I've never met any of the Beatles, but I did talk to Ringo Starr on the phone for a short while, and it was certainly a thrill. I thought I'd tell the story in detail in honor of his 85th birthday, which is coming up Monday, July 7.

I interviewed Ringo for a newspaper article 13 years ago, and it's pretty interesting how it came about. At the time, I was writing for the Mobile Press-Register as a "correspondent." That means I wasn't actually employed by the company but was getting paid per article as a freelance writer.

I worked directly for Lawrence Specker, who was the entertainment editor at the time (and, for the record, he was a total pro and really easy to work with). Most of the articles I wrote for him were for the Bay Weekend entertainment section, which came out every Wednesday. Typically, they were what we call "advance stories" about concerts coming either to the Saenger Theatre in Mobile or  The Wharf Amphitheater in Orange Beach.

I worked with publicists, mostly by email, to schedule interviews with performers who were soon going to play a show.. Some of them were pretty big names, including Charlie Daniels, Aaron Neville, Michael McDonald, Ricky Skaggs, Gary Rossington, Dewey Bunnell of America, and Robert Lamm of Chicago.

One day in early March  20122, Lawrence forwarded me an email that included a press release about Ringo Starr and His All-Star Band playing four months later at The Wharf. Surely knowing the answer already, he asked if I'd be interested in interviewing someone in Ringo's band.

Neither of us thought that it would actually be Ringo giving interviews, but that was fine by me. Asking anyone what it's like to play in a band with Ringo is a cool assignment, and all of his band members were accomplished musicians who had done some amazing things.

As the concert date got closer, there was another email from the publicist asking me to specify which of the band members I'd most like to interview. She mentioned then that Ringo himself was a possibility. That stopped me in my tracks, but I was thinking "yeah, right" as I more realistically listed Todd Rundgren, Greg Rolie (Santana, Journey), and Steve Lukather (Toto) as my top three choices to have on the line.

In our next email exchange, Lawrence let the publicist know that our deadline would be June 25, which meant that we needed to step on it, so to speak. Sadly, we heard nothing back as our deadline passed. But two days later, the inbox contained the bombshell reply that Ringo may be available the following day for five to seven minutes on the phone. The Bay Weekend section had already been published with no Ringo, so now we were hoping for an interview to come through so I could quickly write something for another section of the paper before Ringo's showtime the following Wednesday. Lawrence gave a detailed heads-up to the features editor as he took off to enjoy a long holiday weekend.

But the interview didn't happen that next day, which was a Thursday, or the following day, either. My cell phone rang that Saturday as I was getting ready to drive from Fairhope to Navarre, Fla., to play a gig as the bass player for Sugarcane Jane. It was such a lovely sound when I heard the publicist's voice say, "Please hold for Ringo."

I sat down at my computer and prepared myself to type every word he said, which is something I'd learned years earlier from a newspaper colleague and friend named Ken Fink. On the phone, Ringo was cordial and upbeat but also efficient. I realized as he was answering my first question that he was totally locked in and "present," not just going through the motions like someone who was jaded after thousands of interviews.

I asked why he was still out there performing after all these years when surely he could be off enjoying his retirement somewhere, and this was his response: "Since I was 13, I've wanted to play drums, and that's what I'm doing. I'm going to play as long as I can still hold the sticks. I'm doing what I've always wanted to do."

If my math is correct, he's been holding those sticks for 72 years now. Thirteen years after our brief conversation and 63 years since he joined the Beatles, Ringo has a new album out and is still touring. In fact, he and his band performed last Tuesday night in Tuscaloosa.

His birthday was coming up in a week on the day of our interview, so I asked him about his practice of asking people to stop what they are doing every year at noon on July 7 and say or think the phrase, "peace and love." I asked whether he thought it would do any good, and he said this: "It creates a moment when we’re not thinking about feeding the dog, not thinking about violence or anything, just thinking about peace and love. And how can that be a bad thing?"

When I got off the phone with Ringo, I raced over to Florida to play the gig, knowing that I would have time the following day to write the story for Tuesday's paper. I let my bandmates in Sugarcane Jane (Anthony Crawford and Savana Lee) know that I was running a little late and why. They were all smiles when I got there, and I feel like I may have even gotten a hero's welcome. (Such is the power of the Fab Four.) They asked how the interview went, and Anthony wanted to hold my cell phone for a moment, which still makes me laugh. Then he said, "Ringo was the coolest Beatle."

I had never thought of it that way, but it's hard to disagree on that, isn't it?

"Peace and love," Ringo, on your 85th birthday coming up Monday. Thank you for the music, and thank you for what turned out to be eight minutes of your time.