Day 230: Ringo Starr – Ringo

Yesterday I mentioned wanting to watch the film I discovered when reading up on Harry Nilsson, a supernatural musical about the son of Dracula, and I very much did watch that yesterday and had a wonderful time with it, it was very camp and good and bad at the same time, just the way I like it. While watching Ringo play Merlin, I realised I haven’t actually listened to any of his solo stuff, so today it was time to tackle Ringo.

Album cover courtesy of Apple Records

After leaving the Beatles, Ringo Starr (real name Sir Richard Starkey) says he was lost, spending the first year sitting in his garden and wondering what he’ll do next. And when he did release solo material, he wasn’t as successful as his former bandmates. Ringo was released in 1973 as his third solo album, and it finally got him some hits.

The album features all four members of the Beatles, with George Harrison on "Photograph" and "You and Me (Babe)", John Lennon on "I'm the Greatest" and Paul McCartney on "Six O'Clock". That’s one thing that I love about Ringo, they all broke up and fought afterwards and wrote diss tracks about each other but Ringo seemed to still be everyone’s pal, he often played the drums on Lennon and Harrison’s solo work.

It’s a reasonably good album that’s presented with a bit of a nudge and a wink, with some stronger songs like “Six O'Clock” and "Devil Woman". It’s not bad by any means, but for me it’s just not one of the better Beatles solo albums. It’s perfectly pleasant, but nothing about it really wows me, all of the songs are just perfectly fine to listen to. And it’s not for a lack of variety, there’s a lot of different stuff happening on the album, but nothing that’s really knocked out of the park.

Ringo famously said about their fans, “I had the mothers. I had the mothers and the children, always have. George had the mystics. John had the intellectual college attitude. And Paul had the teenies.” So maybe that’s the issue, I’ll relisten if I ever have a kid, maybe something magical happens and I’ll become a huge fan. But for now, it’s a reasonable 7.5/10, I had a nice time listening to it but I think it’s a one and done.

Also, fun fact: Ringo’s also the narrator of the first two seasons of Thomas the Tank Engine.