photo: Dan Winter

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Ringo Starr’s decision to release an album of country music nearly 55 years after his last such endeavor feels both serendipitous and ineluctable. The happenstance occurred on November 10, 2022, when the iconic drummer attended an event at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in Los Angeles to celebrate the release of Olivia Harrison’s book, Came the Lightening – Twenty Poems for George. Also on hand was renowned producer and singular musician T Bone Burnett. The two struck up a conversation, which eventually led the drummer to query whether Burnett would be interested in composing a song for him.

Here’s where the element of inevitably comes into play. In 1970, Starr traveled to Nashville and recorded Beaucoups of Blues with Pete Drake and a team of country aces. He hadn’t explored the genre in any depth over the subsequent decades. However, beyond being an acclaimed artist in his own right, Burnett is an avowed fan, who has said, “Nobody means more to me than The Beatles and Ringo.” So as he contemplated the task, he decided to craft a song that reflected the totality of Starr’s life and career, going all the way back to the Liverpool teenager’s infatuation with the music of Gene Autry.

Burnett explains, “I think there’s a real line from Carl Perkins and ‘Honey Don’t’ through Buck Owens and ‘Act Naturally.’ That continued with the songs Ringo wrote, like ‘What Goes On’ and even ‘Photograph,’ which is very much a folk-rock, country rock kind of tune. So when he asked me to write a song for him, I wrote ‘Come Back When You Go Away,’ which was an attempt to write a Gene Autry-type song without aping any particular Gene Autry song—just knowing the mindset and then tapping into that country and western style.”

Starr was enamored with the results, although surprised by the nature of “Come Back,” which he had thought would be in the pop-rock vein. When the two next met, the drummer broached the possibility of Burnett producing a four-song country EP. In response, Burnett presented nine additional songs written from a similar perspective. Starr was equally impressed by Burnett’s prolificacy and the caliber of the material, resulting in their partnership on Look Up, Ringo’s first full-length album since 2019.

Burnett’s familiarity with the scope of Starr’s vocal output helped him to tailor the compositions accordingly. The producer recalls, “Before I wrote ‘Come Back,’ I was listening to The Beatles Channel, and they played this Harry Nilsson song that he sang called ‘Easy For Me.’ I heard ‘Easy For Me’ and thought, ‘OK, that’s Ringo’s true voice. Then I wrote everything else into that vocal style because it’s the place he’s obviously the most comfortable. It’s the place where he does his most profound storytelling. It’s in the same place as ‘Little Help from My Friends,’ the same range.”

There was another element that also informed Burnett’s efforts. He notes, “When we’ve done movies like Crazy Heart about Bad Blake—this fictional character we created—the first thing Jeff [Bridges] and I did was we sat down and made a history of Bad Blake. What was the first song he ever heard? What records did his parents have that he played? What was the first song he ever wrote? What was the first song he ever bought at the record store? You put an imaginary history together for him.

“With Ringo you have a real history to deal with and to learn from. There’s an extraordinary historical record of what he recorded as well as the sources of those things. I also understand his ethos very well. It’s positive and joyous. So you can tell why he likes the stuff that he likes.”

The songs that Burnett contributed to Look Up are grounded in the present, yet harken to the past, marked by evocative imagery and deft wordplay. Still, Burnett remarks, “Somebody recently took me to task by suggesting that the word ‘boulevard’ couldn’t be in a country song. Well, have you ever listened to Hank Williams? Now, I’ve never heard ‘beguiled’ in a country song before, but I loved the idea of including it. Ringo is a rock-and-roll musician, but he’s also incredibly sophisticated. So I like him singing, ‘When I’m on the boulevard,’ and I like him singing, ‘I’m beguiled.’ If people are so narrow as to think somebody in country music wouldn’t know the word ‘boulevard,’ then they should listen to Waylon Jennings singing ‘Dreaming My Dreams Of You.’ I think that’s the greatest country song ever written and it’s also a Viennese waltz.”

