Music

Ringo Starr: I had parties in the 1970s, but you’ll never find any photos of them

The 81-year-old former on rock stars, The Beatles and changing the world with his new EP

Ringo Starr: ‘I wouldn’t let you take photos in my house’

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Ed Power
Fri Sep 24 2021 - 01:00

Ringo Starr’s spare room is adorned with a huge multicoloured star and two cut-outs of figures with beard and sunglasses. Closer inspection reveals the silhouettes are mini Ringos. Also over his shoulder as he sits down for a Zoom call with The Irish Times – and 92 other media outlets – are the CD and vinyl sleeves of his new EP, Change the World. So that’s five Ringos – and one star – gazing out together, like a cut scene from Yellow Submarine.

The banter is as upbeat as the backdrop. It’s in keeping with the celebratory tone of Change the World, a lockdown bauble recorded with the Pink collaborator Linda Perry and with Steve Lukather and Joseph Williams of Toto. Kicking off with a title track that sounds like Octopus’s Garden meets Slade, the record is boisterously brisk – though with a serious message.

“The expression ‘change the world’, we are changing it for the kids,” the 81-year-old says, adding that this change is not for the better. “There are all those people meeting in New York right now” – at the United Nations General Assembly. “Half the world is on fire, half of it is under water. They are still, ‘Well, we won’t do that.’ I think we have to do a lot. So I would like to change the world for the kids.

In Get Back you'll see this band worked really hard and went through emotional ups and downs to get to where we got every time. That's just how it was. Four guys in a room – you're going to have a few ups and downs

“I do wonder about politicians. Do they have kids? Do their kids have kids? Isn’t that reason enough to let us breathe and let us find water?”

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Starr's tone softens as he is asked about Charlie Watts, the Rolling Stones linchpin and fellow superstar drummer, who died recently. "We will miss Charlie," he says. "He was a beautiful human being ... He was like the Quiet Man."

“Me and Charlie, we hung out,” Starr elaborates. “It’s not like we lived together. We lived close in London, or we’d find ourselves at dinner or a gig.”

He recalls a party at which he, Watts and John Bonham of Led Zeppelin ended up jamming. “Bonham got on the kit, so, as he was playing, the bass drum was hopping away, and you had Charlie Watts and Ringo holding the bass drum for him as he played,” he says.

“And you think, Oh, man. That would have been a great little video, or TikTok, and it would have gone worldwide. But in the 1970s I had parties, and you’ll never find any photos, because I wouldn’t let you take photos in my house. But I always think that would have been a great shot to have.”

The Beatles: in Peter Jackson’s Get Back ‘you’ll see this band worked really hard and went through emotional ups and downs to get to where we got every time.’ Photograph: Ochs/Getty

It’s a busy time to be an ex-Beatle. In 2020 Paul McCartney took advantage of lockdown to record the third in his McCartney series of experimental records. And Starr has put out two EPs this year. In November, meanwhile, the director Peter Jackson will debut The Beatles: Get Back, a six-hour series utilising footage from The Beatles’ “break-up” movie, Let It Be.

Let It Be portrayed The Beatles’ later studio sessions as tension-filled and rancorous. Jackson has complained that much of the “joy” of being a Beatle ended up on the cutting-room floor. So he’s put it back it. Starr has seen Get Back and approves.

“I love it, but I’m in it, of course, so six hours is never long enough,” he says, smiling. “And I think everyone will enjoy it, because you’ll see this band worked really hard and went through emotional ups and downs to get to where we got every time. That’s just how it was. Four guys in a room – you’re going to have a few ups and downs.”

Change the World concludes with a upbeat and faithful cover of Bill Haley’s (We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock. The song is, of course, a rock’n’roll staple. Yet Starr explains that, for him, it holds special meaning.

“My grandma and grandad took me to the Isle of Man,” says Starr. “And it was incredible, because I went to see Rock Around the Clock the movie. It was on there. And it was full of crazy holidaymakers with Kiss Me Quick hats and a little out of their minds. And I’m sitting there, and I’ve been in hospital” – for tuberculosis – “and I don’t know too much about what’s going on lately, and they ripped up the cinema. I mean, they threw the chairs … I was going, ‘Wow! This is great!’”

Change the World is released today