He may be "71 and a half" years old, but that won't keep Ringo Starr from hitting both drums and the road this summer as he heads out on his 13th All Starr tour. The former Beatle gave TODAY's Matt Lauer a drum lesson Friday, and talked with him about how while he still feels the love onstage, he's nervous before every show.

"I wanna go home," Starr told Lauer about his trepidation before taking the stage. "'Can I do it? Will it -- will it be okay?' Blah, blah, blah. 'Will they love me?' I mean, a thousand things go through your head."

Starr also addressed his actual ability to play drums -- while many consider him an underrated drummer, he's suffered slings and arrows from bandmates and others undercutting his talent -- by saying such comments never bothered him. "It never got in my way because I knew I could play.... And now I'm the fifth-best drummer in America. I'm working my way up."

allDAY: Ringo Starr gives Matt Lauer a drum lesson

Whatever talent he had he tried to pass on to his children, and he had some real success -- son Zak plays live with The Who.

"I gave (my kids) a lesson.... I gave lots of kids lessons. And some will never get it, just cannot get it," Starr explained. "So I'd say, 'Well, maybe you should play piano or guitar or whatever.'"

But perhaps most surprising is that after a lifetime of playing second fiddle to the late John Lennon and George Harrison and the just-turned-70 Paul McCartney ("Every time I do a promotion for a record or whatever they say 'Oh, Ringo, you got a new record. How's Paul?'" he laughed), Ringo Starr is pretty down to earth and, as Lauer suggested, "normal."

"I do get along with people," he said. "I love people. You know, that's how it is." And that translates live, he acknowledged: "I think everybody knows, who comes to the show, it's a love fest. They know I love them, and I know they love me."

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Luke Macgregor / Reuters

Ringo Starr and wife Barbara Bach.

Ringo Starr's birthplace in Liverpool has been saved from the threat of demolition, the Telegraph reports. The house, a run-down three-bedroom Victorian terrace, was one of 400 buildings marked for demolition in the Dingle area of Liverpool, but Beatles fans and city residents have successfully lobbied to save the house, along with 15 others in the area. The Liverpool City Council has agreed to give locals the opportunity to fix up the properties.

Ringo Starr: I lost my Beatles photographs

The Liverpool City Council initially resisted efforts to preserve the house because Starr only lived at the location with his family for three months as an infant.

Exclusive Q&A: Ringo Starr on his upcoming tour and the elusive "Let It Be" DVD

The National Trust of England decreed that the house did not merit saving because of his brief stay there at a very early age, and that they simply did not have the means to acquire more than a dozen houses where the Beatles lived as children.

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AP file

This was a news photo, but Beatles member Ringo Starr himself took many photographs of the band, which he's since misplaced.

During the early days of the Beatles, Ringo Starr often traveled with a camera and took photos of the group behind the scenes, from rehearsing for their history-making appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" to goofing around on the set of their 1965 movie, "Help!" 

In countless Beatles photographs, Starr is seen taking his own pictures, the vast majority of which have never been released. Sadly, Starr tells Rolling Stone that's unlikely to change anytime soon.

"I don't know where they are," he says with a sigh. "I wish I did. There's been several moves and things happen."

Starr hopes they might pop up unexpectedly one day, since it's happened before -- about a decade ago, he uncovered a bunch of postcards from his bandmates and published them in the 2004 book, "Postcards from the Boys."

"I found a box on my shelf and was like, 'What the hell is that?'" Starr recalls. "And it was full of the postcards. At the time we were moving house yet again, and the secretary I had at the time decided to put them all in envelopes and put them in a shoebox. That's how I found out I still had them. So you never know -– one day I may find another box with all my photos."

Check back later this week for more from Rolling Stone's new interview with Starr, including his thoughts on releasing the "Let It Be" movie on DVD, his upcoming summer tour with the All Starr Band and why he's reluctant to perform "Octopus's Garden" live. 

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