Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Happy 70th, Ringo!


Few phrases seem as incongruous to me as the one in the headline above. A thousand replays of Ringo Starr and the other Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show have made it impossible to expunge the image of enduringly carefree youth, even if the boys eventually fell apart over money and ego problems and two are now dead.

And that great opening-credits sequence in A Hard Day’s Night—yes, they were the ones being chased through the train station by crazy fans, but they turned the tables by chasing the blues away—the “blues” in this case being nearly a decade of depressing British “kitchen-sink cinema” such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, This Sporting Life, and the one that started it all, Look Back in Anger.

Ringo’s life offscreen and away from the drums hasn’t always been fun (he’s had to fight an alcohol problem), but he’s managed to keep his humor intact and not accumulated neuroses or pretenses. He really seems to believe it when he sings, “I get by with a little help from my friends.”

Peace and love, Ringo.

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