Ringo Starr and John Lennon Got High and Survived a Keith Moon-Like Disaster During a Holiday Celebration

Was Ringo Starr the glue that held The Beatles together? The world may never know, but it’s not far-fetched. After all, he was the only member of the Fab Four to play on solo albums from each of the other three Beatles. He proved to be the favorite Beatle among his bandmates several times. Ringo had a close relationship with John Lennon. They lived near each other and spent time together outside the band. Ringo and John channeled Ringo’s friend Keith Moon during a nearly disastrous holiday celebration that didn’t go as planned.

Ringo Starr and John Lennon survived a Keith Moon-like disaster during a holiday hangout

Ringo and John shared a close relationship. You could argue they shared the strongest bond in the band since John and Paul McCartney lost the chemistry that propelled the band in the early years. Ringo claimed to have a psychic connection with John. It wasn’t only because they were in the same band for nearly a decade. They were also neighbors. 

When The Beatles drummer moved out of his apartment, he moved to a suburban London estate just down the road from his bandmate. Ringo later bought John’s house (and burned all the leftover possessions) after The Beatles broke up.

As the drummer writes in Postcards From the Boys, It was during their time as neighbors that Ringo and John had a Moon-like disaster while hanging out with each other and their sons:

“One Bonfire Night that we had at my place, John and I decided to show our kids some fireworks. We went and bought all these fizzy ones. We’d smoked a lot of herbalized stuff, so we didn’t want anything really loud. We were doing this whole setup and sitting around, relaxing a little, and we went outside to give the babies this big show, and everything we bought just exploded! Exploded! What the kids must have thought, I don’t know, because the grown-ups were going, ‘Ow! Ow! Aaaagh!’ We were so shocked we had to go back inside.”

Ringo Starr

Bonfire Night in England commemorates the failed Gunpowder Plot each November. Ringo and John planned a small, low-level pyrotechnics display for their young sons, only to have it all explode at once a la Moon’s famous drum set-destroying detonation during The Who’s 1967 appearance on the Smothers Brothers show. In fact, it might have been around the same time. Ringo writes that his and John’s sons were around two or three years old. Zak Starkey was born in 1965 and would have been two years old during the 1967 Bonfire Night.

Ringo had another bad experience with fire years later

Ringo and John’s disaster with their pyrotechnics didn’t end as poorly as Moon’s. No one suffered permanent hearing damage (as Who guitarist Pete Townshend did) or took flying shrapnel to the arm (as Moon did). But The Beatles’ drummer had another close call that didn’t end so well.

Ringo escaped a 1979 house fire without injury but lost several cherished and irreplaceable Beatles keepsakes.

Luckily for him, he didn’t lose everything. Several items survived. That included the collection of postcards from his bandmates that he later turned into a book and his Ludwig drum kit that brought in $2.2 million at a 2015 auction, according to Reuters. 

The Beatles drummer and Moon were close friends

The Beatles ran in some of the same social circles as The Rolling Stones and The Who when they moved from Liverpool to London. Ringo formed an extremely close friendship with Who drummer Keith Moon that rivaled any relationship he had with his bandmates. 

Ringo had an intimate relationship with Moon, allowing them to have entire conversations without saying anything. They had different playing styles — restrained Ringo and Moon the Loon — but that didn’t interfere with their friendship. 

The drummers were so close that Moon babysat Ringo’s son, Zak, who played drums for The Who after Moon died.

The Beatles had an explosive impact on the pop music landscape. Ringo Starr and John Lennon survived a near-disaster during a holiday celebration that channeled Keith Moon’s exploding drum set during The Who’s famous TV appearance.

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