Concert Reviews

Ringo Starr’s All-Starr show featured plenty of callbacks to classic rock, and who could ask for better ambassadors of the era?

By Abby Patkin

October 1, 2026 | 12:16 PM

5 minutes to read

Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band at MGM Music Hall at Fenway, Wednesday, Sept. 30. 

Six decades removed from his floppy-haired “yeah yeah yeah” days, Ringo Starr has proven time and again that he can still sell out a venue and summon ecstatic shrieks from a crowd. 

The 86-year-old Beatle’s audience tends to skew more silver-haired and stiff-jointed these days, but you wouldn’t know it from the palpable energy inside MGM Music Hall at Fenway Wednesday night. 

Flashing his signature peace signs, Ringo took his place on the stage with his All-Starr Band and addressed the packed house in a Liverpudlian drawl.

“You ready to have some fun? You ready to hear some good music?” he crowed. And then he made a promise: Each and every person in the audience would know at least one song on the setlist. 

That, of course, was an understatement. 

The show was a trip down memory lane from the very first tune of the night: “Matchbox,” the rockabilly Carl Perkins hit favored by the Beatles in their early days. And while the setlist featured a generous helping of Ringo’s Beatles classics and solo material, the show also pulled from the catalogs of the other All-Starrs. 

Founded in 1989 and featuring a revolving lineup, Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band is currently touring with a stacked cast of Toto’s Steve Lukather, Colin Hay from Men at Work, Hamish Stuart of Average White Band, and industry veterans Gregg Bissonette, Warren Ham, and Buck Johnson.

The supergroup operates under the motto “everybody on stage is a star in their own right,” and that dogma was evident Wednesday in the eclectic mix of fan-favorite rock tunes from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. It was, in other words, a setlist that felt a bit like flipping through the radio in your dad’s old wood-paneled station wagon. 

Lukather was sublime on guitar throughout, and Stuart laid down some funky bass that merged seamlessly with Ham’s immaculate saxophone during Average White Band’s “Pick Up the Pieces.” Hay’s vocals seem to have transcended time; his cry of “I can’t get to sleep” during the third verse of “Overkill” was electrifying and reached the back of the house.  

But make no mistake: Ringo was the main attraction. He alternated between playing the drums and crooning directly into a microphone at the front of the stage, and his voice — while never a standout among his Beatles peers — is still remarkably strong. 

Ringo’s unique, understated drumming style is also fascinating to watch live, especially as he slipped in some Fab Four-style head bops. He’s not particularly showy behind the kit, but he keeps a steady beat and creates a certain cohesion that lets the vocals shine. Bissonette, thundering on “double drums” alongside Ringo, plays a complementary role that sounded particularly effective on a cover of Toto’s “Rosanna.”  

Vibes-wise, it’s about as close to a garage band jam sesh as you can get with an octogenarian Beatle and his rockstar friends. The show featured plenty of callbacks to classic rock, and who could ask for better ambassadors of the era?

There were, however, some misses among the hits. The “shoo bops” in Ringo’s rendition of “Boys” felt a little less heart-fluttering than they likely did when the Beatles first covered the Shirelles’ song for their debut album in 1963. But Ringo was all swagger in the John Lennon-penned “I’m the Greatest,” his earnest cries of “all I wanna do is boogaloo!” somehow endearing instead of dated. “Yellow Submarine” brought out his playful side and was clearly a crowd-favorite. 

With Ringo offstage for a short break, the All-Starrs launched into the jazzy, funky Average White Band hit “Cut the Cake” and had some fun interpolating popular oldies like “We Will Rock You,” “Come Together,” “All Right Now,” “Honky Tonk Women,” and “Immigrant Song.”

Then Ringo was back on stage, pantomiming to “Octopus’s Garden” and punctuating his performance with a cheeky shimmy. He also displayed a wry sense of humor while interacting with the crowd and reading (or struggling to read — the man’s 86, after all) their homemade signs. 

One of his newer tracks, 2005’s “Choose Love,” was a bit of a test for the audience given the song’s reserved tone and lack of nostalgic bona fides. Though somewhat discordant with the hard-rocking, upbeat setlist, “Choose Love” did see some heads bopping in the audience. Ringo’s vocals were strong, and the song flowed decently well into the next track, Men at Work’s “Overkill.”

Lukather earned some laughs when he teased a song he’d supposedly been working on since his teens, only for the band to play the most unharmonious garble of noise imaginable. 

“Oh, you guys gotta see the look on your face,” he cackled. “It’s a joke! But you might know this one.”

With that, the All-Starrs led into a particularly snappy cover of Toto’s “Africa,” a perennial crowd-pleaser. It was essentially hit after hit from there, and Ringo shone on “I Wanna Be Your Man” and “Photograph,” a show highlight that saw him fully at ease on the stage and basking in the spotlight. 

Closing out the show, fittingly, was “With a Little Help from My Friends,” and this was Ringo at his best: crystal clear vocals, in good company, and tossing a little gravel behind the lyrics he first recorded in 1967. The scattered shrieks during the song’s “Billy Shears” intro — though perhaps a few decibels softer than at the height of Beatlemania — were further proof of Ringo’s lasting star power, all these years later. 

Setlist for Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band at MGM Music Hall at Fenway, Sept. 30, 2026

• Matchbox (Carl Perkins cover)
• It Don’t Come Easy 
• Rosanna (Toto cover)
• Pick Up the Pieces (Average White Band cover) 
• Down Under (Men at Work cover)
• Boys (Luther Dixon and Wes Farrell / the Shirelles cover)
• I’m the Greatest 
• Yellow Submarine (the Beatles cover)
• Cut the Cake (Average White Band cover)
• Octopus’s Garden (the Beatles cover)
• No No Song
• Choose Love
• Overkill (Men at Work cover)
• Africa (Toto cover)
• Work to Do (the Isley Brothers cover)
• I Wanna Be Your Man (the Beatles cover) 
• Who Can It Be Now? (Men at Work cover)
• Hold the Line (Toto cover)
• Photograph 
• Act Naturally (Johnny Russell cover)
• With a Little Help From My Friends (the Beatles cover, with an outro cover of the Plastic Ono Band’s “Give Peace a Chance”)

Abby Patkin

Staff Writer

Abby Patkin is a general assignment news reporter whose work touches on public transit, crime, health, and everything in between. She has been covering the Lindsay Clancy murder case since January 2023.

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