Ringo Starr sings about his band before The Beatles

February 3, 2015 by Daytrippin' Leave a comment

Postcards from Paradise album cover. Photo credit: Rob Shanahan

Ringo Starr has written a new song reminiscing about his early days in Liverpool about the band he was in before he joined The Beatles. The song title, “Rory And The Hurricanes,” was announced last week along with the full track listing and release date of Ringo Starr’s new album, Postcards From Paradise.

The song “Rory And The Hurricanes” coming out on March 31 will add to the musical autobiography that Starr has been creating since 2008. Instead of publishing a traditional autobiography, Ringo has chosen to write about his life through his songs.

“I have been offered autobiographies, but all they only really wanna know about is those eight years in The Beatles and there would be three volumes before I even got to that,” Ringo explains. “[So] I’ve decided to do mini-autobiographies, instead of writing a book, I’m doing it on record… I’d rather put it quickly in a song, snippets of part of my life.”

This song will continue the musical memoir that Starr started in 2008 with his song “Liverpool 8” about the good and the bad of growing up in this British working class town where he became part of The Fab Four.

Rory Storm was mentioned in “Liverpool 8” as Ringo sings: “Played Butlin’s Camp with my friend Rory / It was good for him, it was great for me.”

It was while Ringo was the drummer for Rory Storm’s band that he adopted the first name “Ringo” instead of “Richard” for all the rings he wore and “Starr” instead of “Starkey” for “Starr Time,” a portion of the show where Ringo did a major drum solo.

Here are Ringo’s autobiographical songs (so far) in order of release:

“Liverpool 8”

“Liverpool 8” released in 2008 is the first song in Ringo’s virtual musical biography. Ringo sings about joining The Beatles and leaving Liverpool for worldwide fame. In the song, which was co-written with Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, Ringo asserts “Liverpool, I left you, but I never let you down.”

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“The Other Side of Liverpool”
“The Other Side of Liverpool” released in 2010 was about the negative aspects of growing up poor in Liverpool as Ringo sings “We had to go to Steeple Street / Just to take a bath.”

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“In Liverpool”

“In Liverpool” is the third installment to Ringo’s musical biography released in 2012. He sings of his early days as a drummer and going to clubs: “Me and the boys, me and the band / Living our fantasies.”