Ringo Starr brought country music to The Beatles — now he’s getting back to it

Ringo Starr has just released his 22nd solo album, which in some ways represents a return to his earliest recordings with The Beatles. (Supplied: Henry Diltz)

If you’re surprised that Ringo Starr has just released a new country music record, you haven’t been paying attention.

Even as drummer of The Beatles he made his love for the style well known.

You hear it in his vocal takes on the band’s 1965 version of Buck Owens’s Act Naturally and Rubber Soul gem What Goes On. It’s all over his first solo composition for The Beatles, the White Album’s carnivalesque stomper Don’t Pass Me By.

“The first two songs I ever did with the Beatles — because I got one track an album — were Carl Perkins songs,” Ringo, who was born Richard Starkey, says from his home in Los Angeles.

“I brought other people in too. As Paul said [on] a TV show, ‘Ringo was always bringing in country songs.’”

A bold move when your bandmates are widely regarded as the best songwriting team of all time.

“[McCartney] did write me some fine songs,” Ringo, now 85, concedes. “But [bringing in country songs] was something I did.”

Following the country road

When The Beatles split at the beginning of the 1970s, they all became free to pursue their individual musical passions more thoroughly.

McCartney countered lo-fi solo experimentation with bold and brassy prog-pop. John Lennon stuck to his mission to deliver peace at any cost, while making glorious noise with Yoko Ono. George Harrison toyed with the avant-garde before cleaning things up for the monstrous All Things Must Pass.

Ringo originally made Sentimental Journey, a record released in 1970 and filled with prewar standards such as Cole Porter’s Night and Day and Hoagy Carmichael’s Stardust.

These were the songs his parents had loved in his childhood and were a hell of a departure from the psychedelic wonderland of late-era Beatles.

“[People] said ‘Oh, Ringo’s got a record out,’” he monotones, mocking the world’s dismissive reaction to his solo output.

Circumstances then led him to follow his passion for country music all the way through to a second 1970 album, the underrated Beaucoups Of Blues.

“We had just all split up. George [Harrison] was having a recording session with some other musicians and myself on drums. Unbeknownst to me, he got in touch with Pete Drake to come to England to play on his album,” Ringo says.

Drake was a gun in the country music scene who’d played on everything from Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man to Bob Dylan’s Lay Lady Lay to Charlie Rich’s Behind Closed Doors. And he needed a lift from the airport.

“Something had happened and [George had] sent his car away, so I sent my car to Heathrow to pick up Pete,” Ringo recalls.

“He came into the studio and looked me right in the eye and says, ‘Hey, horse, I see you like country music.’ Because I had a lot of cassettes in the car — that’s what we were playing in those days.”

Ringo Starr’s second solo album was a collection of country songs recorded in Nashville in just two days.

The two men got along swimmingly, so Drake made a proposition.

“[The Beatles] had just broken up, I got me kids, and [I’m just] trying to get [it] together,” Ringo explains.

“When he asked me, ‘Do you want to go to Nashville and make a record?’ I said, ‘No, no. I don’t want to be away for a long time.’”

But Drake wasn’t satisfied. He knew how to make great country records, and he knew how to do it quickly.

“He said, ‘Long time? We did [Bob Dylan’s classic 1969 country album] Nashville Skyline in two days.’ So I said, ‘I’m coming.’”

Ringo jumped on a plane and was soon in a studio on Nashville’s famous Music Row.

“I got there, and we did Beaucoups Of Blues in two days. In the morning, five songs were chosen. In the afternoon they were recorded, in the evening they were sung,” he says”

“The same the next day: the five songs we picked were the five songs that were recorded, and the five songs I sang. Then it was over, so I left the next day — we got back to England and fed the kids. It was so great.

“I was trying to get on my feet again, so that was part of it.”

Why stop now?

So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when, in 2024, Ringo Starr announced he was releasing a new country album, produced by the legendary T Bone Burnett.

But initially, it was even a bit of a surprise to Ringo.

“It was an accident,” Ringo says of his first album with Burnett, last year’s Look Up.

“T Bone came over to visit, we were chatting, And he talked about songs. I said, ‘Well, how many songs have you got?’ and he goes, ‘Nine.’ It gives me the courage to say, ‘Well, would you produce an album on me?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’”

“It wasn’t planned.”

T Bone Burnett is a good man to have in your corner. He has worked with everyone, making blockbuster rock records for Counting Crows and The Wallflowers and modern blues masterpieces with B.B. King and Willie Dixon.

Ringo Starr enlisted revered producer T Bone Burnett for his two recent country music albums. (Supplied: Scott Ritchie)

Then there’s 2000’s O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack, a record credited with the Americana revival that resonates to this day.

Ringo probably wouldn’t need to tug on too many sleeves to enlist a great guest cast on a new album, but Burnett’s connections meant easily accessing in-demand talent like Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle, who fit into these songs beautifully.

Critics and fans loved Look Up, praising its warmth and natural feel.

“We got a great response,” he says. “I was a little stunned, actually. Even the BBC loved me!

“I think that’s what gave us the impetus to do the second one. Because we did get such a great reaction. It was a great experience, so we had no trouble saying yes.”

Which brings us to Long Long Road, Ringo Starr’s 22nd solo album, released last week, just over a year on from Look Up.

The album shares similar DNA to its predecessor thanks to its writers, producer and guest cast. It worked so well the first time, why not do it again?

“We had finished the Look Up album and three days later we decided,” Ringo chuckles when talking about the decision to hit the studio with T Bone again.

“It just sort of fell into place. It went so well and [was] so much fun.”

There are a couple of older songs on Long Long Road. Ringo goes back to his roots with a take on I Don’t See Me in Your Eyes Anymore, a country standard that Ringo’s perennial favourite Carl Perkins recorded in 1959.

He also revisits a song of his own, Choose Love from his 2005 album of the same name.

“I love that expression: no matter what you choose, choose love. Peace and love,” he says.

“So, I just thought, ‘Let’s do this country and see how it works. And it worked out really good.”

It is one of the most self-referential Beatles solo tracks, a couple of lines directly cribbed from Ringo’s old band.

Discussing the line “The long and winding road is more than a song”, Ringo says it served as a bedrock to build the album from.

“That sort of put the attitude in my head of the long, long road,” he says.

“That’s what I was thinking about internally, thinking of life so far. And it’s been a long one, I’ll tell you.”

Fit, focused, and looking ahead

Ringo looks remarkable for 85, a testament to vegetarianism, regular fitness training and daily meditation.

“I’m in a good space,” he says. “I’m quite fit lately. Things are good.”

Ringo Starr is 85 and feeling fit and well.

Whether that means fit enough to visit Australia again remains to be seen. For now, there are no plans. But never say never.

“Not this year,” he says.

“This year’s gone with this record, a best of coming out later, a tour of America, and then plans to work on another EP of songs that I wrote with Bruce Sugar, who wrote Long, Long Road with me.”

It’s nothing personal. Ringo has loved his time down here since The Beatles visited in 1964.

“Since our very first time in Australia, we loved it,” he says.

“Barbara [wife, actor and model Barbara Bach] and I used to go to Australia just to visit, to have a holiday and it was great. We had a great time.”