FEATURE:
Ringo Starr at Eighty-Five
PHOTO CREDIT: Dina Litovsky for The Atlantic
With a Little Help from My Friends: An Artist I Admire and Envy
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I am going to come to…
IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles in 1963/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
a couple of recent interviews with Ringo Starr. He released his new album, Look Up, on 10th January. It won a lot of critical praise. One of the best albums of this year. His twenty-first album, it arrived almost fifty-five years to day after his debut album, Sentimental Journey, came out (27th January, 1970). Even though Starr now resides in the U.S., he was born in Liverpool and holds the city dear in his heart. He turns eighty-five on 7th July, and I know there will be a lot of articles about him. Such celebration from music journalists and fans. I wanted to write a couple about him, so I am starting out with one where I write why I both admire and envy him. I used to live in the same village as Ringo Starr back in 1999. He moved to Cranleigh, Surrey then and moved out not that long after. He sort of did the Rock artist thing in reverse. They normally start out in the U.S. then retire to a quiet village in England! I love how Ringo Starr is in the U.S. As I have theorised in a previous Ringo Starr feature, I think that is a way of being closer to John Lennon. Lennon was living in New York when he was killed in 1980. Lennon would have turned eighty-five this October. On 8th December, we will remember him, forty-five years since he died. It is strange he is not around. I think Ringo Starr wants to be close to Lennon in that way. Perhaps he has different reasons for being in the U.S., but I would like to think it is because of John Lennon! Starr occasionally performs with Paul McCartney. The former Beatles have been on stage a few times recently. I do hope they record together again and there is some collaboration. As Sam Mendes is making four Beatles films – biopics of the four members that will be released in 2027 -, that might bring Starr and McCartney together. I want to include a couple of recent interviews with Ringo Starr. Promoting Look Up, it must be a fascinating experiencing getting to speak with such a music legend. The Times interviewed Starr. He explained why he always wants to be in a band. He also reveals why Liverpool has always been the capital of Country music:
“At 84, and following that pre-Christmas live reunion at the O2 in London playing Helter Skelter and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with his mate Paul McCartney, 82, Starr has just unveiled his collection of 11 new country-leaning tunes. From start to finish Look Up is a delightful surprise — although perhaps it shouldn’t be, given Starr’s lifetime love of the music; he sang lead vocals on the Beatles’ version of Buck Owens’s Act Naturally on the Help! album nearly 60 years ago. That at a time when most British listeners’ idea of country music was more Jim Reeves than Johnny Cash.
But the affair began earlier, in Richard Starkey’s teenage years in working-class Merseyside, even before he became Ringo. Like his former bandmates, he has always accredited his love of rock’n’roll and soul to living in a port town where young men in the merchant navy returned home with exotic 45s from their travels. But they were also his introduction to the down-home music of the southern states.
“Country’s been good to me,” he tells me. “My idea of country is, ‘The dog’s dead and I don’t have enough money for the jukebox.’ Hundreds of records about the jukebox. I keep saying Liverpool was the capital of country music. In the streets I lived in every other house had some 18 to 25-year-old who was in the ‘merch’. And you could always tell those kids — there’d be a camel saddle in the living room because they’d been to Egypt,” he says with a laugh. “But they also went to America and came back with all the records, so we were getting them before everyone else.”
Look Up is produced and largely written by that most assured studio superintendent, T Bone Burnett, the man who oversaw Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s award-hoovering 2007 collaboration Raising Sand. Burnett has won 13 Grammys, including for his work on soundtracks for such classic Americana-fuelled movies as O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Cold Mountain and Walk the Line.
“There was no plan to make a country record,” says Starr, who first met Burnett socially in the 1970s. When they reconvened more recently at an event hosted by Olivia Harrison, Starr asked T Bone for a song. “He sent me this beautiful country track, and that blows me away even today. I thought he’d be sending me a rock-pop sort of song, because you’re just in that world.” The song was Come Back, a splendidly old-fashioned lullaby in the style of “Singing Cowboy” Gene Autry, complete with Starr whistling.
Burnett then proceeded to present Starr with no fewer than nine tracks, inspiring the drummer to sidestep his recent policy of making EPs and go the whole hog with an album for the first time since 2019.
These songs are the best Starr has been involved with for decades, Burnett’s sage production sympathetic to his unmistakable if limited voice, and making sparing use of vocal partners from the modern Americana scene, including Larkin Poe, Molly Tuttle and Billy Strings. Krauss accompanies him on the closing Thankful.
That track features an unusually personal lyric by Starr. “I had it all, then I started to fall,” he sings, acknowledging his place in the most famous pop group of all time and then his descent into a drink-induced haze, before he and his wife got sober in the late 1980s.
