As he’s done annually since 1989, save for a two-year interruption due to the pandemic, Ringo Starr & His All Starr Band will be out on tour this summer and fall, playing two month-long stints that include shows six days during most of the weeks. For a drummer-singer who is now 82, that might seem like a demanding workload.
But this is exactly how Starr likes it. Speaking during a pair of press conferences with the other members of his All Starr Band (one just last month and another last fall) Starr said the original tour routing for this summer and fall actually had too many off days and he had his booking agent add more shows.
“If I’m on the road, I want to play,” Starr said during the mid-May video conference. “I don’t want to sit in a hotel and relax for three days. I want to get out there and play. It’s just how I am. I just love to do it. I mean, with this band it’s great because everybody takes the weight.”
The current tour is hitting the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on Thursday, June 15 and returns to Southern California during the fall leg of the run to perform at Toyota Arena in Ontario on Sunday, Sept. 17.
This band includes six other stars in their own right — Edgar Winter on keyboards and saxophone, Steve Lukather (from Toto) on guitars, Hamish Stuart (an original member of the Average White Band) on bass, Colin Hay (of Men At Work fame) on guitar, horn player Warren Ham and drummer Gregg Bissonette.
It’s the latest edition of what has been a rotating unit – although this lineup of the All Starr Band has been mostly intact since 2018 – since the former Beatle assembled the first All Starr Band in 1989. Each show features a cross section of hits from Starr’s solo catalog and his time in the Beatles, while each member of the band plays a hit or two from their respective careers.
Several band members agreed that the chance to play such a variety of songs is part of the appeal of the tours.
“I love the challenge of…
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