Say what you might about octogenarian acts—Rod Stewart, Paul Simon, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Bob Dylan, Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, Neil Young, Paul McCartney—rocking the road this year. Ringo Starr has them beat at age 84. (He’ll be 85 in three weeks.) And with that age, Starr only seems to get better.
Without exaggeration to make my point, consider a steady new-music release schedule of EPs and, with January’s Look Up (an album featuring writing and production from T Bone Burnett), an earnest leap into the country music of which Starr was forever fond. (Ringo recorded his second solo album, 1970’s Beaucoups Of Blues, in Nashville, soaked in country touches and its players). When he stages his annual Ringo Starr And His All-Starr Band tours, he drums from center stage in that famous energetic, tom-heavy swing style he brought to the Beatles. A second drummer (hammy Gregg Bissonette) does play as well, but Ringo is still slamming the skins for a double-pummeling effect.
You can’t lip-sync drumming.
With that, the 2025 iteration of Ringo Starr And His All-Starr Band—Bissonette, Steve Lukather, Colin Hay, Hamish Stuart, Buck Johnson and utility guy Warren Ham playing saxophone, harmonica, flute, percussion, keyboards and adding key high-note vocals—played Ringo’s party at the Mann Center.
Getting this out of the way, now: I wish it was more Ringo singing and less All-Starrs singing.
I get that that is the point of Starr having All-Starrs to begin with: journeyman singer/musicians in past iterations such as the late Rick Derringer, Todd Rundgren, Edgar Winter and Steven Van Zandt backing up Ringo, singing their own hits—and with the extra added bonus of having Starr drum on their stuff. That last bit was weird, yet thrilling: getting to see and hear Ringo cut deep into the pocket of Stuart’s “Pick Up The Pieces” from his Average White Band days, the post-“Rosanna” rock out (Lukather’s Toto) that found Starr swinging hard with a neo-Bo Diddley beat, adding that signature rat-tat-tat drum kick to Hay’s “Who Can It Be Now?” from Men At Work.
Now, everyone who goes to any show grouses when they miss hearing personal favorites: “Good Night,” “Don’t Pass Me By” and “Matchbox” from Starr’s Beatles catalog or “Goodnight Vienna” and “You And Me (Babe)” from his solo albums. Then again, Philly managed to get the taut, tough-but-tender title track of his new album and the genuinely odd, rocking, John Lennon-penned “I’m The Greatest” (from 1973’s Ringo) and the word “boogaloo” used in a sentence.
Blessings counted.
I wanted more Starr than All-Starrs is all. Simple math. Ringo is a charming, nasal, expressive vocalist who his crowd—young and old—adore to the point of selling out the Mann. Again. If I wanted to see Toto (which I don’t, but that doesn’t mean Lukather was bad backing up Ringo), I would.
With all that, Starr and Co. ran through Carl Perkins’ “Honey Don’t” with roughshod, hard-skiffle glee, keyed up the George Harrison guitar line of “It Don’t Come Easy” (the most Beatles-y song of the evening) and cut mean rocking-and-rolling rugs with “I Wanna Be Your Man” and “Boys.” The 2025 tour addition of silly, countryish Hoyt Axton hit “No No Song,” with its toking and sniffing sound effects, reminded everyone over 50 in this crowd that the excesses of the ’70s weren’t a dream. (It’s funny watching thousands of people at once pretend to snort cocaine.)
And having Ringo Starr closing out his show with the knockout punches of his yearningly poignant “Photograph,” his gently hillbilly-ish “Act Naturally” and the mashed-up “With A Little Help From My Friends”/“Give Peace A Chance” master mix made you forget that you ever listened to “Hold The Line” mere moments before.
Smashing.
—A.D. Amorosi; photos by Chris Sikich
