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During the pandemic, endlessly youthful Ringo Starr spent time doing what a lot of us did: Cruising the Internet, looking at old photos, finding cool stuff, reevaluating life.
But, of course, as the Beatles’ former drummer, cool stuff hit him a little differently than it might have the rest of us. In particular: pictures of him with his old band. Ringo plucked some favorite shots and collected them for a new book called “Lifted: Fab Images and Memories of My Life with the Beatles from Across the Universe,” out Monday.
“Fabulous images of my Beatles days … have retained the magical and mysterious power to bring me back to those times and memories,” he writes. “Somehow seeing them helped me get back to seeing my life with the Fab Four through fresh and loving eyes.”
According to David Wild, who co-authored “Lifted,” it went beyond that: Ringo chose photos that touched his heart. Wild, who went through the images with Ringo, told The Post. “The pictures in this book represent an emotional sense of what the Beatles mean in his life.”
As to how it feels to have once been a Beatle, Ringo writes, “Sort of like being pope or president, only probably a lot more fun.”
Playing the Cavern
Ringo figures that this shot captures the Beatles performing at the Cavern, a Liverpool nightclub where the up-and-coming group made their bones.
“John is giving me a look here,” he writes. “Like I’ve just done something very wrong or, more likely, very right.”
As explained by Wild, “Ringo looks at photos like this one and always refers to the ‘front line.’ He said, ‘We had the best front line in music.’ His perspective [from behind the drums] was looking at the three of them and he describes John, Paul and George as the front line.”
Ringo’s position on stage came in handy during the height of Beatlemania. “Screaming from the audience eventually got so loud that he only knew where the song was going by looking at how the other band members were moving,” Wild said.
Pre-global stardom
Upon seeing this photo, Ringo exclaimed to Wild, “Look how young we are! And we’re wearing different jackets…” Probably taken in England or Germany, it captures the Beatles before they got big and donned identical outfits, as a type of onstage uniform.
“It makes you realize the essential truth that they were four lads,” said Wild. “They were breaking ground on what a rock star would be and pioneering the idea of what a band would be. They were the first to understand that chemistry was everything and the importance of being in synch.”
Not long after this photo was taken, the Beatles groomed themselves up and appeared on the “Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964. Immediately after, said Wild, “rock bands began playing in garages across the United States.”
‘Hey Jude’ era
“Ringo said something about ‘flower power’ when he saw this one,” said Wild. “This photo would have been taken around the ‘Hey Jude’ era, when they were getting their own lives, going through changes, marrying, growing apart.”
Nevertheless, added Wild, “I see them sitting together in this photo and get a sense of the closeness between them. Ringo said to me that there were squabbles but they were squabbles among brothers.”
The drummer concurs: “The Beatles prove what people can do when they really work together. We were a great team who had a great time and did great work. It was a beautiful thing and part of the reason the music has lasted half a century.”
‘Magical’ time
“Magical Mystery Tour,” a psychedelics-inspired TV offering released in 1967, does not stand as the Beatles’ proudest achievement. As per Wild, “It’s gone down as a slightly confused mess … a TV special that never quite pulled together.”
But this still from the production captures the Beatles having a great time during that middle part of their career, while they were flying high and getting along.
“I see that movie as their first crisis since John got in trouble for saying they were bigger than Jesus,” said Wild. “What Ringo has said to me is that they were hurtling forward and the other three guys kept each of them sane.”
As the drummer writes, the trip was thoroughly enjoyable. “It feels like we were on a magical mystery tour the whole time together. And, in a funny way, I suppose we still are.”
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