In the luxurious room of a London hotel, Richard Starkey, known worldwide as Ringo Starr and former drummer of the most famous British band of all time, The Beatles, was chatting a few days ago with EL PAÍS journalist Rafa de Miguel on the occasion of his new album, Look Up. Between the launch, his fascination with music country Being a kid from Liverpool or Yoko Ono’s role in the band, musician and journalist also had time to talk about the tours with which The Beatles delighted audiences around the world, specifically about their trip to Spain in the summer of 1965. The bullrings of Madrid and Barcelona then hosted the concerts of the Fab Four.
From his stay in Spain Ringo, who was then the oldest of the group, at 25 years old, still remembers the bullfighting spectacle: “It was one of the saddest things I saw there. Because in my culture there was nothing like that.” And he adds: “I saw how that big animal came out into the ring, people stuck everything at it, they did things to it… and in the end, after the matador finished his task, he stayed there on the ground and they dragged him.”
For Ringo, the worst moment was precisely that, when they dragged him: “(…) I thought it was a big, beautiful animal.” Returning to the diplomatic spirit of the interview, the Englishman assures that that was the only thing that saddened him about Spain, and he concludes: “Not the rest! The rest seemed like a fantastic country to me!”
Look Up It will go on sale on January 10. There are eleven songs of music country written mostly by T. Bone Burnett, Bob Dylan’s guitarist during the seventies. It is not the first album of the genre released by Ringo Starr, who composed and produced the album more than fifty years ago. Beaucoups of Blues.
(Read the full interview here: Ringo Starr: “The Beatles put a lot of work into the songs. If we were partying, the recorded take was shit.”)