Ultimately, nine tunes that Burnett wrote or co-wrote made their way onto Look Up, along with a Billy Swan original and Starr’s own “Thankful,” an ode of appreciation to Barbara Bach, his wife of over 40 years, who helped him achieve sobriety in the late ‘80s.

Burnett, Daniel Tashian and Dennis Crouch cut all the initial tracks in Nashville, then Ringo played drums and added vocals from his Los Angeles home studio. During the process, Burnett invited Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, Paul Franklin and Larkin Poe to participate on multiple songs, but he eschewed the stunt casting mindset whereby various country stars would come in for individual tunes, as on Post Malone’s latest record.

“There is a good reason to do that,” Burnett says of Posty’s approach to F-1 Trillion. “I’m sure he loved all the artists that he invited to collaborate with him. So that’s a thrill. It’s also smart marketing because you introduce different audiences to each other and bring them together. That’s an important part of culture.

“But in Ringo’s case, I felt that it would be beneath him to throw celebrity at him. What I wanted to do was bring the best young musicians in the country and folk world—let’s just call it American music world—and weave them through the record rather than have them collaborate on one song. We could have done that, but I wanted to weave them in as members of the band and not as guest artists who were going to bring their celebrity to bear on somebody who’s a bigger celebrity than any of us will ever be. I use that as a pejorative term, by the way. I don’t look at celebrity as any kind of goal or even a desirable state, but none of us will ever achieve anything like that. The things that Ringo and his band did are immortal at this point. The Beatles are our Bach.”

Burnett then shares one additional thought about Ringo’s work with The Beatles and its impact on the current project. “His band was the most collaborative band in history,” the producer observes. “It was a real, honest to God, group. Ringo learned how to collaborate in that group and I’ve never had an easier collaborator.”

Molly Tuttle finally was able to experience Starr’s open and welcoming nature in mid-January. After recording her Look Up tracks 2,000 miles away from the artist, she was part of the ensemble who joined him for two nights at the Ryman in Nashville on January 14 and 15.

“I met Ringo at the rehearsals,” she remembers. “He kind of appeared behind us while me and Billy Strings were running ‘What Goes On.’ He’s such a lovely person and just hilarious. He’s obviously one of the most iconic drummers of all time, and I remember T Bone saying during the process, ‘Ringo just wants to play the drums. He just loves drumming.’ I really got that sense of joy from his playing on the record and then at the Ryman, when he would get behind the drums everyone would perk up. He did that for ‘What Goes On’ and it was almost hard to remember to come in singing. I try not to get starstruck or treat anyone differently who’s famous, but when you come face to face with a Beatle, it’s kind of hard to not be like, ‘Oh my God, is this real life?’”

Those two performances, which feature many of the musicians on Look Up, were recorded for a TV special that aired on CBS in early March and is now streaming on Paramount+. The setlist spans Starr’s career, highlighting his musical throughline, with guests that include Rodney Crowell, Sheryl Crow, Mickey Guyton, Jack White and Emmylou Harris— who extended an invitation for Starr to return to Nashville in February and make his Grand Ole Opry debut. 

“People are calling this a country record and I guess for marketing purposes that’s good enough shorthand, but to me it’s very much a Ringo Starr record,” Burnett muses. “Everything he’s ever done has been what I call American music. It’s been some version of rockabilly/country/folk music. If The Beatles came out today, they’d be considered a country-rock band or maybe a roots band.

“For me, the real story of The Beatles and the story of the British invasion as they called it was how these young English guys who lived in a port city discovered American music and gave it back to us when we had lost the thread. What had been so exciting in the 1950s, with Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly, had turned into Frankie Avalon and Pat Boone and a real sterilized version of that music. There were hints of it but it had all been taken over by commercial interests that wanted to control it. Thankfully, it was a music that didn’t want to be controlled. The CBS special opens with Carl Perkins’ ‘Matchbox,’ which goes back to Blind Lemon Jefferson. That’s a song that originated in this country in the ‘20s and has gone right up until the present day. I want to say it’s all folk music. Just like Louis Armstrong said, ‘All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.’”

