Ringo Starr: 'I made all my mistakes on stage' Regan MorrisLos Angeles, California Ringo Starr talks Beatles, Barry Keoghan and country music with the BBC"Call me Ringo." That's what the former Beatles drummer says when asked if we should call him Sir.He joins us at the swanky Sunset Marquis hotel in West Hollywood where rock stars have gathered for decades in a luxury oasis behind the Sunset Strip.We're here to talk music – specifically Ringo Starr's new country album, Long Long Road.But first we deal with the honorifics because although he was knighted in 2018 for his services to music, technically, he says, it's wrong to call him Sir Ringo because he's actually "Sir Richard."Sir Richard laughs. He just wants to talk music, and he's not worried about formalities or titles. His new album is more Nashville than Los Angeles and he seems more LA than Liverpool as he encourages an American interviewing a British national treasure for the BBC to just relax."Peace and love," he says, a soothing catchphrase often used by the 85-year-old music legend who looks, moves and sings like a much younger man."I've always loved the attitude of LA," he says, adding that he's had a home here since the 1970s.
"Besides, I love the heat and the light, it's just been a good place for me."On his new country album, Starr collaborates with the likes of Sheryl Crow, Billy Strings and St Vincent.Starr tells the BBC he loves the "LA attitude"Getty ImagesRingo Starr pictured alongside Molly Tuttle while making his debut at the famous Nashville country venue The Grand Ole Opry, last yearAnd he says that's the way he likes it. He never plays music alone, not even to practise."That's how I did it. I made all my mistakes on stage," he says.Before joining The Beatles, he says he was practising drums alone as a kid, and the neighbours complained, yelling at him to shut up.
"I think that's what did it," he says laughing, adding that he tells all his grandchildren to stop practising music alone and to get together and join a band."If you play piano, bass, saxophone, I will play with you all night," he says. "Get with people."Getty ImagesStarr only wrote two songs when he was in The Beatles - Don't Pass Me By and Octopus's GardenFor Long Long Road, Starr teamed up with legendary producer T Bone Burnett who played guitar for Bob Dylan in the 1970s. It's their second collaboration in less than two years.
This time, they co-wrote the album and recorded in Los Angeles and Nashville.Starr says T Bone knows all the great musicians in Nashville."And because they're recording in Nashville, they just pop in to play. It's great."Country music now is very cool, of course. Even Beyoncé's making country music.
Her album Cowboy Carter won the top prize at the Grammys last year, rare for country music. "She made a great album," Starr says, whose love for the genre goes way back.So how did he first get into country music in the 1950s and 60s?PALiverpool was "the capital of country music in England," he says, noting that merchant navy workers were bringing in records to the port city from every genre from all around the world, including plenty of country music from Texas."Liverpool loved country. I know I loved it," he says.After finishing school, Starr says he was expected to go to work in a factory.
Instead, when he was 18, he and a friend decided to move to Texas to be near the American blues singer and guitarist Lightnin' Hopkins. But he got bored with the paperwork required to emigrate and changed his mind."He was the blues guy that got to me," he says of Hopkins, laughing at the thought of how life could have been different had he moved to Texas in 1959.A prolific songwriter now, he only wrote two songs when he was with The Beatles; one of them, 1968's Don't Pass Me By, is a little bit country."We did it in a country fashion," he says, singing a few bars. "I think it would be more country now if we did it with T Bone."He says McCartney, Lennon and Harrison laughed at his early writing attempts.PA(Left to right) Actor Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison"They'd all be just laughing hysterically because all I'd done is rewritten another song," he said.
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