US Edition Ringo Starr is 70 today, an event that occasions one of those short, sharp pauses by which one measures one's own mortality. Ringo? 70? Can that really be true?
It is difficult now to comprehend the impact that the Beatles made in the 1960s, not simply as musicians but as avatars of the social changes that were sweeping Britain at the time – a potent cultural force that projected each of the four individuals on to the popular imagination as broad brush-stroke caricatures. Thus, Paul was "the cute one"; John "the clever one" and George "the shy one"; Ringo was the group's clown, with his sad eyes, gargantuan hooter and Christmas-cracker finger jewellery.
Much of his appeal lay in the fact that he always seemed to be a resolutely ordinary man catapulted into extraordinary circumstances. Even his birthplace has an absurdist Ringo-ish charm to it – the Dingle. He worked as a barman on the Mersey ferry and as an apprentice joiner before, in 1962, John Lennon sought him out at Butlins in Skegness, where he was playing in a group called Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, and offered him the job with the Beatles. The pay was £25 a week, on the condition that he shave off his beard and brush his hair forward. He was, however, allowed to keep his "sidies".
He took an uncomplicated approach to the madness that surrounded the Beatles. When, in 1968, the group decamped en masse to India to sit at the feet of the guru Maharishi Mahesh, it was Ringo who took his own food supply – boxes of baked beans.
He was allowed to sing the childlike ditties (Yellow Submarine, Octopus's Garden – songs which seemed designed to counterbalance the group's progressive tendency towards self-seriousness) and obliged to smile indulgently whenever he was reminded of John Lennon's famous crack, when asked whether Ringo was the best drummer in the world, that he was "not even the best drummer in the Beatles". The truth was, of course, that Ringo was the best drummer for the Beatles; the reliable provider of the perfect metronomic backbeat.
And the best drummer for the Beatles is what he has always remained. While the others went on to have second lives independent of the group, Ringo has seemed forever arrested as a loveable mop-top; his career a slow diminuendo of undistinguished acting roles and novelty voice-overs, accompanied by the customary obligations of the ageing rock star's life – divorce from the childhood sweetheart, the struggle with drinking problems, the tax exile in Monte Carlo, the retreat to Los Angeles.
He continues to perform periodically with his own All Starr Band, and he has recorded 15 solo albums – three more than with the Beatles, but nobody I know has ever bought one. We love him for what he once did and what he represents, not what he does now.
To be forever known as the most famous supporting player in pop history – the "funny one" – is, in many ways, a thankless role. Yet Ringo has discharged it with stoical good humour, only occasionally tempered with displays of impatience. Two years ago he posted an announcement on his website that he would no longer be signing autographs as he was "too busy". The posting was withdrawn following adverse publicity.
More recently he has demonstrated a desire to be remembered for something more, assuming the mantle of old mucker John Lennon as a peace campaigner. A few days ago he posted a video on his website requesting that at noon today – 'just for me' – people around the world should celebrate his birthday by flashing a double peace sign and saying: "Peace and love". He hopes it will become an annual ritual. It is a poignant wish – a sentiment befitting a Beatle, not to say a legend. We all want world peace. Whether you'll get his autograph remains open to question.