Ringo Starr Has Gone Through an Incredible Transformation! Check Out Photos From The Beatles Fame to Now

Ringo Starr found international fame when he officially joined The Beatles in 1962. The British rock group sold over 600 million albums worldwide and over 1.6 billion singles in the U.S. alone. The Liverpool-born drummer has gone on to have a successful solo career and has remained an icon of music and style to his adoring fans. 

Ringo was brought on to replace Pete Best in The Beatles by the group’s manager Brian Epstein. Once the band’s popularity grew in the U.K. with their second single, “Please Please Me,” Ringo became a household name. He not only proved to be a master of the drums but a powerful vocalist and songwriter of some of their biggest hits. For Ringo, it’s hard to choose highlights from his time with The Beatles since they shattered records and sparked a movement of mass fan hysteria for an entire decade. 

“As an act, which we were, the Palladium or the Ed Sullivan Show, because they were definite moves in a career,” Ringo told Modern Drummer in 1981. “We still wanted to be the biggest band in the world. Not that we knew it would be a monster, but we knew we were aiming somewhere and the only [way to measure] it is popularity. And we did become the most popular group on earth, so there’s all those moves.”

In 1966, The Beatles released “Yellow Submarine” with Ringo on lead vocals. The hit topped the charts in the U.K. as Beatlemania continued to sweep across the world. When the band went their separate ways in 1970, Ringo had all the tools he needed to release his debut solo album, Sentimental Journey. It was the first of 20 albums the “You’re Sixteen” singer released in his post-Beatles whirlwind.

Ringo was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in 2015 with a little help from his former Beatles bandmate, Paul McCartney. The pair forged a friendship that has withstood the test of time. Paul was featured on Ringo’s 2019 What’s My Name album. On his 80th birthday on July 7, 2020, The Magic Christian actor had a plethora of milestones to celebrate.

“I’m here, the road I’ve taken was made up of good choices and there were some other choices … And we’re in a great business because we don’t have to retire,” he told the Jakarta Post. “And I plan to go on longer than 80.”

Scroll to see Ringo’s incredible transformation from his days with The Beatles to now.