When asked about her favorite moments at the Ryman, Tuttle responds, “It was super fun getting to sing a lot of harmony vocals with Ringo and feel his energy and excitement at being on the Ryman stage with so many special guests coming out to support him and this album that’s been a long time in the making. I also got kind of teary-eyed hearing him sing ‘Thankful,’ which sounds so personal and genuine. I really like the message—it’s a list of the things he’s thankful for. His wife, Barbara, was in the audience and I feel like it reflects the love that they have, which is really beautiful to me.

“I also loved it at the end of night two when we were doing ‘With A Little Help from My Friends’ and everyone just kind of spontaneously started chanting ‘Ringo!’ There was a great feeling in the room. It was an utter celebration of this man and his music and his legacy and what a gift he has given to all of us.”

Burnett affirms, “It was a really fun process of inventing a chapter in Ringo’s third act that connected to his first and second acts, so that it was all of a piece and integrated into his whole life. It was such an enjoyable experience that I’ve been on a writing jag ever since. Maybe we’ll make another one at some point. I’d love to do more if he’s up for it.”

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Your passion for American music began when you were young. T Bone mentioned that you reached out to the Houston Chamber of Commerce while you were in your teens and asked for the location of Lightnin’ Hopkins’ house because you were interested in living near him.

RINGO STARR: I loved Lightnin’ Hopkins and wanted to move to Houston because of him. So when I was a teenager, a friend of mine and I went down to the American Embassy and we got these forms. They gave us a list of factories we could apply to because we were factory workers. So we filled in these forms and did our best. Then we took them down there thinking we were on our way, at which point they said, “OK lads, here’s the next set of forms.”

It’s no good giving teenagers lots of forms. So we ripped them up, said a lot of bad words and that was over. But we did try to go to Houston, Texas, to live.

That was a fascinating moment in cultural history, when musicians and music lovers in the U.K. were reminding people in the U.S. about our own homegrown artists.

RS: Living in England, we felt that all the great music came from America.

I know John felt the same, George felt the same and Paul felt the same about the music from America. We loved that music and we were excited by it all. There was no real English rock or English country or even English blues.

When I landed in New York in 1964, it was like the biggest moment of my life because all the music came from America. Now I was there, and it was something that I’d dreamed about for many years.

As The Beatles, we’d done Amsterdam, we’d done Denmark, we’d done Spain. We made our name in all those other countries in Europe, and now we were going to the land of all the music we loved.

It’s a crazy story because as we landed, we were No. 1. You couldn’t plan it better. We were there and we couldn’t understand it.

I remember I went to see a vocal group, The Coasters, who were playing in Florida, outside Miami. These girls took me to the gig in a big Lincoln Continental because we could still move around a little in those days.

I remember people were dancing and I said, “What are you doing? It’s The Coasters! You can’t dance to them.” They said, “Yeah, we can.” And they did. [Laughs.]

So the music was exciting to us and so were all the players. We met Fats Domino— Wow! We met Jerry Lee Lewis, who was my hero. Johnny Cash even came to our last live gig.

We loved America and we loved it musically, and that’s just how it was. All the music I wanted to hear came from America.

When you perform at a place like the Ryman do you think it has a certain energy that manifests itself in the music?

RS: I think that the Ryman has all of those high spirits of the country guys and girls who came before me. I’ve played it like five or six times with the All-Starrs and then I just played it with the country boys. The first time I played with the All-Starrs, I actually stopped for a moment to think of all the great acts that had played there. For so many years, the Ryman was the place where if you went there, you’d made it. Now the Grand Ole Opry is a different place, but it’s still where people are trying to play.

As you think back on those two nights in January, what’s the first image that comes to mind?

RS: I think of all of those other musicians who came out for me. A lot of them were on the record, like Molly and Billy, but Jack White was there—he was so great—and Rodney was as well. There were a lot of people who put themselves out to come and support me in this endeavor. I love that because it’s what music should be about.

