Ringo Starr stood at the center of a Lake Tahoe stage and did what he has done for decades: made an arena full of strangers feel like they were all in the same living room. The Beatles drummer and his rotating cast of rock legends delivered a full-length concert that moved from ‘Free Ride’ to ‘Yellow Submarine’ with the easy confidence of people who have nothing left to prove and everything left to enjoy. For anyone who wonders whether the old magic still travels, this night in Lake Tahoe answered the question before the first song was halfway through.
The evening opened with a bandmate setting the tone for every introduction that would follow, calling Ringo ‘the passionate, planet-wide purveyor of peace and love, dashing, daring, dazzling, dynamic doctor, holder and detonator of the drums, the revelational, the revolutionary Ringo Starr.’ The crowd response was immediate and loud.
A lineup built from rock history’s spare parts
The All-Star Band format has always been the point: gather musicians whose solo catalogs could fill a festival, give each one a spotlight, and let Ringo conduct the chaos from behind the kit. Steve Lukather stepped forward as ‘an apostle of rock, a disciple of soul, a philosopher of funk,’ and delivered guitar work that stopped conversations mid-sentence. Colin Hay, the Scottish-born frontman who built his reputation with Men at Work in the eighties, brought the room to a pause before ‘Down Under,’ and then told the audience something that landed with genuine warmth: ‘If somebody had said to me when I was 12 years old that one day I’d be playing in a band with Ringo Starr, I would have said, well, can you be a bit more specific? When’s that going to happen? Some things you just need to know.’
Edgar Winter arrived with the instrument that defined his career. He explained to the crowd that he was the first person in musical history to put a strap on a keyboard synthesizer, freeing himself from what he called being ‘stuck behind this big bank of keyboards where nobody can see what you’re doing.’ His performance of ‘Frankenstein’ produced audible disbelief from the audience and from the people filming it.
Octopus gardens and Grammy wins at altitude
Ringo took the lead vocal on ‘Octopus’s Garden’ and ‘Act Naturally,’ the latter delivered with the self-aware charm of a man who has spent sixty years playing a song about becoming a star. He closed with ‘With a Little Help From My Friends,’ which the crowd sang back to him in full. Before the encore, one of the bandmates announced that his 2022 album dedicated to his brother Johnny Winter had won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Recording, then the band launched into ‘Johnny B. Goode’ as a tribute.
The final stretch stretched through ‘Give Peace a Chance’ and ‘Yellow Submarine,’ with Ringo calling out ‘Lake Tahoe’ over the chorus as if dedicating the song specifically to the altitude and the water and the people in front of him.
The keyboard still sitting center stage
Edgar Winter’s keytar, strap still attached, rested at the center of the stage after ‘Frankenstein’ ended, the cord coiled beside it.
Ringo closed with the same two words he uses to close everything: peace and love. At Lake Tahoe, on this night, the room gave them back.
