By Ben
Todd
Last updated at 9:40 AM on 03rd February 2010
John Lennon caused a
worldwide storm by claiming that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.
Now, more than four
decades on, it seems his former bandmate Ringo Starr has acknowledged a humbler
place in the grand scheme of things.
The drummer says he has
found God - after taking a long and winding road to enlightenment.
He admitted he lost
his way when he was younger, both as a Beatle experimenting with marijuana and
LSD and afterwards when he suffered alcohol and cocaine problems in the late
1970s.
But the musician, who
has since become teetotal and quit his 60-a-day cigarette habit, says that
religion now plays an important role in his life.
Starr, who turns 70
later this year, said: 'I feel the older I get, the more I'm learning to handle
life. Being on this quest for a long time, it's all about finding yourself.
'For me, God is in my
life. I don't hide from that. I think the search has been on since the 1960s.
'I stepped off the
path there for many years and found my way back onto it, thank God.' Starr was
speaking at an event at the
It was in 1966 that
his late bandmate John Lennon announced that the Beatles were more popular than
Jesus Christ.
In an interview with
the London Evening Standard, Lennon - who was murdered in 1980 - said:
'Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that.
I'm right and I will be proved right.
'We're more popular
than Jesus now. I don't know which will go first - rock and roll or Christianity-Jesus
was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it
that ruins it for me.'
When a
The protests then
spread to other countries, including
The Fab Four's 1966
tour was their last and they split in 1970.
In his latest
interview Starr - a vegetarian who is married to former Bond girl Barbara Bach
and now splits his time between homes in
He said: 'Seventy's
not as big as 40 was. Forty was "Oh, God,
40!"
'There's that damn
song, Life Begins at 40. No, it's not so big any more. I am nearly 70, and I'd
love to be nearly 40, but that's never going to happen.
'I feel the older I
get, the more I'm learning to handle life.'
Starr is not the
first Sixties music icon to embrace religion.
In 1978, Bob Dylan became a bornagain Christian, but by 1983 this period appeared to end and the singer reportedly reverted to his roots in Judaism.