I love to play and the chance to play with other people is what keeps me going. That’s how it was when I started. I loved the drums, and when I was working in the factory we had a skiffle group. That’s how it began for me.

Then I got with Rory [Storm] and it was sort of a rock-style band, but we had great players, like Johnny Guitar.

From there I was in The Beatles, where I was with three incredible musicians and writers. The four of us really worked together.

Since 1989, I’ve put the All-Starr bands together and it gives me a chance to participate in all those other songs and then do my own songs. I used to call it the 1-800 Number Band because we’d do all the hits that we had in the band. I’d also had a couple of hits, so I was OK.

But all of that is about playing with others in a community.

While you were at the Ryman you received an invitation to appear at the Opry. What was your initial reaction?

RS: My response was “June?” It was freezing there in January when we were there. [Laughs.] They said, “No, no, February.”

I’m just a grateful recovering musician from England who had been invited to go back to Nashville and end up on that stage. I mean, far out!

[When Ringo appeared at the Opry on February 21, he duffed his white cowboy hat, then told the crowd, “As you may have noticed I dressed up a bit tonight. I’m a cowboy inside. This is a great honor and an incredible moment for me. It’s just a dream to end up here.”]

So many of the tunes that T Bone wrote for you contain a positive outlook. How important is it for you to convey that message?

RS: I’m the guy who’s promoting peace and love. That’s important to me. I can’t make anyone else do it, but it’s getting bigger, I know that. A lot more people are “peace and loving.”

I didn’t write the song “Look Up,” but I love that expression “look up.” Sometimes you get in your own head and you’re looking at the floor. If you just look up, though, it’ll change everything. Sometimes I have to do it myself. So when T Bone asked me what we should we call the album, I told him that I liked Look Up, which is a very strong title for this country album.

“Time on My Hands” is a classic song of lament.

RS: This album is country in its way because in a lot of country there’s sadness. I like to say that the wife or the girlfriend’s left, the dog’s dead and I have no money for the jukebox. Those are the emotions that come to me, as a country lover from Liverpool.

So there’s a lot of emotional lament in these songs where it’s like, “Oh, she’s gone.” Although with many of those on the record, it eventually becomes, “Well, she came back.” I always like to have a light at the end of the song.

Apart from this album, I did an EP with Linda Perry, and she wrote a song called “February Sky,” which is all about the dark skies. I said to her, “In the last verse, there has to be a break in the clouds so we can see the sun.” Then she wrote that in.

It’s like in “Thankful”—“I had it all/ Then I started to fall”—which I did. I went down the rock-and-roll lane to hell, and, luckily, I got out of it with the support of Barbara, who helped me.

Did you write “Thankful” for this album or was that a song you’d been working on for some time?

RS: We wrote that song after I got the first track from T Bone. I told him at a party that if he had a song he thought I could do, to send it to me. I had been doing pop-rock EPs, but he sent this country track, “Come Back.”

I thought it was going to be a pop song and it was this beautiful country ballad. Then I thought, “I’m going to make a country EP because I’ve got the freedom to do that.” So Bruce Sugar and I wrote “Thankful,” and we got a couple of other people to write two other songs.

We were going to do that EP with the four tracks. Then when T Bone came to LA, I said to myself, “Man, I should get him to produce the country EP.” So we were chatting like pals, at which point he started talking about other songs he’d written. So I said, “Well, how many have you got?” He goes, “Nine.” He had them with him in his pocket on a stick. We put them into my computer in the studio and I loved 90% of them.

That’s how it started. I said, “Let me play drums on them.” So I played on four tracks in like an hour, just off the top of my emotions. He was sitting there for that and loved what I was doing, which was a good sign. Then I asked him if he would produce an album. He agreed and that’s how it happened. It was all out of the blue. It wasn’t this big plan. If he hadn’t come over to chat, it wouldn’t have happened. The other thing would’ve come out.

