Ringo Starr Quotes & Sayings

Every night there's a moment that I just wanna go back to bed. I just get nervous. Then I run on (stage) and as soon as I grab the mic then I'm fine. — Ringo Starr

I'm on my feet and I'm doing what I love to do, and I'm in a profession, as a musician, where we can go on for as long as we can go on. — Ringo Starr

I've never gone to the bedroom when I was starting out and practiced away. — Ringo Starr

They said do what you want, because if we don't like it, no-one will hear it. — Ringo Starr

And in a marriage you can't TRY and be married. You're married or you're not married ... as far as I'm concerned. — Ringo Starr

I'm left handed and I'm playing a right handed kit ... That's why everyone thought, 'Wow, he's a genius,' but all I was doing was trying to play backwards ... It's one of those mad accidents, you can't learn it. — Ringo Starr

I used to wear different rings when I first got called Ringo in about 19, about, umm, '59 I got called Ringo. — Ringo Starr

John had Julian and I had Zak so we'd try to do the fatherly things. We'd try to do manly things too; we'd go to the pub and bring Maureen and Cynthia a Babycham or something- a real Liverpool attitude — Ringo Starr

The Beatles were just four guys that loved each other. That's all they'll ever be. — Ringo Starr

I know when I feel good when I play. There's a closeness with musicians you only get from playing live, even in the studio it's still playing live. For me, it's what expands my soul. — Ringo Starr

You got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues ... And you know it don't come easy. — Ringo Starr

I've never been able to sit round on my own and play drums, practice in the back room, never been able to. I've always played with other musicians. It's how I play, there's no joy for me in playing on my own, bashing away. I need a bass, a piano, guitar, whatever, and then I can play. — Ringo Starr

The business is so driven by money, everyone's trying to get it right. — Ringo Starr

Let's make my birthday, July the 7th at noon, Peace and Love Day. Everybody go, 'Peace and love.' In the office, on the bus, wherever. It's still peace and love for me, I'm a product of the 60s and it was a very influential period in my life, and you know, my head was turned around a bit, my eyes were opened as it were. In fact, I even have it on my arm, 'Peace and love'. I see nothing wrong with peace and love. — Ringo Starr

Roy Orbison was the only act that The Beatles didn't want to follow. — Ringo Starr

Of course I'm ambitious. What's wrong with that? Otherwise you sleep all day. — Ringo Starr

I like playing with a live band and I've got my act and we're fine. — Ringo Starr

I've been asked to write my autobiography and really they only want 8 years (1962-1970), and I keep saying it would be five volumes before I even got into the band! — Ringo Starr

I'm always good for starting a bit of a tune and the first verse, but after that I just can never go anywhere. It takes me years, that's why I'm so slow. — Ringo Starr

That's when we decided to stop in '66. Everyone thought we toured for years, you know, but we didn't. I joined in '62, and we'd finished touring in '66 to go into the studio where we could hear each other ... and create any fantasy that came out of anybody's brain. — Ringo Starr

At the end of the day, I can end up just totally wacky, because I've made mountains out of molehills. With meditation, I can keep them as molehills. — Ringo Starr

They paint you red before they sacrifice you. It's a different religion from ours - I think. — Ringo Starr

I've never broken a bone in my life, or in my body. — Ringo Starr

I made all my mistakes playing with people. — Ringo Starr

Take a dose of rock and roll, and wash it down with cool clear soul. — Ringo Starr

I think we should have understanding and love and peace. I mean, peace and love has been my situation. You hear that in the song. I'm trying to promote that now: peace and love and understanding. — Ringo Starr

I'm like everyone else, on the stage it's good. Not too much fun in the hotel or the airplane or the bus, but you got to do it. — Ringo Starr

I was the new boy. It was like joining a new class at school where everybody knows everybody else but me. — Ringo Starr

We'd get in the car and i'd look over at John and say 'Christ. Look at you. You're a bloody phenomenon!' and just laugh because it was only him. — Ringo Starr

I'm not sleeping with all the women I appear with. — Ringo Starr

Well, I'm getting happier all the time, which is very nice. — Ringo Starr

It all comes down to who you crucify, you either kiss the past or future good-bye. — Ringo Starr

