Ringo Starr was honored Thursday at The Paley Honors: A Gala Tribute to Music in Beverly Hills.
Ringo was recognized for The Beatles' performance on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9th, 1964.
Ringo spoke about that time, saying, “I’m here because we are celebrating the four of us. I well up a little bit because two of us aren’t here...
“We started in Liverpool and got bigger in Liverpool and then we went around the world…conquering the world, in Denmark, Sweden, Spain. And one day we’re on a plane coming back to Heathrow, to London, from Sweden, and this guy we’d never heard of was coming in from New York called Ed Sullivan. He’d never seen us play, he just saw the crowds on the airport roofs screaming and shouting and booked us as a blind booking.
“We arrived in New York, and 99-percent of the music I loved came from America, and we landed in New York and that was enough. I could have just stayed at the airport for the next 10 years. I’m in America, and then we went to do this TV show, The Ed Sullivan Show, and it just happens that when we landed with Capitol Records and Brian Epstein, the record ['I Want to Hold Your Hand'] was number-one, thanks to [New York disc jockeys]Murray the K and Cousin [Brucie] and all those DJs from those days who were playing it, because we’d had three records before in America that didn’t really do a lot. What could go wrong? We landed in America. That was enough. We did an incredible TV show. That was enough. We had a number-one record. That was enough. And we carried on doing that for another six years.”
In all, The Beatles were on the Sullivan Show nine times.
Michael Jackson was posthumously honored for his numerous TV performances.
Gene Simmons, who was one of the presenters, tweeted, "Thank you Paley Center Honors for inviting me to speak at your wonderful event. It was great to see Ringo Starr in the audience."