Ringo by Ringo Starr
It's 1973, four years after the rooftop concert and recording of Let It Be you might have seen recently in Get Back. In that time, The Beatles have split, and George and John have released perhaps their best solo albums (All Things Must Pass and Plastic Ono Band) and Paul's Band on the Run is just around the corner.
Ringo's was the first proper solo album released in 1970 and Sentimental Journey - an album of standards with a solid collection of contributors - was pretty successful. The country album, also from 1970, Beaucoups of Blues didn't trouble the charts but it's been three years since then and Ringo's ready for his third album.
Being an ex-Beatle gives you an ability call in some pretty big players to star on your album. Ringo contains performances by all four Beatles (never all on the same track) and is therefore as close to a Beatles reunion as we ever got. Indeed, while it was being recorded in LA there were rumours that a Beatles reunion was happening with Klaus Voormann replacing Paul on bass. (As an aside, this is such a weird idea - like the only thing you'd need to replace if Paul wasn't available was his bass playing?)
The opener, I'm The Greatest is written by John and had he performed it would have been suitably sarcastic whilst also showing more of his insecure megalomaniac personality than perhaps he would have liked. In Ringo's voice, it's charming and sweet, and when he sings "I was in the greatest show on earth, for what it's worth" it seems both fitting and self-effacing. As well as John on piano, this has George on guitar and Billy Preston on organ. On Have You Seen My Baby, a sweet if insubstantial Randy Newman cover, Marc Bolan plays guitar. Because why not?
The third track, the George-penned Photograph is the real star of the show. It's a beautiful, poignant song, especially when you know it was written by George for Ringo. With its soaring strings and beautiful melody it's one of George's best tracks after All Things Must Pass. The next track, Sunshine Life For Me (Sail Away Raymond) is not as strong, but in its defence it does have four of the five members of The Band playing on it.
Oh My My opens side two and it's a charming sing-along penned by Vini Poncia (more on him later). On backing vocals it has Merry Clayton (famous for her vocals on the Stones's Gimme Shelter as well as being perhaps the greatest backing singer of all time - I recommend watching the documentary Twenty Feet From Stardom in which she has a large role) and Martha Reeves. They're entirely wasted on this track, but if nothing else, Ringo's a great chooser of collaborators.
Ringo's own song, Step Lightly is perfectly fine, but has little to remember about it. It's followed by a lovely track, Six O'Clock written by, and starring both Paul and Linda McCartney. It's a song that is perfect for Ringo's range and is the second highlight of the album. Ringo had to visit the McCartneys in London since Paul was not at this time allowed to travel to the US due to his drug conviction. I doubt if he had been able to travel that we would have seen all of The Beatles performing together considering John, George and Paul were yet to make up, but who knows?
The penultimate song is by far the worst thing about the album. Devil Woman is a nastily misogynistic song penned by Ringo and Vini Poncia. The Ringo fans amongst us, of which I am definitely one, really have to hope that lines like:
Your eyes are green and your legs are long,
And if I'm gonna get you, well, I gotta be strong.
But you're like the devil with horns in your head,
The only way I'll get you is to get you in bed.
…came from the mind of Poncia rather than Ringo. Even worse, in this song in which the author laments that this woman who he's seen walking down the street is clearly satanic because she's attractive, there is also the line:
I wanna beat you up then I wanna be kind,
Lazy misogynist songs were hardly unusual in the 70s but a line in which a man wants to start out a relationship by threatening a women still seems unusually awful. If this song was a TV show, John Cleese and Laurence Fox would be defending it on Twitter, it's that bad.
Thankfully, the album finishes with the perfect chaser - a charming song about friendship, You and Me (Babe) written by George and Mal Evans. It's a delight and closes off with Ringo thanking everyone who performed on the record (somewhat pointedly ordering the Beatles according to his current closeness to them, George, John, Paul) and for those of us of a certain age, the Thomas and Friends voice saying anything is deeply calming.
So the horrendous Devil Woman aside, there's a lot to like on this album. It's more than a curio, but perhaps not quite enough to be a classic album, but it's definitely worth a listen.