Ringo Starr on why Liverpool is the 'capital of country music'
Former Beatle Ringo Starr has a new album out which is different to any of his previous releases. Look Up is an ode to country music, containing 11 new country-influenced tracks. In an interview with the Sunday Times over the weekend, Ringo explained why he decided to go down the country route and how growing up in Liverpool influenced his love of the genre.
Ringo, 84, who grew up in Dingle and replaced Pete Best as the Beatles' drummer in 1962, has always been a fan of country music. On the Beatles' Help! album, he sang lead vocals on the band's cover of Act Naturally by Buck Owens, a country classic.
He claims to have been influenced by the "Cunard Yanks" - Liverpool's merchant sailors who went to America in the 1950s and 60s and returned to their home city with exotic records. These included not just rock and roll music, but also bluegrass and country recordings from the southern states.
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Ringo told the Sunday Times: "Country’s been good to me. My idea of country is, ‘The dog’s dead and I don’t have enough money for the jukebox.’ Hundreds of records about the jukebox. I keep saying Liverpool was the capital of country music. In the streets I lived in every other house had some 18 to 25-year-old who was in the ‘merch’.
"And you could always tell those kids — there’d be a camel saddle in the living room because they’d been to Egypt. But they also went to America and came back with all the records, so we were getting them before everyone else.”
His new album got its name due to Ringo's sunny outlook. "I’m thankful that my life has changed," he told the Times. "[I was] at the top of the mountain, and gradually it worked its way down. And then I looked up and life came back. I truly believe in looking up. You’re always in a better mood if you’re looking up. It’s one of those things you notice, walking around London, or it doesn’t matter where. They’re all looking down. There’s nothing down there."
Things weren't always easy for Ringo, especially when the Beatles broke up. In a track recorded with country legend Alison Krauss on his new album he sings, “I had it all, then I started to fall." This is apparently a nod to Ringo's descent into alcoholism after the breakup of the band. He and his wife got sober in the late 1980s after many years spent battling addiction.
His final words to the Sunday Times suggest Ringo misses being part of something bigger. "I only want to be in a band," he said. "I don’t want to be out on my own. There’s no way you can go out there and do Yesterday just on drums."
Ringo admitted that despite his success, he "always wanted" a different singing voice. He said that while he can "hold a tune", he found that everything "worked out" for them all because of the songwriting talent within the band.
He told the newspaper: "Well, I always wanted to be someone else. Like Jerry Lee [Lewis] or someone! I mean, I can hold a tune, as long as it’s in my key. And it just worked out with The Beatles because John and Paul were great writers.
"That’s what made us. And I’d get one song. And a couple of them were really good, you know, 'With a Little Help from My Friends' and 'Yellow Submarine'. They’re still huge and I still do them on tour. They wrote me a lot of really nice songs."