GREG LAKE ON RINGO STARR

Ringo Starr may appear to be the easygoing Beatle, but Greg Lake, who toured with him in 2001 as a member of Ringo's All-Starr Band, said in a phone interview that Ringo was the real leader of the band and very much in charge.

“It was quite an extraordinary experience, partly because he wasn't the person I was expecting. He's a lot better player than I really thought,” he said. “He's a very disciplined person. You only have to listen and focus on the drum parts in the Beatles and hear that they're all flawless. But he's very disciplined. Even with my music, he would keep on and on and on until it was absolutely right.”

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NEWSLINK: Recordings of The Beatles' Ringo Starr's first band discovered after 50 years

This has very little to do with the main body of the Gonzo Daily, which is - after all - about artists who appear on Gonzo Multimedia, but it is a news item of great interest to rock historians, and as I am a rock historian I am reosting it. It has long been claimed that Rory Storm was one of the great lost heros of rock and roll, and now we are going to have the chance to find out if it was true...

Recordings of The Beatles' drummer Ringo Starr's first band Rory Storm And The Hurricanes have been discovered, 50 years after they were originally made.

The tapes were recorded in March 1960, a full two years before Starr [whose real name is Richard Starkey] was asked by producer Brian Epstein to join The Beatles.

The band performed alongside The Beatles during their stint in Hamburg and were considered to be one of the leading lights of the Liverpool scene. They were fronted by Rory Storm [whose real name is Alan Caldwell], who died in 1972. It is in the basement of his sister's house that the new tapes have been found."

The tapes include tracks recorded at the Jive Hive club in north Liverpool, and at Storm's house, which was known locally as Stormsville, where bands including The Beatles would get together once clubs like The Cavern had shut at night.

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