Ringo Starr believes The Beatles would have found their way back together to make more music had John Lennon and George Harrison lived.

The 86-year-old drummer said he thought the Fab Four could eventually have reunited after their split, reflecting on the deaths of Lennon, who was 40 when he was shot dead outside his New York home in 1980, and Harrison, who was 58 when he died from cancer in 2001.

Starr remains close to Paul McCartney, 84 – the only other surviving Beatle – more than half a century after the group split.

“I do think (The Beatles) possibly would have got together sometime from, you know, John leaving us to now, if we were all still around, you know,” he told Page Six.

“And George, you know, I miss George.”

Starr said what he missed most about being part of The Beatles was the relationship between the four musicians during their extraordinary rise from Liverpool clubs to becoming the biggest band in the world.

He missed their “friendship, the togetherness, the support of each other”.

“I’m an only child. I had three brothers,” he said.

“And you know, brothers up rows and you know little get-togethers, and then little get-aparts. And for me, it was great. And musically it was dynamite, which it still is out there. You know, the chance to play that. Right. And you know, it’s all happened in eight years.”

Starr and McCartney remain in regular contact and speak “a couple of times a month”.

“If he’s in England, we go to visit England, mainly to visit family, (if) we know, we’ll have dinner or we’ll go around and hang, so yeah, a couple of times a month.”

“We’re still pals.”

Interest in the group is again growing ahead of director Sam Mendes’ ambitious four-film Beatles project, which will tell the band’s story from the perspectives of each member, scheduled to be released in 2028.

“I think it’s amazing, actually,” Starr said.

“It’s not a documentary … it’s a story of four stories. You know, one on each of us, but, you know, of course we will get in together sometimes. So, we just said, ‘Okay, it’s a movie’.”