NEW YORK Ringo Starr chartered a plane the last two times he went on the road with an All-Star Band. This summer he'll go by bus.

"My wife Barbara is American and we keep threatening to go around America to see it. This will give us a glimpse. It's one of those fantasies we're going to try," Starr says during a day of back-to-back interviews plugging the tour.

"There will be a smoking and a non-smoking bus for the entourage of 40 to 45," says Starr who gave up smoking.

"We used to go in a van in England, of course, in the early days," he said. "This will be a return for me."

The early days were the 1960s with the Beatles.

"Very emotional" is how Starr describes the 1994 session when he, Paul McCartney and George Harrison made two new Beatles records, with the late John Lennon's voice on tape. The way the three dealt with it was to pretend Lennon had gone out for tea or on vacation and left his tracks of "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" for them to finish.

"But it turned out fabulous," Starr says. "It turned out just like the Beatles. Why not?"

The concert tour The All-Star Band tour, which stops at the Concord Resort Hotel in Kiamesha Lake (Sullivan County) on Saturday, began June 14 with 11 dates in Japan. They left Japan June 28 to begin 46 shows in the United States, from Sunday through Sept. 3.

"I'm out to have fun," Starr says.

"Let's hit it and do it, do as many pieces as we can. We're not like bands who go out for a couple of years and sort of take their time, a month off, then a month of two or three shows a week.

"We're out for the summer. Everyone is on holiday, in a really good mood. The weather is usually fabulous. We have a lot of sun and audiences have a lot of fun."

These days, Starr and Barbara Bach, who were married in

1981, live quietly in Monte Carlo.

"I get up, have breakfast, may go shopping for vegetables and fruit in the market. It's always so pretty in the South of France. I may do some painting in the apartment. It depends on what mood I'm in.

"I'm not good at figurative painting. If I paint you it'll never look like you. The people in my paintings, feel them 'my people.' Or it is very abstract … I didn't use a brush, just paint out of the tube. It was pretty exciting."

They also spend time in Los Angeles.

"Barbara's folks live there," Starr said. "I like it. I like to be wherever there are palm trees. I like warmth. I can't deal with the drizzle of England any more."

In Monte Carlo, he says, he may be recognized on the street but people don't bother him. "If I come to New York as a private citizen it's OK. Now I'm promoting and