Richard Starkey (Liverpool, 84 years old, known throughout the planet as Ringo Starr) is the permanent reminder that the Beatles loved each other, respected each other and worked like mules to make good music. “Each generation discovers and listens to the Beatles in its own way. Isn’t that something fantastic? When they first remastered all the albums, it was a gift for me. Because for the first time the drums could be heard clearly, not just as a dull thud in the background. I love to keep listening to those songs, because you realize all the work we put in there. We weren’t partying. And if we ever were, the recorded take was shit. We always try to do it in the best way possible,” says Starr in the room of a luxurious London hotel, where she has locked herself in to launch the promotion of her new album, Look Upwhich will go on sale on January 10.
Eleven country music songs written mostly by T. Bone Burnett, Bob Dylan’s guitarist during the seventies, composer and producer, with several Grammys behind him. It is not the first album of the genre that the former Beatles drummer has released. More than fifty years ago he composed and produced the album Beaucoups of Blues.
And anyone who listened to Ringo the few songs he sang for the band, like What Goes On, Act Naturally (“We’re going to make a movie about a sad, lonely man. All I have to do is act naturally.”), or even Octopus´s Garden can sense a soul cowboy in the rhythm and in the voice.
“It’s always been easy for me to make country music. I love the emotion that this type of music gives off,” explains the musician, with an enthusiasm and kindness that disarms the journalist. What can you ask such a legend that he hasn’t already answered endlessly for sixty years? “In Liverpool he was very successful. Because Liverpool is a port. Many of those who worked in the merchant navy traveled to the United States and returned with a stack of albums. We could hear a lot of material never heard before in England. If a country music show landed on British soil, they always performed in Liverpool. Sister Rosetta Tharpe only made one stop in England, and that was in The Cabin (one of the city’s historic music clubs). And I was there. It blew me away,” Starr recalls.
Europe, Spain… and the bulls
Starr has succeeded in film and as a solo musician. But he knows that none of the four, in their different careers after the split, managed to produce anything close to the magical chemistry that emerged from the Beatles. “It’s not that I intend to diminish my work, but people come to see me because they know what band I was in before. We had a good time. All three of them loved me, and I loved them. Since then, my entire musical career has always gone upwards,” he says.
The world surrendered to them. They arrived in Spain in 1965. Two bullrings, Madrid and Barcelona, to welcome the Fab Four. The oldest of them all, Ringo, was 25 years old. “For me the bulls are one of the saddest things I saw there. Because in my culture there was no such thing as that. I saw how that big animal went out into the ring, people stuck everything at it, did things to it… and in the end, after the matador finished his task, he stayed there on the ground and they dragged him. It was at that moment, when they were dragging it, that I thought it was a big, beautiful animal. That was the only thing that made me sad. Not the rest! “The rest seemed like a fantastic country to me!” describes the former Beatle, determined to present his life as a constant exercise in diplomacy in which he was lucky enough to be at the center of a revolution.
They traveled through Spain, Italy, France, Holland, Denmark, and brought the British pop revolution to the United States. “The reaction was wonderful everywhere. We simply had that connection with the public. “They thought we were wonderful,” he remembers.
If Paul McCartney, who kissed and hugged his beloved Ringo when he appeared to play with him at his concert at the O2 in London on December 19, has spent a lifetime trying to dismantle the cliché of separation, the acrimonious breakup with John Lennon and the interference of Yoko Ono, the band’s former drummer, who was always the glue that provided stability and good vibes, accepted with affection and understanding all the eccentricities of those years.
“There was a time when Yoko Ono was practically sleeping in the recording studio. My wife, at that time, was Maureen. During the eight years of the band I don’t think I spent more than two hours in the studio in total. We were going to work, not to socialize. So I asked John why that was happening. And he said, ‘When you come back to Maureen every day and she asks you what you’ve done, what do you answer?’ Well, I said, I tell you that we have recorded a couple of songs, which haven’t sounded bad… No more than a couple of phrases. ‘Well, the two of us want to know exactly what each one of us has done,’ he told me. They liked to do everything with each other’s constant presence. That seems fine to me. God bless John, and God bless Yoko,” he concludes his story with a smile.
He has had his ups and downs, as happens to anyone who comes down from Olympus when they still have a life ahead of them. But he carries it all with an infectious naturalness —Act Naturally—, which flees from solemnity or transcendence. He even makes an effort to tone down the religious tone that some of the songs on his new album exude. “It will never be religious. But it will always be spiritual. He has some pretty spiritual lines in the songs. But because we go in search of the light. That’s why we look up. But not beyond!”, he bursts out laughing while making his usual peace gesture with two fingers of his hand. “And you’ve had enough, brother. “You’ve been here all day!” he jokes with the journalist, who, in fact, could spend all day asking a legend. The opportunity is rarely given.