Beatle finally plays Poland

Ringo Starr greets crowds in Warsaw. Photo: PAP/Jacek Turczyk

The Liverpudlian legend appeared, shades intact, and proceeded to treat his Polish fans to a two-hour banquet of tracks, old and new.

The former Beatles drummer and singer of such Fab Four hits as Yellow Submarine and Octopus's Garden, performed in Warsaw with his longstanding All-Starr Band.

Looking decidedly younger that his seventy-one years, Ringo didn't disappoint his fans, with 23 tunes from both The Beatles' and the All-Starr Band's back catalogues.

As well as early Beatles numbers like “I Wanna be your Man”, he raised the roof with a rendition of “A Little Help from My Friends”, rounding things off with a cover of John Lennon's “Give Peace A Chance.”

And of course, there was room for Yellow Submarine.

“If you don't know these you're in a bad place,” the ex-Beatle quipped.

Ringo is the first of the Fab Four to play on Polish soil. Now, only Paul McCartney is able to follow in his footsteps.

Virtually no British or American rock stars performed in Poland during the sixties. A notable exception was The Rolling Stones, who played one gig - at the very same venue that Ringo played – in 1967.

However, Professor Jerzy Eisler, head of the Warsaw department of the state-sponsored Institute of National Remembrance, says that the communist authorities had considered hiring the Beatles in 1966, as a means of sabotaging the 1000th anniversary of Poland's adoption of Christianity. The focus of that event was at the historic monastery at Czestochowa.

“There was even an idea that there would be a concert in Czestochowa on the very same day,” the professor has said, although he claims that the authorities bottled out owing to fear of two separate crowds to contend with. (nh)

Source: Rzeczpospolita, Onet