Ringo Starr and his All-Starr Band bring Beatles hits and more to Pittsburgh

Ringo Starr may not be everyone’s favorite Beatle, but an evening spent under the same roof with any Beatle has to be considered time well spent.

And so it was for a far less than capacity, but enthusiastic, crowd at PPG Paints Arena Saturday night as the former Beatles drummer and his All-Starr Band finally got to play a Pittsburgh concert that was postponed three times due to the pandemic.

It was well worth the wait.

It was also fitting that Starr’s return to Pittsburgh happened in September, the month that the Beatles played their one and only Pittsburgh show nearly 58 years ago to the day on Sept. 14, 1964, at the old Civic Arena, a stone’s throw away.

A good portion of the mostly older crowd looked the way disapproving parents did back then. Instead, the baby boomers in attendance brought their children and grandchildren with them, young kids likely up past their bedtimes and teenagers as well.

Born Richard Starkey, Ringo is the oldest Beatle at 82. (John Lennon, who was assassinated in 1980, would have turned 82 this October. Paul McCartney turned 80 last June. George Harrison, who died of cancer in 2001, would have turned 80 next year.)

But Ringo, wearing a black blazer with splashes of red down the front and black pants with red stripes down the sides, neither sounded nor moved like an 82-year-old. His trademark deep, warm, throaty voice sounded the way it always has, a little rough around the edges but as strong as ever, especially on up-tempo early Beatles rockers like “Matchbox,” “I Wanna Be Your Man” and “Boys.” The latter is a song he said “I’ve done at every live gig I’ve ever done.”

He may have been exaggerating, but he wasn’t far off. At the height of Beatlemania, “Boys” was the song Ringo performed regularly in concert. And it was just as impressive Saturday as he proved he hadn’t lost the knack for singing lead vocals and playing the drums simultaneously.

With Gregg Bissonette drumming side by side with Ringo, Starr was able to spend equal parts of the show back behind his kit and front and center at the mic.

Anyone wanting to hear Beatle songs on which Ringo sang the lead likely did not come away disappointed. He didn’t perform all of them but managed to work in favorites like “Yellow Submarine,” during which Starr ad-libbed “Where are we captain? Oh, we’re going to Pittsburgh!”

There was also “Octopus’s Garden,” “With a Little Help From My Friends,“ “Act Naturally” and “What Goes On,” the only Beatles song credited to Lennon-McCartney and Starkey.

“I told them, ‘I think it should be Ringo, Paul and John’ and they looked me in the eye and said, ‘Sod off,’ ” Starr told the crowd. The patrons were clearly getting a kick out of hearing a behind-the-scenes Beatles story straight from one of the Fab Four himself.

Starr is not only a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer for what he brought to the Beatles but his solo work as well. Songs like “It Don’t Come Easy,” “Back Off Boogaloo” and “Photograph” were given the All-Starr treatment as he demonstrated his evolution as a songwriter.

Of course, Ringo’s fans knew the words to the songs and did not hesitate to sing along when he prompted them. They spent the evening lavishing so much love and affection on Starr that he was clearly moved by their appreciation.

“Man, what a crowd! I should move here,” he said.

Sorry Bethany I pulled up the wrong song. That one was "Matchbox" and it did sound great. But for your enjoyment, here's "It Don't Come Easy." https://t.co/OSztLPEJKN pic.twitter.com/soX4aqmkN2

— Paul Guggenheimer (@PGuggenheimer) September 11, 2022

But it wasn’t just Ringo the crowd was enamored with, as his bandmates more than lived up to their all-star billing. It didn’t hurt that they came from great bands themselves.

They included guitarist and singer Colin Hay, who was lead vocalist for the Australian ‘80s band Men at Work, guitarist and singer Hamish Stuart, lead vocalist for the Scottish funk and R&B group The Average White Band, and guitarist and singer Steve Lukather, founding member of Toto.

Rounding out the All-Starrs were saxophone, percussion and keyboard player Warren Ham and last but certainly not least, keyboard and saxophone player Edgar Winter, who brought the house down with a white-hot version of his ’70s hit “Frankenstein.” It might have gone down as the best song of the night had it not been for the energy of Starr’s grand finale, “With a Little Help From My Friends.”