I like to say, “I did look up and I made a right turn.” I’ve made a few left turns in my life but more right turns now.

On “Can You Hear Me Call” there are some lovely harmonies that complement lyrics like, “I will love you past forever/ longer than the longest never.” It feels timeless.

RS: I think that country has all these emotions. The ‘50s country I knew had stories and a lot of those were sad stories—like Hank Snow and “the big eight wheeler rollin’ down the track” sort of country. Hank Williams could always make you cry.

For me, that’s what country is. I’m from that period of the ‘50s when I felt it was very emotional. It was emotional to me, although at the moment I was a teenager and as teenagers we were very emotional.

I think that many people today are too outer-directed or self-conscious for some of that messaging.

RS: The country of today has gone where it has gone. I feel like it rocks more than it countries.

There’s a line in the song that references “when the four winds blow,” which reminds me of “Franklin’s Tower” by the Grateful Dead. Over the years, have you had any musical engagement with the band or its individual members?

RS: I’ve met them, but I really only know them from their records. I used to love the live albums because they would jam for three hours. I love that attitude.

I like to jam and we always have a jamming moment with the All-Starrs. We’ll rehearse a couple of tracks to get my voice up, we’ll do a couple of tracks to get back to being the band again and then we’ll jam. It’s amazed me that several of the All Starrs from the past years—not this band— didn’t know how to jam. I couldn’t believe it. A musician and you don’t know how to jam, far out!

I do love jamming, though.

Elvis Costello contributes some liners to the record in which he declares that you’ve never sung better. I’ve heard quite a few people make the same assessment. Do you concur?

RS: I keep saying it was really nice to sing these songs. They were all in my key and, over the years, I’ve been given songs that have been in F-demented.

I do appreciate hearing what you’ve just said, but it was all part of the process. T Bone put a lot of music, a lot of meat, on the tracks. Then he sent them to me so I could put on the drums and the vocals.

We sent them back to him in Nashville and that’s when he added some more instruments, along with backing vocals from people like Molly and Billy.

T Bone did all the hard work. I just played drums, which I love to do, and sang, which I do my best.

On Beaucoups of Blues, you weren’t drumming, just singing. Do you think that took the music in a different direction?

RS: With Beaucoups of Blues, I was there for two days and we’d finished the album. It was far out.

I think Pete Drake got it right when he had that local country band—the session guys of the day. He was the leader of it and he knew a lot of writers. He did the work where he convinced me to come to Nashville because I had thought, “Oh, a month in Nashville, I don’t know if I can handle that.” He said, “Why a month? What are you talking about? Nashville Skyline took two days.” I said, “Oh, well I can handle that.”

So that’s what made me come. We picked five songs on Tuesday morning and we picked five songs on Wednesday morning. n Tuesday we finished recording five tracks around about 10 p.m., and the next day we picked songs in the morning and we started the sessions in the afternoon.

But he had a band. I love the feel of Beaucoups of Blues because that band had played together a lot. They knew each other and that always helps.

Jumping back to Loop Up, at this point it’s been out for a little while. Can you share some of the surprising or moving feedback you’ve received?

RS: Well, friends of mine have engaged and said they love it. That helps. But I really appreciate the reaction to this record from the people out there. It’s been well streamed, it’s been well bought and it’s been well acknowledged as a good album.

You like to do something that’s appreciated, and this album certainly has been appreciated. I can only thank all those fans who went to their computer and downloaded me.

When it comes to playing this material with the All-Starrs, I know historically you’ve been reticent to do too many new songs, but this album feels different to me. Do you have any thoughts as to whether you might incorporate a few more than you have in the past?

RS: I’d even stopped putting one in. When I’d say, “Here’s one from my new CD,” you could see the scramble for the toilet.

But what I’m thinking of doing when I’m going out this year with the All Starrs is I’ll include one of the tracks from the album.

I’m pushing for two, if not more. I think people would appreciate it.

RS: That would be a different tour in which I would have to put a whole different band together. I’m not thinking of it this year, but we’ll see…