Ringo Starr: The Beatles never betrayed Liverpool

Dec 17 2007

Ringo Starr (Pic: AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) (320)

The song chronicles Ringo’s early working life, from his teenage years as a sailor and factory hand to his time in Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, the red lights of Hamburg and becoming a Beatle. It draws to a close with the Shea Stadium concert in New York in 1966 and the lyrics “When I look back, it was cool for those four boys from Liverpool.”

Ringo said: “I was a sailor first, and it was on the SS St Tudno to Llandudno. It left at 10 in the morning and came back at eight o’clock every day.

“I wanted to go deep sea because everybody in our neighbourhood, there was always a lad in any family was in the Merchant Navy.

“And I just wanted to be in the Merchant Navy and see foreign places.

“If you did those coastal boats you stood a good chance of getting in the union and getting your deep sea ticket. Anyway, it only lasted five weeks because they didn’t like my attitude.

“And then I worked in a factory, H Hunt and Sons, then I went to Butlins with Rory – the song is like a little mini-biography.

“And then of course we went to Germany and later we played Shea Stadium. It has to stop somewhere because it’s a song, so we stopped it there - that was one of the peaks. If I carried on then I’d have to write a verse about ‘then we wrote Pepper and it was heaven’.

“It could go on, because after the Beatles I still have a life and a career.”

Liverpool 8 also contains a chorus saying: “Liverpool I left you, but I never let you down.”