Say what you want about Joe Cocker’s cover version, but this classic “Sgt. Pepper” song belongs to Ringo. Clearly he loves singing it and jumped up and down at the front of the stage with a little boy’s enthusiasm as the All Starrs jammed away and the crowd likely wondered, “How can this guy be 82 years old?” Lukather, Stuart and Hay provided exquisite three-part Beatles harmony and asked the call and response questions such as “Do you neeeeed anybody?”

Ringo ends his concert at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh Saturday with "A Little Help From My Friends." pic.twitter.com/g3EG1u2nXE

— Paul Guggenheimer (@PGuggenheimer) September 11, 2022

The support went both ways as Starr had fun banging out a funky beat behind Stuart on a cover version of The Average White Band’s breakthrough hit “Pick Up the Pieces,” as well as Colin Hay’s cover of Men at Work’s smash hit “Down Under.”

As much fun as it was for the fans to hear those songs, they might have wished for a little more Ringo. Did they really need to be stuck with a cover of a middling song lke Toto’s “Rosanna”? Though it did come with a smoldering Lukather guitar solo, did it also come at the expense of a heartfelt song like “Good Night,” a sweetly sentimental song Ringo recorded for the “White Album” but left off of Saturday’s playlist? For this Beatles fan, it was a glaring omission.

Winter performed a fine cover of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” which he dedicated to his late brother Johnny Winter. But how about another Beatles cover that shows off Ringo’s pioneering drumming style, something like “Ticket To Ride”? John Lennon referred to it as “the first heavy metal record.” Lennon wouldn’t have even considered making such a claim were it not for the heavy drums played by Ringo on that tune.

Judging from the opening riffs of songs like “Day Tripper,” the All-Starrs were teasing the crowd with, they’re probably itching to cover another Beatles song. How cool would it have been for the folks to hear that ‘Ba Boom bop bop boom bah, Ba Boom bop bop boom bah’ “Ticket to Ride” drum beat live?

Perhaps Ringo thinks it would be a sacrilegious thing to do.

Other questions that have come up: Why was there no video feed on the screen behind the stage? Maybe Starr figured “The Beatles never had video, so let’s go old school.”

Also, why was there no encore? After “With a Little Help From My Friends,” Ringo left the stage and the remaining band members did a version of “Give Peace a Chance” and that was it. There was no return to the stage.

Also, there was surprisingly no mention of Queen Elizabeth’s death. In 1965, Starr and the other Beatles first met her when they were appointed Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).

But these things did not seriously detract from an otherwise highly entertaining and memorable show by a dynamic 82-year-old legend.

In many ways, after having an appendectomy at age 6 that caused him to contract peritonitis, surviving a childhood bout with tuberculosis, and overcoming alcoholism and drug addiction as an adult, it’s nothing short of a miracle that Ringo Starr is still with us.

Someday, it will come to an end, of course, but after his and his band’s performance in Pittsburgh on Saturday night, it feels like he could go on forever. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.

Setlist

Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band

Saturday, Sept. 10, 2022

PPG Paints Arena

1. Matchbox

(Carl Perkins cover)

2. It Don’t Come Easy

(Ringo Starr song)

3. What Goes On

(Beatles cover)

4. Free Ride

(Edgar Winter Group cover)

5. Rosanna

(Toto cover)

6. Pick Up the Pieces

(Average White Band cover)

7. Down Under

(Men at Work cover)

8. Boys

(Shirelles cover)

9. I’m the Greatest

(Ringo Starr song)

10. Yellow Submarine

(Beatles cover)

11. Cut the Cake

(Average White Band cover)

12. Frankenstein

(Edgar Winter Group cover)

13. Octopus’s Garden

(Beatles cover)

14. Back Off Boogaloo

(Ringo Starr song)

15. Overkill

(Men at Work cover)

16. Africa

(Toto cover)

17. Work to Do

(Isley Brothers cover)

18. I Wanna Be Your Man

(Beatles cover)

19. Johnny B. Goode

(Chuck Berry cover)

20. Who Can It Be Now?

(Men at Work cover)

21. Hold the Line

(Toto cover)

22. Photograph

(Ringo Starr song)

23. Act Naturally

(Johnny Russell cover)

24. With a Little Help From My Friends

(Beatles cover)

25. Give Peace a Chance

(Plastic Ono Band cover)