NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – The 1960s mop top is gone, but Ringo Starr is still flashing a peace sign.

The former Beatle marked his 72nd birthday Saturday by holding a “peace and love” moment at noon. He asked people worldwide to do the same at 12 o'clock in their time zones.

The idea came to him in 2008 when an interviewer asked him what he wanted for his birthday. Since then, he has held events each year in cities such as New York, Chicago and Hamburg, Germany.

“It's sort of catching on more and more, the more we do,” Starr said before the festivities. “We got lots of blogs from Japan and China and all over the world saying, `We did peace and love.' So it's working.”

Ken Scott on recording The Beatles, Bowie, Elton and more

On the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ first recording at EMI Studios and the 40th anniversary of Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust,” engineer and producer Ken Scott shares all in new book.

More than 48 years on from the job interview that forever altered his course, legendary recording producer and engineer Ken Scott recalls his nervousness as he climbed the steps outside EMI Studios to meet with the assistant studio manager. “I had never had a job before, so I was panic-stricken going for this interview,” he remembers.

Only five days previous, after a particularly grueling Friday at school, Scott sat down and penned approximately 10 letters addressed to various London-based record labels, television and radio studios in hopes of landing a position as a recording engineer. Exactly one week later, he received some news that stopped him in his tracks. “I was offered a job and left school that day,” Scott told me. “I started at EMI the next Monday. There were nine days between school and starting work at the greatest recording studio in the world.” Ken Scott was 16 years old.