Ringo Starr: ‘The Beatles weren’t partying when doing the tracks. We did that occasionally, and the track was always shit’

Richard Starkey, born in Liverpool and known throughout the world as Ringo Starr, is the constant reminder that The Beatles loved each other, respected each other, and worked like dogs to make good music. “Every generation listens to the Beatles. It’s fantastic. The remastering, for me, was great because you can hear the drums, really hear what was played, not so boom, boom, boom… I still love the tracks. There was a lot of energy. We realized ‘we’re working here,’ you know, we’re not partying down while doing the tracks. We did that occasionally, and the track was always shit. But we went in and we did our best,” says Starr, 84, in the room of a luxury London hotel, where he has locked himself away to launch the promotion of his new album, Look Up, which will go on sale on January 10.

Starr’s latest record consists of 11 country songs written mostly by T. Bone Burnett, Bob Dylan’s guitarist during the 1970s, and a composer and producer with several Grammys under his belt. This is not the first album of the genre released by the former Beatles drummer: over 50 years ago he composed and produced the album Beaucoups of Blues.

And anyone who has heard the few Beatles songs Ringo sang, such as What Goes On, Act Naturally (“We’re going to make a film about a sad, lonely man. All I have to do is act naturally”), or even Octopus’s Garden, can sense a cowboy soul in the rhythm and in his voice.

“Country music has always been good for me. I just love the emotion of country music,” explains the musician, with an enthusiasm and kindness that disarms the journalist. What can you ask a legend like Starr, that he hasn’t answered ad nauseam over the course of 60 years? “It was quiet big in Liverpool, because Liverpool is a port, and a lot of the lads who where in the merchant navy would go to America and they´d bring records back. So we were listening to a lot of stuff. That was the first time it had been heard by English people. If a country act was going around England, they always went to Liverpool. Sister Rosetta Thorpe, the only gig she did in Britain was at The Cabin [one of the city’s historic music venues]. I was there, you know, and she blew me away,” Starr recalls.

Europe, Spain… and bulls

Starr has enjoyed success in film and as a solo musician. But he knows that none of the Fab Four, in their various careers since the band broke up, managed to produce anything close to the magical chemistry that emerged from The Beatles. “I’m not putting my work down, but people come to the show because… guess what band I was in? We had fun. They loved me and I loved them. And part of my whole career is still going up,” he says.

The world surrendered to The Beatles. They arrived in Spain in 1965. Two bullrings, in Madrid and Barcelona, were used to host the Fab Four. The eldest of the band, Ringo, was 25 at the time. “The saddest thing I ever saw was the bullring, because, you know, my culture doesn´t have that. I saw this great animal come out, people stabbed it and did things to it. And then at the end, after the matadors did it in, it would just be laying dragged off. It was the dragging off. I thought it was a beautiful and huge animal. That was the only thing. The rest of Spain was great,” says the ex-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 toured Spain, Italy, France, Holland, Denmark... and brought the British pop revolution to the United States. “The reaction was wonderful everywhere. We just had that bond with the public. They thought we were wonderful,” he recalls.

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 his entire life trying to dismantle the cliché of the separation, the bitter 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, accepts all the eccentricities of those years with affection and understanding.

“With John and Yoko, we turned up at the studio one day, and she’s in bed in the studio. My wife at the time, Maureen, probably spent two hours in the studio in eight years. We were working, not socializing. So I talked to John. I said, you know, John, what’s going on? And he said, ‘Do you know when you go home to Maureen every day and she asks you what you’ve been doing? What do you say?’ I said, I’d tell her we’ve done a couple of tracks that played well, you know, three lines at the most. He said: ‘Well, we want to know exactly what we’ve done.’ It was a thing they were doing, being in each other’s presence constantly. And I said, okay, I can only support that. God bless him, and God bless Yoko,” he concludes, with a smile.

Starr has had his ups and downs, as happens to anyone who comes down from Olympus when they still have their whole life ahead of them. But he takes it all with an infectious naturalness — Act Naturally — that avoids solemnity or transcendence. He even goes out of his way to downplay the religious tone exuded by some of the tracks on his new album. “It’ll never be religious. It will always be spiritual. There is some spirituality. We’re looking up for the light. That’s why we look up. But no further,” he bursts out laughing while making his habitual peace sign. “And that’s it for you, brother! You’ve been here all day!” he jokes with the journalist, who, indeed, could spend all day asking a legend questions. The opportunity rarely arises.

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