“There is a nod to the past, because I’m thankful for Barbara being in my life,” he says sweetly.
“I’m thankful that my life has changed. [I was] at the top of the mountain, and gradually it worked its way down. And then I looked up and life came back. I truly believe in looking up. You’re always in a better mood if you’re looking up. It’s one of those things you notice, walking around London, or it doesn’t matter where. They’re all looking down. There’s nothing down there.”
The album was also a full-circle moment for an artist whose second solo album, Beaucoups of Blues in 1970, was an arch-traditional country record, cut in two days with the American producer and pedal steel player Pete Drake. “Pete realised I liked country music and said, ‘You should come to Nashville and make a record.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to go anywhere for two months.’ And he said, ‘What are you talking about? Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline was made in two days.’ I thought, ‘I can handle that.’”
We talk about how much country music has changed since then, and its latter-day adoption by stars of R&B and hip-hop. “It’s just popped up. I mean, in a pop music sort of way,” he says. “I know Beyoncé made a record and it was No 1 for, like, ten years,” he says, laughing. “But no, I haven’t heard it”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Paul McCartney and Ringo Star together at the O2 in London in 2024/PHOTO CREDIT: Raphael Pour-Hashemi/Mega
I am going to move things on in a minute. However, The Atlantic’s interview with Starr from March is incredible. It goes into such depth and detail. Someone who seems incredibly funny and charming in interviews, Ringo Starr is near the top of my wish-list of artists I would love to interview – though I realise it won’t happen. I am so glad that he is putting out music:
“What does “normal” life look like for an 84-year-old former Beatle? I was able to ascertain some details about Starr’s day-to-day. Does he drive? (Yes.) Does he have a trainer? (Yes: three days a week, weights, yoga, pilates, treadmill.) Streaming? (“Yeah, I love TV,” he told me.) What shows?
“Well, I’m not going to plug anybody,” he said, and I withdrew the question.
Naturally, Starr is a fan of Liverpool FC of the Premier League, but also the Dallas Cowboys of the NFL. He saw me wince when he mentioned the Cowboys and asked why. “Just like everyone loves the Beatles, everyone hates the Cowboys,” I explained. Starr objected—mostly to my choice of words.
“Why would you hate them?” he wondered. “That’s a strong word, to hate. Dislike is a better word.”
Confronted with more inner-directed questions about what it’s like to be Ringo Starr, the man can be stubbornly understated. “My name is Ringo, and I play drums,” he said when he entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in 2015. On the topic of how he came to join the Beatles, Starr is similarly laconic. “They wanted me to join the Beatles,” he told me. “I got this phone call, and that’s how it all happened.”
In 2022, Starr was given an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music, in Boston. “I don’t have a lot to say, just ‘Thank you,’ ” he said.
“You know, I just hit them. That’s all I do. I just hit the buggers,” he added, “the buggers” being the drums. “In a way, it’s like some strange fairy tale.”
Perhaps the strangest quality of this fairy tale is that it’s still unfolding. Starr’s country collaboration with T Bone Burnett, Look Up, is one of Starr’s most successful albums in years, hitting No. 1 on the U.K.’s Official Country Artists Albums Chart and selling briskly in the U.S. as well.
Coverage of Look Up has noted that Starr is one of several pop acts who have recently made country albums, as if Starr has latched on to some new crossover fashion, chasing the likes of Beyoncé and Post Malone. But Starr sounds genuinely oblivious to the bandwagon he’s supposedly hopping on. “I know Beyoncé made a record and it was No 1,” Starr said in an interview with The Times of London. “But no, I haven’t heard it.”
In fact, Starr’s life and career have always been steeped in country music. As a boy, he loved Westerns and worshipped Gene Autry, the Singing Cowboy. His early music idols were Hank Williams and Hank Snow; later, he admired Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. He dreamed of escaping the Dingle for Texas. He even wrote to the Houston Chamber of Commerce after resolving to live close to the country-blues icon Lightnin’ Hopkins. As a general rule, this was not something poor Liverpool boys aspired to do.
Burnett says he always considered Starr to be the Beatles’ resident country ambassador. He thought of him as “rockabilly.” Burnett pointed to “What Goes On,” from Rubber Soul, and “Don’t Pass Me By,” from The White Album. “Even ‘Octopus’s Garden’ is country,” Burnett told me. “It sounds like Chet Atkins playing guitar.”
Country also played an essential part in helping Starr adapt to his post-Beatles life. The withdrawal was difficult at times: eight years of manic, identity-warping hysteria and creative intensity. Then, suddenly, nothing. Starr wallowed. He drank, a lot. The plaintive strains of country music made for a fitting companion. “The wife’s left, the dog’s dead, or I need some money for the jukebox” is how Starr sums up the standard trajectory of country tunes.
