Nobody else thought he was necessarily going to be OK. He was small, weak-looking and undernourished with very, very little schooling.
‘He’d had a difficult childhood,’ says Marie Maguire, the girl who’d taught him to read. ‘With a broken home and two long illnesses. I just hoped he’d be happy. Not successful or anything. Just happy.’
The two long illnesses must have had a big effect on him, making it very difficult to adjust to school and to work and to ordinary life. Today he can’t remember any of his schoolmasters’ names, but he does remember two of the nurses who looked after him — Sister Clark and Nurse Edgington.
But he himself never remembers being unhappy. He thinks he had a good childhood.
It was ironic that when he went back to Dingle Vale Secondary Modern that time for a reference, no one could remember him. Just a few years later, on an open day, they brought out a desk which Ringo Starr was supposed to have used. They charged people sixpence a time to sit in it and have their photographs taken.
19 ringo with the beatles
Ringo showed no musical interest and learned no instrument as a boy. ‘We did have a ward band in the hospital. There were four kids on cymbals and two on triangles. I would never play unless I had a drum.’
It was when he started to work, as an apprentice fitter, that the skiffle craze arrived. He helped to form a group called the Eddie Clayton Skiffle, which played to the rest of the apprentices in the dinner hour.
His first drums were a second-hand set bought by his stepfather when he was down home in Romford. They cost £10. ‘I brought them up from London in the guard’s van,’ says Harry. ‘I was waiting for a taxi home at Lime Street when I saw Joe Loss walking over. I thought, if he asks me if I can play them, I’ll have to say no. But he walked right past me.’
His first new set of drums cost £100. He went to his grandad for the £50 deposit.
‘If his grandad even refused him a shilling, he’d do a war dance,’ says his mother. ‘This time his grandad came to see me. “Hey, do you know what that bloody noddler of yours wants?” He always called him the Noddler. But he gave him the money. Ritchie paid it back faithfully, a pound a week out of wages.’
His mother was a bit worried about the group taking up too much of his time, as he was supposed to be going to classes at Riverdale Technical College, catching up on some of the schooling he’d missed.
But Harry, his stepfather, was quite interested in the skiffle group. It gave the boy an interest. One night Harry met a bloke in a bar who said he was in a band. The man agreed to give Ritchie a go and Harry made a date for him. Ritchie went along and came back furious. It turned out to be a Prize Silver Band. They wanted to give him a huge drum, strap it on his front, then make him march along the street going bang, bang, in time to a military march.
Not that he was doing much better in the Eddie Clayton group. Not that there was an Eddie Clayton, come to that. Eddie Miles, who was really the leader of the group, had changed his name — for professional purposes — to Eddie Clayton, the minute the group had begun. Just as Paul, George and John had changed their names when they went to Scotland.
But eventually, after going through the same sort of skiffle competitions and parties and little dance halls that the Beatles had, Ritchie joined Rory Storm’s group. When they were offered a season at Butlins, Ringo had to make the decision whether to leave work. He was then 20, with just one more year of his apprenticeship to go. ‘Everybody said I shouldn’t leave, and I suppose they were right. But I just felt I wanted to. I was getting by then £6 a week at Hunt’s, and about £8 by playing at nights. Butlins was offering me £20 a week in all, £16 when they took off the money for the chalet.’
Rory’s was by then Liverpool’s leading group, but the offer of 13 weeks at Butlins was their biggest break. ‘We were going to make our names, so we thought we’d better have good ones. Rory Storm had already changed his name twice. He’s really Alan Caldwell, then he became Jet Storme then Rory Storm.’
It was at Butlins that Richard Starkey finally became Ringo. Up until then he’d been occasionally called Rings. He’d got his first ring on his 16th birthday from his mother. When his Grandfather Starkey died, he got another, a broad gold ring, which he still wears. By the age of 20 he was wearing up to four rings. His surname was abbreviated to Starr at Butlins so they could announce his solo drumming spot as Star Time. Rings naturally became Ringo, as it sounded better with a one-syllable surname.
Back in Liverpool, Ringo had his 21st birthday party at his home in Admiral Grove. All the leading groups were there, including Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Big Three and Cilla Black. The Beatles didn’t come. Ringo didn’t know them. They were from another part of Liverpool and just another struggling group.
The living room at Admiral Grove is tiny, just ten feet by twelve feet, but somehow they got 60 people in for the party. They know the number because Ringo lined them up afterwards for a picture on the brick rubble heap opposite the house.
Elsie, Ringo’s mum, had known Cilla Black for a long time, as a local lass called Cilla White. For almost a year she’d been coming to Mrs Starkey’s, with a friend, every Wednesday after work. Cilla had her tea and then did Elsie’s hair for her.
The success of their 13-week season at Butlins led to other engagements. They did a tour of United States air bases in France, but Ringo says this was terrible. ‘The French don’t like the British, at least I didn’t like them.’
Rory’s group was doing so well that when the first offer came to go to Hamburg they turned it down. But they went later, joining the Beatles at the Kaiserkeller, which was where they met for the first time. Ringo has a slight memory of catching sight of them once before that in Liverpool. He looked into the Jackaranda Club one day and saw them teaching Stu how to play the bass.
In Hamburg Ringo used to sit around with them between sessions and request numbers when they were playing. He came back to Liverpool with Rory, then returned to Hamburg on his own, accompanying Tony Sheridan. During this spell in Hamburg, he seriously considered staying on for good. He was offered his own flat, a car and £30 a week to stay for a year. But he decided to come back to Liverpool and Rory Storm again for another season at Butlins. This was when he was asked to join the Beatles. John told him on the phone that he would have to brush his hair down, but he could keep his sidies.
Ringo had to put up with a lot of shouts and threatening letters from Pete Best fans. ‘The birds loved Pete. Me, I was just a skinny, bearded scruff. Brian didn’t really want me either. He thought I didn’t have the personality. And why get a bad-looking cat when you can get a good-looking one?’
It was the money that made Ringo decide. ‘I got another offer at the same time, from King Size Taylor and the Dominoes. He offered £20 a week. The Beatles offered £25, so I took them.’
As with all of them, and as with everyone in life, their paths might not have crossed. Much earlier, Ringo was on the point of emigrating to the United States. He and a friend were looking through some records one day and read that ‘Lightning Hopkins comes from Houston, Texas.’ They went to see the US consul in Liverpool and said they wanted to go to Houston, Texas. He said they had to have a job first. Ringo picked one in a factory. ‘Then the really big forms arrived, all about was your grandfather’s Great Dane a Commy. I couldn’t understand them. If I had done, I would definitely have gone.’