Ringo Starr has spent decades being the most underestimated member of the most famous band in history. Tom Doyle’s ‘Ringo: A Fab Life’, out May 12th from ECW Press, makes a compelling and long-overdue case for why that underselling has always been a mistake. Doyle, the critically acclaimed author behind the award-winning Kate Bush study ‘Running Up That Hill’ and a veteran of Q and Mojo, brings the same forensic depth and warm narrative instinct to Starr’s remarkable life across 400 pages of exclusive new interviews and meticulously researched detail.
The book’s scope stretches far beyond the Beatles years, which is precisely what makes it essential. Doyle traces the full arc from Richard Starkey’s poverty-stricken Liverpool childhood and near-fatal illnesses, through the dizzying years with the biggest band on the planet, and deep into the messier, richer decades that followed: the film career, the addictions, the career detours, the children’s television narration, the furniture design, the marriage to Barbara Bach, and ultimately the hard-won peace and sobriety of his later years. It is a life so packed with incident that the Beatles chapter, remarkable as it is, feels like one movement in a much longer symphony.
The critical response has been emphatic. Classic Rock awarded it a perfect 10, calling it “full of drama, emotion, comedy, tragedy and incident” and “an essential purchase for music fans, never mind Beatles fans.” Mojo called it a “resolutely fab” portrait of “the Beatles anchor emotionally as well as rhythmically.” Record Collector gave it five stars, praising Doyle’s “friendly, informal, engaging yet fact-packed and forensic” style. Samira Ahmed of BBC Front Row called it “perhaps the most dramatic life arc of any of the Beatles,” adding that it is “a beautiful read.”
‘Ringo: A Fab Life’ is available for pre-order now ahead of its May 12th release from ECW Press, in paperback at $29.95 CAD. For Beatles obsessives, music biography devotees, and anyone who has always suspected there was far more to Ringo Starr than the punchlines suggest, this is the book that settles the argument once and for all.