I'm not the creative one. I know that. If Rory Storm hadn't come along ... and then The Beatles ... I would have continued running around in teddyboy gangs. Today, well ... I'd probably be a laborer. I'm glad I'm not, of course. It'll be nice to be part of history ... some sort of history anyway. What I'd like to be is in school history books and be read by kids. — Ringo Starr

I used to wish I could write songs like the others - and I've tried but I just can't. I get the words all right, but whenever I think of a tune and sing it to the others they always say 'Yeah, it always sounds like such a thing' and when they point it out I see what they mean. But I did get a part credit as a composer on one - it was called What Goes On. — Ringo Starr

The drummer's always going to be there. They're the floor of the whole deal and everyone can stand up on you. — Ringo Starr

I am truly grateful. I'm a grateful human being. — Ringo Starr

I love being in a band. I love playing with other human beings. I've never practiced drums unless there was another human being in the room. — Ringo Starr

That's all drugs and alcohol do, they cut off your emotions in the end. — Ringo Starr

I get on with kids and I feel that's because I am one. — Ringo Starr

George was getting alot of independence for himself in those days. He was writing more, and wanted things to go his way - where, when we first started things basically went John and Paul's way. You know, 'cuz they were the writers. — Ringo Starr

Do you remember when everyone began analyzing Beatles songs..I don't think I ever understood what some of them were supposed to be about — Ringo Starr

This was the point of our lives when we found pills, uppers. That's the only way we could continue playing for so long. They were called Preludin, and you could buy them over the counter. We never thought we were doing anything wrong, but we'd get really wired and go on for days. So with beer and Preludin, that's how we survived. — Ringo Starr

I never take it as any real pressure. It's like my son. I only gave him one lesson. When I went to give him the second one he said, 'Oh, I can do that dad.' I said, 'Now you're on your own.' — Ringo Starr

I'm a musician and I'm really blessed, because in my life if I can hold the sticks, I can play. — Ringo Starr

Beatles, women and children first! — Ringo Starr

And I came back and it was great, 'cuz George had set up all these flowers all over the studio saying welcome home. So then we got it together again. I always felt it was better on the White one for me. We were more like a band, you know. — Ringo Starr

I've always felt that a space is as good as a fill. — Ringo Starr

I've said this over and over again, but I love being in a band. — Ringo Starr

So this is America. They must be out of their minds. — Ringo Starr

I play weird. I'm always just behind. We [drummers] only have so much room. We're not guitarists. — Ringo Starr

I'm warning you with peace and love I have too much to do. So no more fan mail. Thank you, thank you. And no objects to be signed, nothing. Peace and love, peace and love. — Ringo Starr

We will miss George for his sense of love, his sense of music and his sense of laughter. — Ringo Starr

People in Liverpool don't move very far, you know. — Ringo Starr

I am, I definitely am. I'm really excited about that ... — Ringo Starr

I hate click tracks. A lot of people I know like to use click tracks. Like my son is perfect on the click tracks. It makes me to edgy. — Ringo Starr

I hope the fans will take up meditation instead of drugs. — Ringo Starr

If you made a record, I'd probably pick out tracks that I like and download that. That's just how it is. — Ringo Starr

When they come here, the English make a choice: New York or L.A. L.A. suited me better, I just feel comfortable here. — Ringo Starr

I met The Beatles while we were playing in Germany. We'd seen them in Liverpool, but they were a nothing little band then, just putting it together. In fact, they weren't really a band at all. — Ringo Starr

Ringo: 'I had no schooling before I joined The Beatles and no schooling after The Beatles. Life is a great education. — Ringo Starr

For me, God is in my life. I don't hide from that ... I think the search has been on since the '60s. — Ringo Starr

I've never had any big ideas about being the solo. — Ringo Starr

America: It's like Britain, only with buttons. — Ringo Starr

I think the most exciting thing is that you expect people our age to know the music, but actually a lot of kids know the music, and if anything is left, we have left really good music, and that's the important part, not the mop-tops or whatever. — Ringo Starr

The second side of Abbey Road is my favorite. — Ringo Starr

I'd like to be in a man band, but with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Keith Richards. We'd have a rocky edge. — Ringo Starr

Gaps can be very emotional. I mean, that's in my drumming. When I drum, you know, I don't need to drum all over the track. I play with the singer and I can back off. — Ringo Starr

