Even at 85, Ringo Starr eagerly awaits each new tour with his All Starr Band not just to play his own material, which includes Beatles classics such as “Yellow Submarine,” “Octopus’s Garden” and “With a Little Help from My Friends,” but to showcase his buddies and bandmates’ work.
The Fab Four drummer and longtime solo artist, who first visited Colorado for a Beatles concert at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in 1964, is keen to showcase recognizable hits above all else. Those range from bandmates Colin Hay (Men at Work) playing “Who Can It Be Now” to Steve Lukather (Toto) belting out “Rosanna” and Hamish Stewart (Average White Band) leading “Pick Up the Pieces.”
It’s maximized for nostalgic, sing-along fun and bygone chart-toppers, and one that Starr has spent decades honing with invited musicians who back up his drumming and singing.
“When I first started doing this in 1989 it was, ‘You have to had have hits,’ ” Starr said via phone from Los Angeles last week, where he had just finished pre-tour rehearsals with . “And in the ’90s we were sort of like the 1-800 band. But I had people who would apply and I’d put it together in my head. I’d say, ‘OK, here’s the band and deal with it!’
“And I got to play with a lot of really good musicians and got disappointed by some other players, but thatap just life,” he added. “The main thing is I’ll do my best and I hope you’ll do your best.”
Starr certainly seems to be doing that lately, given his late-career renaissance. His 2025 country album “Look Up,” produced by T Bone Burnett, finally gave Starr his first No. 1 solo release in the U.K. and charted on various Billboard lists (including its Top 10 sales chart). He also played the Grand Ole Opry for the first time, which is a bit of a surprise for someone who grew up in Liverpool loving U.S. country songwriters such as Carl Perkins and Johnny Russell, both of whom he covers with the All Starr Band.
That gives Sir Starr, who was knighted as British royalty by Prince William in 2018, even more momentum as he tours and celebrates his April 24 solo album, “Long Long Road.” It’s his 22nd studio LP and another slice of earnest and ambling country helmed by Grammy winner Burnett in Nashville. On top of all that, Starr performed his on McCartney’s new album, “Boys of Dungeon Lane,” with
“It was all I knew,” Starr sings on the track, which revisits the hardscrabble days of growing up in Liverpool. “The world around us wasn’t safe, the place was falling down. But that was my hometown.”
Did he ever expect to work with so many talented young artists on his recent albums? (See Sheryl Crow, Molly Tuttle, Billy Strings, Sarah Jarosz and St. Vincent, all of whom were corralled for the latest project by Burnett.) Or even hope to see a No. 1 solo album in his lifetime?
“I hoped for it,” he said of recent wins, including the Opry show. “I played the Ryman (Auditorium, in Nashville) several times. When I was a lad loving country music, Ryman was the place to be if you were a country guy, and so I played there with the All Starrs.”
However, you won’t hear much of Starr’s recent work on the current tour, which plays Denver on Tuesday, June 9, at Bellco Theatre (see for tickets). Starr long ago learned that variety is the spice of his sets, with his bandmates’ hits and covers of The Shirelles, Hoyt Axton, The Beatles, John Lennon, The Isley Brothers, Plastic Ono Band at the ready.
“I’m not doing a whole country set,” Starr said. “I’ve always felt with Colin Hay and Steve Lukather, everyone on stage has had hits, and we do those hits and ‘A Little Help from My Friends’ and (solo hit) ‘Photograph’ and one song from the new album. Most of our fans come to see us for the great mixed bag.”
Burnett has helped with that by connecting Starr to younger musicians, including on 2025’s “Look Up,” which also featured Larkin Poe, Lucius, Alison Krauss and others.
“We’ve been hanging out a lot more lately than we ever did, and he really loves country music,” Starr said of Burnett. “People send me songs, but what is great is that all of the ones T Bone sent were in the key I could sing. … He’s easy to get on with, and we’ve both been in it for awhile. I’m blessed, really, that he decided to be the producer of the last two records. We had no big plans. We just did it.”
Some tracks were recorded separately, with Starr and collaborator Tuttle in different studios across the country. Starr is famously laidback and welcoming, but it’s understandable that guests may have been intimidated to work with a living music legend. How has he learned to tune everyone into the same wavelength?
“Just being me, I suppose. I don’t put a bowtie on or anything,” he said. “Itap just how it is.”
Starr is now older than most surviving British Invaders, including The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger (82) and Keith Richards (82); The Who’s Roger Daltrey (82) and Pete Townshend (81); and the Kinks’ Ray Davies (81). Along with McCartney, who’s 83 and just played Denver’s Coors Field last year, Starr has an uncommon musical energy and work ethic, keeping the hippie-activist flame alive by working for peace and environmental conservation while writing books, painting, acting and dipping into other artistic mediums.
Like his Rock & Roll Hall of Fame peers, there would be little reason to keep recording and playing music if he didn’t have a pure love of it, given his existing fame and wealth. For him, it’s a simple choice, mostly because he “likes playing with other guys and girls,” he said.
Oh — and don’t forget drumming. Even though he’s been playing them nonstop since 1957, right after his dad gifted him his first kit for Christmas, and about five years before he’d replace drummer Pete Best in the Beatles, there’s a simple reason he still loves climbing onto the drum riser.
“I just like to hit those buggers,” he said.
