Earlier on when he and the band did his 1970 solo hit It Don’t Come Easy, he confessed to the crowd that although it was credited to him, it was actually co-written with George Harrison who’d decided to give him the whole credit. That’s Starr’s approach to music: share it around. Or as All Starr’s guitarist Steve Lukather of Toto fame says, “The whole show is a jukebox of hits. But I must say as a player, I’m especially waiting for With A Little Help From My Friends. As soon as that voice comes in, I’m thinking to myself, ‘I’m playing this with Ringo!’” ‘The Boss’ (as Lukather refers to the man about whom John Lennon famously quipped, “Not the best drummer in the world, not even the best drummer in The Beatles!”) or Lukather himself often look out at the audience and see everyone up and singing along to every line of Yellow Submarine, and feel a chill.
This version of the Allstars also includes Todd Rundgren, Gregg Rolie (Journey, Santana), Richard Page (Mr Mister) as well as drummer Gregg Bissonette and multi-instrumentalist Mark Rivera, who is Ringo’s music director. Aside from Starr’s own stuff, they do a couple of their individual hits which Starr chose for them. Lukather does Toto’s Hold the Line, Rosanna and Africa; Rundgren recalls I Saw the Light and Bang the Drum; Rolie rolls out Evil Ways and Black Magic Woman.
Every single member of the Allstars is a card-carrying Beatles nut. Often at rehearsals, they’d inevitably be jamming on a Beatles song. Ringo would come in and groan, “Don’t you know any other music?” Lukather says that watching The Beatles on TV on their very first trip to America in 1963, on The Ed Sullivan Show, “turned on the switch in my life. That was it for me. George Harrison was my first guitar hero. The Beatles still do it for me. To be in the same band as Ringo is the most surreal experience but in a groovy way. We do what The Boss wants us to do. He picks the songs. This music is in my DNA. Even when I’m recording my own stuff, I’m thinking ‘Now what would they do on a track like this?’
“I consider The Boss a friend. I learn from him as a person. At 72, he’s quick and witty. If he wasn’t Ringo but the guy next door, he’s still the coolest. Very funny and so soulful with his experiences: he still believes in love and peace. When he talks everyone listens because you know he’s not talking shit. Only a few people in the world can understand what his life has been for 50 years on planet earth.”
Starr is the third Beatle that Lukather, much in demand to play guitar on sessions, has worked with. After meeting Paul McCartney during sessions for Michael Jackson’s Thriller, he was invited to London to work on Macca’s Give My Regards To Broadstreet project. Years later, he met George Harrison at a club in Los Angeles, and they hit it off immediately. They worked on a number of projects and Lukather learned about transcendental meditation. “I wish I’d kept the telephone messages he left for me: ‘Hello, this is your buddy George.’ His son Dhani wanted to meet Slash, whom I know really well, so I took the two of them to Slash’s house.”
In between All Starr commitments, Lukather has been playing with a reunited Toto (expect a visit to Australia in 2014), and has also visited our shores with G3, with Joe Satriani and Steve Vai (“We finished the tour at Bluesfest to 12,000 people. An absolute blast!”). He’s just released a solo album featuring the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith and Def Leppard’s Phil Collen. Lyrically it explores emerging from a low time in his life: losing his marriage, his mother and a number of friends. “36 years on the road caught up with me,” he says, but the musician has now given up drinking and smoking, and goes hiking with Toto members.
Finally on the All-Starr Band: everyone checked their egos at the door? “There was never any of that. Hey, look who we’re working for!”
BY CHRISTIE ELIEZER
