Monday Minutiae

Did you know that Ringo brought his own food when the Beatles went to India in 1966 because his stomach couldn't handle the Indian food? And that he was on his death bed in 1979 with intestinal problems, surviving only after much of his intestine had been removed? Unfortunately, his medical problems started much earlier, when he was just a young boy in the small working-class section of South Liverpool called "The Dingle".

Ringo developed appendicitis at the age of 6. He was hospitalized but his appendix had burst, causing peritonitis which drove him into a coma for 2 months. Doctors didn't expect him to survive. After waking from his coma, he spent 6 months recuperating and was doing well when he fell out of his hospital bed (the story goes that he was trying to show another child a toy) and suffered a severe concussion, forcing him to remain in bed another 6 months.

When Ringo was 13, he had bronchitis which turned into chronic pleurisy and he spent the next 2 years in a children's sanatorium.

Luckily for Ringo (and for us!) he found himself to be musically inclined, as he was pretty disenchanted with school and had missed so much of it that it would have been nearly impossible to catch up. He dropped out of school at 15, upon his release from the hospital . His stepfather, Harry Graves (whom he called his "stepladder") bought him his first drum set in 1957 (a Premier kit) and the rest, as they say, is history.