Starr quality

‘He was the most influential Beatle,’ Yoko Ono recently claimed. When Paul and John first spotted him out in Hamburg, in his suit and beard, sitting ‘drinking bourbon and seven’, they were amazed. ‘This was, like, a grown-up musician,’ thought Paul. One night Ringo sat in for their drummer Pete Best. ‘I remember the moment,’ said Paul, ‘standing there and looking at John and then looking at George, and the look on our faces was like …what is this? And that was the moment, that was the beginning, really, of the Beatles.’

I think Ringo Starr was a genius. The world seems to be coming around to the idea. Two months ago, he was finally accepted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — the last Beatle to be inducted. About time too. On 7 July he turns 75.

Some might now plead, enough. Ringo should surely just be celebrated for being Ringo: daffy, doleful, odd. Ousting for good in mid-1962 the gloweringly sexy, Mersey-fan-adored Best, Ringo chanced upon the biggest ride in showbiz history and so became the luckiest Scouser of all time. He wasn’t spectacular; he set the Beatles’ backbeat and kept time, making up for a lack of upfront technique with his characteristic ‘fills’ — flicks and flashes across the drums between lyrics and musical phrases.

Ringo was also short, with a big nose, traditionally the least appealing Beatle. When the band played live, he shook his mop and thrashed around behind the bass drum. On TV in December 1963 the comedian Eric Morecambe called him Bongo. The idea of a slightly absurd creature with a silly name, bucking the sleeker charisma of his colleagues, somehow stuck.

A specific stab at Starr was once attributed to John Lennon himself.