RINGO ON NOT LOOKING BACK

Ringo admits that he was ‘mad’ for years after the Beatles split. Finally he went to rehab - and now he’s still touring at 74

“I’m looking forward / Not looking back,” sings Ringo Starr — a touch optimistically — on his new album Postcards From Paradise. “What’s behind is gone,” he explains when we meet. “We can’t not have memories of the past but we don’t have to live them.” 

Ringo was so angry after the Beatles went their separate ways he couldn’t let it be for two boozed-up decades. Ringo said he couldn’t remember whole years following the split and after he turned to drinking to wash away his bitterness.

“I was mad,” the 74-year-old told the paper. “For 20 years. I had breaks in between of not being.”

Starr, born Richard Starkey Jr., said he doesn’t remember much of the decades following the Fab Four’s big breakup.

The 1970s and 1980s, when Starr launched his successful solo career and scored hits with “Back Off Boogaloo” and “No No Song,” were a bit of a blur for the Liverpool-born drummer.

“I was drunk,” he admitted. “I didn’t notice ... some of those years are absolutely gone.”

During the height of his missing years, Starr managed to narrate the children’s series “Thomas & Friends,” and portrayed the character Mr. Conductor on the show’s U.S. spinoff “Shining Time Station,” which aired on PBS.

The one-time wild man cleaned up his act and entered rehab with his wife, actress Barbara Bach, in 1988. 

The Los Angeles resident said he now leads a more down-to-earth lifestyle.

“I do live healthily,” Starr said. “I’m a vegetarian and I eat a lot of kale and broccoli. And a lot of berries. It works for me.”

The iconic drummer keeps busy touring with the alternating cast of the Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band and just released a new album, “Postcards from Paradise.”

“These days I can be mad but I’m not the Mad Hatter,” he said.

The “Octopus’s Garden” songwriter will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 18, alongside Green Day, Joan Jett, Lou Reed and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Ringo was inducted as part of The Beatles in 1988, but his three bandmates have since entered the Hall of Fame as solo artists.

“It was Paul (McCartney)’s idea,” he said of the honor. “I’m just giving him a night out.”