what you get, and you still love it… I saw Bob in the ‘60s when he first came, and he played the Albert Hall … A lot of people in sweaters stood up screaming at him, ‘Traitor! Traitor!’ because he’d gone a bit rock.”
Starr has truly been a Dylan fan throughout thick and thin too, even when others have deserted him. In 2009, during an interview with ABC News, he named ‘When The Deal Goes Down’ as his favourite track from Dylan’s career, which featured on his 2006 album Modern Times.
He said from the heart, “You just got to love Bob. My old-time favourite lately is ‘When The Deal Goes Down,’ and it’s just a beautiful love song. It’s this beautiful love song, he’s very romantic in a lot of songs, everyone listens to his wacky dream stuff, which is great. He moves me on that record.
Starr is a real one when it comes to Dylan, and in 1987, he accomplished his bucket list dream of working with his hero. However, what happened during that session has never seen the light of day due to Starr aborting his plans for the entire album due to his alcohol problems.
He later conceded in 2010, “I did a track in Memphis with Bob. I was doing an album there, and he came up to sing on it, but the album fell apart, and so did we. One thing was the person who was looking out for Bob at that time said, ‘Bob’s gone’, so I said, ‘Where’s he gone?’, ‘Graceland’. I said, ‘That’s good’, he said, ‘That’s bad’. It depends on which way you look at it.”
While this is a disappointment, Starr knows it was all his doing, and it didn’t stop him from getting to the next Dylan show his calendar permitted.
Like all of his biggest fans, Starr admires that Mr Zimmerman is not a man who puts on airs whenever he gets onstage, and whenever he entertains a crowd with songs, he’s not marching to anyone else’s tune but his own. That might be frustrating for those who just want to hear ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ or ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, but Dylan should be commended for sticking to his guns. He never went glam in the 1980s or tried his hand at making brooding grunge in the 1990s.
He may have periods that were more celebrated than others, but Dylan knew that no artist should have to compromise their performance to suit what the trends are
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