Ringo Starr’s home is going to be saved from being pulled down….putting a spanner in the works as regeneration is being carried out in the area. Housing Minister Grant Shapps has stepped into the local affair…perhaps spotting a PR opportunity, to try to halt the more informed and better placed council’s plans.
So why do we not care it’s getting pulled down? Well firstly, let’s quote the same reasons that English Heritage decided not to make it a listed building:
“The decision not to recommend 9 Madryn Street, Ringo Starr’s former home, was taken because the house has no associations with the success of The Beatles as a group, was only lived in by Ringo Starr for four years after his birth and is not architecturally or historically significant enough to match listing criteria.”
Surely you can’t halt a massive regeneration helping one of the poorest areas in Europe because Ringo lived there for a bit. I’ve spent alot of time in Liverpool (lived there for 18 years) and never saw this in particular pointed out as a tourist attraction.
Secondly, Ringo has annoyed residents of the city massively by saying he misses nothing about the city since he left. This is not an isolated incident in his cock-end behaviour – most famously he asked fans not to write to him anymore with a breathtakingly arrogant tone.
But it’s not about him as a person, it’s about him as a musician right? OK…well his recent album got panned generally – take this review from the great Hecklerspray “It’s so completely, utterly, unspeakably terrible that we’re not even sure a human being could be responsible for it, let alone Ringo Starr.” But he was in the the Beatles? Well we refer you to the famous comment from Lennon when asked if he thought Ringo was the best drummer in the world: “He’s not even the best drummer in The Beatles!”
There may be other reasons from stopping the regeneration…but not that Ringo was born in the area.
