Ringo Starr Rocks N.Y.C.'s Radio City With A Little Help From His Friends
As he approaches 85 next month, Ringo Starr remains spry on the mic and the drums when he and his All Starr Band performed a sold-out date at New York’s Radio City Music Hall on Friday evening. It was a positive sign given that the former Beatle had to cancel the last two showas of his summer tour last year, including a date in the Big Apple, due to illness.
The Radio City show more than certainly made up for that cancellation as he and the band — guitarist/singer Steve Lukather (Toto), bassist/singer Hamish Stuart (Average White Band), guitarist/singer Colin Hay (Men at Work), woodwinds player/multi-instrumentalist Warren Ham, drummer Gregg Bissonette and keyboardist Buck Johnson — played a set of Starr’s solo material and Beatles songs that featured him on lead vocals.
The concert kicked off with a rollicking cover of Carl Perkins’ rockabilly classic Honey Don’t (which the Fab Four covered on 1964’s Beatles for Sale). From there, Starr alternated between standing in front of the stage with a mic in his hand and playing behind his drum kit as he ran through other beloved Beatles classics: “Yellow Submarine,” “Boys,” “Octopus’s Garden,” “I Wanna Be Your Man,” and a cover of Buck Owens’ “Act Naturally.”
Additionally, Starr unveiled his popularly known solo songs such as “It Don’t Come Easy,” “I’m the Greatest,” “No No Song” and the sublime “Photograph,” which he co-wrote with his former Beatles’ bandmate George Harrison. He also performed his recent single “Look Up” from the country album (produced by T Bone Burnett) of the same name released earlier this year.
Source: forbes.com/David Chiu