“I sat in my garden, wondering what to do with myself,” Starr told me. “And get over, really, missing and playing with the other three boys. And I thought one day, I’ve got to get up.”
He talked with Pete Drake, an American producer who worked with Harrison on his album All Things Must Pass, about making a country album. Beaucoups of Blues would be Starr’s second solo release. Hearing it now, it’s striking how well suited Starr’s voice is to country singing. He sounds playfully mournful—or mournfully playful—like someone perfectly at home in the genre.
“Are you worried at all?” Jimmy Kimmel asked him. “Why would I be worried?” Starr replied.
Starr has long been a casual acquaintance of Burnett’s, who has won about a million Grammys (13). In November 2022, the pair encountered each other at a reception for Olivia Harrison’s book of poems about her late husband. Starr mentioned that he was making an EP and asked Burnett if he wanted to contribute a track. Sure, Burnett said. He came back with a song, and then Starr asked for more. He sent nine, all of them country songs, figuring Starr could pick one or two. Starr said he liked them all.
Look Up is a vibrant and gentle compilation with recurring themes of despair, resilience, and, especially, gratitude. “Thankful” (with Alison Krauss), the record’s second release, is an homage to hard-won lessons and, in some ways, a countrified rendering of Starr’s post-Beatles trajectory.
His descent into alcoholism and long path to sobriety is a clear subtext. “ ‘Thankful’ is the most personal song he’s ever written,” Burnett told me. “It starts off, ‘I had it all and I started to fall,’ ” Burnett said. “It’s about being in the Beatles, and being on top of the world, being the most famous person in the world. And then being an addict.” A central figure of Starr’s recovery—and the main object of his gratitude—is his wife of more than 40 years, Barbara Bach. Together, they embraced sobriety in the late 1980s, which was around the time Starr convened the All Starr Band and resumed his touring career.
“Thankful” resonates with familiar Ringo refrains (“hoping for more peace and love”) and contains echoes of some of his signature songs (“I needed a friend to help me along”). After I listened a few times, I came to hear the song as an updated version of “It Don’t Come Easy,” conveyed by a blessed old soul, who had lived, thankfully, to sing the tale”.
I couldn’t let Ringo Starr’s upcoming eighty-fifth birthday slip by. I wanted to write about him. He is the musician above all others I envy. In terms of how he has lived his life. Looking so young and vibrant at the age of eighty-five, he has lived his life right! Even though he has made mistakes and no doubt indulged in more than his fair share of excess and drug-taking with The Beatles, he is now in a place in his life where he seems happier and healthier than ever. Living a relaxing life in the U.S., he is still performing a lot and recording music. We hope to get more Ringo Starr albums. Many who are in older bands put distance between themselves and the group. Starr loves The Beatles and recalls his time with them fondly. He is close with Paul McCartney but also does not forget John Lennon and George Harrison. Starr always proffers peace and love. He is someone who has had the same values since he was young. One of the most conscientious and nicest people in all of music, Starr is someone to look up to. A really positive role model still! His new music is among his very best. I also love how he has had this amazing career.
In my mind the best drummer who has ever lived, he was the heartbeat of The Beatles. Responsible for some of their best moments. Perhaps the most respected member of the group, as the eldest member, there was this sense of authority and wisdom. Songs that Starr sung on – like With a Little Help with My Friends, Boys and Yellow Submarine – are among the most joyous. His bandmates always delighted to be backing him! The things he has seen and his experiences with The Beatles. Though we hear a lot from Paul McCartney and there have been a lot of books about him and his legacy, there has not been the same focus on Ringo Starr. His role in transforming popular music and culture really cannot be underestimated. I admire him because he has remained so modest and ego-free. You can check out Ringo Starr’s books here. Like Paul McCartney, Starr is someone whose photography is another strand worth spotlighting. I hope that Ringo Starr writes a memoir or autobiography sometime soon. I almost think his times with The Beatles is more interesting than the other three members. The biopic of Ringo Starr – Barry Keogh will play Starr – is the one I am most looking forward to. This music icon turns eighty-five on 7th July. There will be so much love for him on the day. I hope that we get to celebrate his ninetieth and ninety-fifth birthday. Someone who is in rude health and is looking ahead, I do feel this jealousy. Starr has had this life that I could only aspire to. Those two interviews I included are really engrossing and worth reading. He has this passion and energy for music that seems undismissed. Such humour and wit. I do hope that he has something big planned for his eighty-fifth birthday. Salute, peace and love to a musician I admire…
ABOVE almost everyone else.