SAN DIEGO — Talk about a fab time warp!
It was 50 years ago today — well, this year — that Ringo Starr recorded the John Lennon-penned song, "I'm The Greatest," for his 1973 album, "Ringo." It re-teamed the avuncular drummer and vocalist with Lennon and George Harrison, sparking rumors of a Beatles' reunion that never came to pass.
It was 50 years later — on Friday night — that Starr performed "I'm the Greatest," nine numbers into his 2023 tour-opening concert at Pechanga Resort Casino in Temecula, an hour north of San Diego. And it was almost impossible not to smile when the legendary drummer sang the lines: "Now I'm only thirty-two / And all I wanna do is boogaloo!"
Hearing Starr, now a spry 82, enthusiastically deliver those lines half a century later is a kick. Ditto the fact he did so during a 126-minute concert that saw him on stage for all but two of the 24 songs performed — let alone just seven months after he and his All-Starr Band had to cut short their 2022 fall tour when he contracted COVID, not once, but twice last October.
Starr, still as slender as in his days with The Beatles in the 1960s, was well aware a half century had passed between his recording of "I'm The Greatest" and Friday's concert.
"Fifty years from now, you'll say: 'Yeah, I saw him!" he told the sold-out crowd of 3,100. He then launched into his next selection, the 1966 Beatles' favorite, "Yellow Submarine."
A few minutes earlier, while introducing "Boys" — the 1960 hit by The Shirelles that Starr sang on The Beatles' 1963 debut album — he said: "I'm going to do a song for you now from before most of you were born."
There were some Millennials and Gen Zers in the audience, including a young woman in front of me who danced joyously during much of the concert. But the majority appeared to be graying baby-boomers who grew up in the 1960s when The Beatles were irrevocably transforming music and pop culture — and Starr was the most famous young rock drummer on the planet.
The passing of time also inspired quips at Pechanga from some of the members of his All-Starr Band, the 15th iteration of the group he has led since its inception in 1989.
"Do you remember 1976? What was it like?" Average White Band co-founder Hamish Stuart, 73, asked the audience as he led the All-Starrs — minus Starr — into a percolating version of AWB's mid-1970s hit, "Cut the Cake."
Toto guitarist Steve Lukather, now in his second decade with Starr, introduced "Hold the Line" as: "A song from when I was 20 years old — in 1927." Explaining why his until recently full head of black hair is now white, Lukather told the audience: "At 65, you just say 'F--- it!' "
Levity aside, Starr and his six band mates didn't kid around when it came to the music.
As in previous years, their repertoire mixed chestnuts from The Beatles' songbook and Starr's solo career with hits by the All-Starrs, whose other members include Edgar Winter and Men At Work's Colin Hay. The lineup was completed by former David Lee Roth drum dynamo Greg Bissonette and former Toto and Kansas utility player Warren Ham, a quadruple-threat on saxophone, percussion, harmonica and vocals.
The concert opened with a spunky version of the 1957 Carl Perkins' rockabilly gem, "Matchbox," and concluded with a mashup of The Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends" and the Plastic Ono Band's "Give Peace a Chance."
Starr alternated between enthusiastically singing at the front of the stage and delivering rock-solid drumming from a riser farther back. On several songs — including "Boys" and "I Wanna Be Your Man" — he sang while he drummed, just as he did all those years ago in the 1960s with The Beatles.
Stuart, who was a member of Paul McCartney's band from 1988 to 1994, had the strongest voice of anyone in this edition of the All-Starrs.
Multi-instrumentalist Ham ably hit the high notes on Toto's "Africa" and "Rosanna," both of which featured the fleet-fingered Lukather as the nominal lead singer. Ham teamed with keyboardist and singer Winter for the rousing twin sax parts on Average White Band's "Pick Up the Pieces" and "Cut the Cake," the latter of which included a deft quote from the darting brass lines in Tower of Power's "Down to the Night Club."
The instrumental highlight of the night came during an extended, 12-minute rendition of the Edgar Winter Group's 1972 hit, "Frankenstein."
With Winter providing support on timbales, Bissonette delivered a dazzling solo that found him quoting the trademark drum parts from — among others — The Beatles' "Day Tripper," Led Zeppelin's "Rock 'n' Roll" and "Immigrant Song," the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women" and the 1937 Gene Krupa/Benny Goodman landmark, "Sing, Sing, Sing."
The show lagged a bit near the end with back-to-back readings of Men At Work's "Who Can It Be Now" and Toto's "Hold the Line" that overstayed their welcome.
But the closing volley of Starr's "Photograph," the Buck Owens-cum-Beatles romp "Act Naturally" and the mashup of "With a Little Help From My Friends" and "Give Peace a Chance" brought the night to a rousing conclusion. And watching Starr cap off the evening doing jumping jacks — while flashing the peace sign with both hands and smiling from ear to ear — well, that never gets old.
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