I imagine it’s a hard job being Ringo Starr’s drummer.
“No, we have a lot of fun. We play together, which is great,” Starr says. “So it gives the band a bit of meat.”
Starr has been making headlines for decades. I ask him about some of them and whether or not they were really true.
Did he coin the phrase “A Hard Day’s Night” – which later became the title of their first movie, a song and album? He sure did.
Was he the first member of the Beatles to smoke pot? “Yes,” he says.
“I took the first puff,” he adds with a laugh.
Has he really never eaten pizza or curry?
“I never have,” he says.
His life has also been covered extensively in films and documentaries. Director Sam Mendes is due to release four Beatles movies about each of the band members in 2028. Barry Keoghan is playing Starr and has been spotted around town with an iconic Beatles-style mop top hairstyle.
The actor came to Los Angeles to meet Starr “to hang out” – not to study his movements.
“It wasn’t like one of those in-depth things,” Starr says, noting the actor didn’t question him on things like “which hand do you use to pick your nose”.
“It was none of that. It was just hanging out and saying ‘hi’.”
