Sentimental Journey
Image of Ringo Starr © Dan Winters
As a source of news I gave up on the BBC website about a month back, bored of the sub-standard journalism, quotes - if not entire stories - sourced in many instances from social media. That doesn’t make it unique, The Guardian can be pretty bad for that too, and for that reason I ditched them both in December, replacing them with The Irish Times. Irish, as in Ireland, not the United Kingdom, €2.60 a week for online access to a newspaper that still employs actual journalists. And I’m enjoying reading about the world viewed from Dublin, so.
It was in that newspaper on Sunday that I read an interview with Ringo Starr. Over the years - and for no reason other those peace signs he does with his fingers - I’ve been rather hard on Ringo, only three weeks ago describing him here as the Beatles second drummer, a snide comment if ever there was, although I’m sure Ringo couldn’t give a shit. The reason for the interview was the launch of his 21st - yep, twenty first - solo album, a straight up country affair, Look Up, produced by T Bone Burnett.
Speaking to Shilpa Ganatra, he comes over as very contented, happy to tell stories about the Fab Four which he must have told many times before and which represented only a handful of years in his long musical career. He also talks about visiting Ireland with his wife of over 40 years, Barbara Bach:
“We just hopped over on a plane, rented a car and found a little guesthouse to stay in for two nights. When we were leaving we’d ask where we could go next, and the owners would send us to another lovely guesthouse. I went to give one of the guys a tip. He said, ‘No, you don’t tip me. I’m family,’” he says, as incredulously as one might expect from someone used to the transactionism of American hospitality. “Plus no one got crazy, like, ‘Guess who’s in town.’ We had such a great time.”
Starr explains that Look Up - with contributions from Molly Tuttle, Alison Krauss and Billy Strings - “feels a bit old school, maybe because I’m old school.” And he always has been. 55 years ago, 1970, after the Beatles had ceased being, Starr’s first solo album Sentimental Journey was a collection of pre-rock ’n’ roll standards, favourites of his mother Elsie. Many of these were from the big band era, Fats Waller, Matt Munro, Doris Day, full orchestral arrangements with Ringo adding his vocals later, a complete departure from late-period Beatles. No surprise that it was met with an unenthusiastic response.
I’d never listened to Sentimental Journey until this week. Ranking an artist’s albums against each other seems a bit pointless and I’m going to guess that in any list of Ringo’s 21 albums out there on the internet this one will be quite low. I’d have to disagree, this is beautiful, Blue Turning Grey Over You is an absolute knockout track. This sounds like a man glad that it’s all over, joyful at being released from the pressure of being one of the four lads who shook the world. Who can blame him?
Ringo is heading out on the road again with his All Starr Band later this year. At the age of 84 what’s the motivation asks Shilpa Ganatra. “It’s what I do.”