We thought we'd be really big in Liverpool. — Ringo Starr

We [the band] had this open door policy - if you walked in the door, you were asked to play — Ringo Starr

I don't talk about myself in the third person, and I laugh at people who do. — Ringo Starr

I'm not going to say anything because nobody believes me when I do. — Ringo Starr

Ringo: 'I do get emotional when I think back about those times. My make-up is emotional. I'm an emotional human being. I'm very sensitive and it took me till I was forty-eight to realize that was the problem! We were honest with each other and we were honest about the music. The music was positive. It was positive in love. They did write - we all wrote - about other things, but the basic Beatles message was Love. — Ringo Starr

Everything government touches turns to crap. — Ringo Starr

I was in George Martin's studio in Amsterdam and he was telling me, 'They come in here and it takes them three days to do a bass line.' Well I'm not from that era. — Ringo Starr

A lot of the players I'm with, thank God, we're all still vertical. We've lost so many great players through the years, and we're still standing, as Elton John says. — Ringo Starr

I have a trainer who comes three times a week and just listens to me moan ... and I keep fit and keep moving ... and I do watch what I eat. I am a vegetarian ... I can't eat crazy food. I'm highly allergic to onions and garlic and spices ... I've never had a pizza, never had a curry. — Ringo Starr

From 13, I wanted to play drums. I wanted to play with good people and I'm still doing it. I still love it so that's why I do it. — Ringo Starr

When I was thirteen I only wanted to be a drummer. — Ringo Starr

Ten years from now, it'll all be the blues because that's the only speed I'll be able to play — Ringo Starr

I couldn't put my finger on one reason why we broke up. It was time, and we were spreading out. They were spreading out more than I was. I would've stayed with the band. — Ringo Starr

Gene Autry was the most. It may sound like a joke - Go and have a look in my bedroom, It's covered with Gene Autry posters. He was my first musical influence. — Ringo Starr

I'd like to end up sort of unforgettable. — Ringo Starr

Fondest memory of being a Beatle: Having three brothers. — Ringo Starr

The kids are interested in the music of them. They're not interested in mop-tops and Beatle boots and crazy suits. It's all down to the music now - that's what they hear, and that's what they love. — Ringo Starr

When you're in a band - before it got to grunge - you dressed the bit. So yeah, I've always had an attitude with the clothes. — Ringo Starr

The trouble with leaving your feet on the ground is you never get to take your pants off. — Ringo Starr

I feel as though that was someone else playing. I was possessed! — Ringo Starr

Believe me, I wish this song was yours instead of mine. — Ringo Starr

Every time, my syncopation is different, because I can never play the same fill twice. I just can't, never have been able to. Even as a Beatle, they'd say, 'Oh, double-track that.' I don't know how you do that, because when I'm in a fill I'm sort of this blackout, just this pure me coming out and I can't pure me the same, twice. So, that's that. — Ringo Starr

I've never really done anything to create what has happened. It creates itself. I'm here because it happened. But I didn't do anything to make it happen apart from saying 'Yes' — Ringo Starr

I have no anonymity.I've not had a drink in nine and a half years. That's my whole story right there. — Ringo Starr

I am the best rock drummer on the planet. — Ringo Starr

No, no, no, I don't snort no more, I'm tired of waking up on the floor. No thank you please, it only makes me sneeze, then it makes it hard to find the door. — Ringo Starr

I want to deal with what's in front of me now to the best of my abilities, and sometimes that's not very good. But a lot of the days it is really great. — Ringo Starr

I don't like talking. It's how I'm built. Some people gab all day and some play it smogo. I don't mind talking or smiling, it's just I don't do it very much. I haven't got a smiling face or a talking mouth. — Ringo Starr

In 1989 I sort of got back into the music business and one of the reasons I got back in is [that] I put the first All Stars band together. It's actually progressed from that every other year, or every two years, I've put that together ... more and more realizing that's what I do. — Ringo Starr

I mean, women are very important to me. I don't know, they just drive me crazy. — Ringo Starr

I think I'm more prolific in the songwriting. — Ringo Starr

I am a big Beatles fan. And, you know, unbeknownst to anyone, I used to be one. But I have no problems of putting titles and lines from other songs in my songs, because they're great lines and great titles. — Ringo Starr

Wake up meat head, don't pretend that you are dead. — Ringo Starr