Ringo Starr 'Choose Love' album

“‘The Long And Winding Road’ is more than a song,” Ringo Starr sings on the title track of his latest album Choose Love. And one of the most remarkable things about Choose Love is that this far down that long and winding road, Ringo Starr has never sounded more excited and engaged by the music he’s making and the message of love that it spreads.

Choose Love is full of inspired songs of innocence and experience -- the heartfelt and heartening work of someone who’s lived a little and learned a lot. This is rousing, rough and ready rock & roll that lovingly embraces the past, but has its eye very much on our shared future. And it’s an album first and foremost about the best choice any of us have -- Love.

“What other choice is there?” Starr asks as he sits at home with Mark Hudson. Hudson is one of his key fellow travelers in the journey of the Roundheads, the loose but tight combo of collaborators – Hudson, Steve Dudas, Gary Burr and auxiliary Roundhead Jim Cox -- who have worked with Ringo on his recent run of winning albums. For Starr, love is a theme of profound and enduring importance. “From the beginning, the Beatles were saying `I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ and `Love Me Do.’ It was all about love and that’s still the most powerful message. If you look at the overall picture, the Beatles were about love and what better subject is there really?”

Having lost his way somewhere in the first half of the Seventies, Ringo Starr eventually found love with his wife Barbara and found his way back to his love of music in at the start of the Nineties. And now with the Roundheads he rediscovered his rightful place in the world. “I am a band member,” he declares. “That’s who I am. That’s who I want to be. It takes a band — even more than it takes a village — to make music like this. By now, we feel like we know each other’s minds, we know where we’re going. It takes time — time takes time. The good news is that as we’ve been making records together a while now, and I’m proud if this album shows growth and progress in terms of playing like a band.”

“That’s what we are — a well-to-do garage band,” says Starr says with a grin.

“Speak for yourself,” Hudson says with a laugh.

Though the new album features a few guests, notably Chrissie Hynde on “Don’t Hang Up,” roots guitarist Robert Randolph on “Fading In, Fading Out” and “Oh My Lord”, Billy Preston on “Oh My Lord,” Ringo and the Roundheads are once again at the beating heart of Choose Love.

“Every time before we start a new album we sit down and think, okay what do we do now? On the last album, RingoRama, we decided to feature the drums – the drumming on that album is unbelievable. Ringo was literally the driving force on that album. This time Ringo wanted to go the other way. He said, “I want it to sound like a band, a little more down and dirty and guitar-driven.” And as soon as we got on that page, we started writing that way as well.”

“This has been a joy in my life working with the guys,” Starr says. You can have fun and you can even have that bad day with each other and it’s not held against you. So you have the freedom to be who you are and still be together. It’s been a remarkable run already, but ten years from now it will be all blues because that will be the only speed I’ll be able to play.”

Until then, Starr is proud to spread his own good word. “You have to get a lot of experience to get to the point where you can say `Choose Love’ in an honest way,” he says. “Life is filled with ups and downs, but in the end it’s best filled with love — that’s my conclusion. That it’s the best choice any of us have.”

Here’s what Starr and Hudson had to say about all their loving song choices on Choose Love:

FADING IN, FADING OUT

RINGO: You feel like if you die, the world will end. And actually, it won’t. Throughout the album, there’s a lot of peace, love and spirituality. So I wrote a line that says, “When I disappear, I hope I’ve left enough love.” That’s all that you can really leave and all you really do need. You can leave your money if you want to, and leave the house. But if you’ve left enough love that’s more important I feel.”

MARK: At one point Ringo wanted to call the album just Love and have every song deal with that concept. But once we got going, things changed.

RINGO: It’s like with Sgt Pepper — that was going to be “the opera.” Then after three tracks, it was like, “Sod it, let’s just play.” This time we had several possible album titles including One Leg at a Time and Fading In, Fading Out. Ultimately we thought the thing to say to the world is Choose Love. “No matter what you choose/choose love.” I think that says it all.

GIVE ME BACK THE BEAT

MARK: That started with an idea Ringo had to do a drum song using multiple drummers, including Charlie Watts, his son Zak, Jim Keltner and himself.

RINGO: They always have guitarists coming on together on record, so I thought why not one for the drummers? That didn’t work out for this record, but then “Give Me Back The Beat” became a love song about beat of the heart. And for all the drummers out there, this is the first time I’ve ever done two complete drum tracks of myself on one song. And for guitarist, check out Steve Dudas’ solo.

OH MY LORD

RINGO: When I wrote “Photograph” and “Back off Boogaloo” I had George to produce me and George was always trying to get into them the words “God” and “Krishna” and I fought it. And now just with the growth within myself, I have no problem with that now. For Oh My Lord,” we begin with my demo with me and my little crazy organ. George, bless him, has his “Sweet Lord” — this is mine. I did play the song for Olivia when it was a demo because I feel that George would have loved it. I always say “God” or “Lord” in a spiritual sense, not a religious way. But I’m big enough to say the word now.

HARD TO BE TRUE

RINGO: We always three guys sitting around and they’re the saddest mother-bunch in the world because inside of all of us there’s “The dog’s dead, the wife’s left and the jukebox is broken. Inside, we’re all a country song and half of our battle is to pick it up and write a song where we’re not sad, where she hasn’t left and the dog’s fine.

MARK: Ringo is playing this old Wurlitzer all over this record. To me, playing the middle eight of “Hard To Be True” there’s something that brings to mind “Photograph.” This song gives me that same great feeling.

SOME PEOPLE

RINGO: That’s Barbara and I, speaking of love. The songs come out of the atmosphere.

MARK: It’s a great song about the ying and the yang of relationships. If I may mention your old band, we were talking about the song “You Won’t See Me” and playing acoustic guitars. Richie sat down at the drums and started playing the beat for “Some People” and it was that moment the song was really born. Ringo said, “There’s got to be a twelve-string on this” and Dudas played another great solo.

RINGO: Every album someone gets the Man of The Record badge for being the most valuable player — Steve Dudas is getting it for Choose Love.

WHY AM I ALWAYS WRONG?

RINGO: I was just having a bad two days with Barbara. You’re married for 25 years and you’re going to have a few bad days. I just came into the studio one of those days and said, “Why am I always wrong? Let’s have a cup of tea.” When I came back and Gary had the start of the melody of that song just from that one line. Around us, you have to be careful who says what because suddenly it becomes a song.

DON’T HANG UP

RINGO: We were in England doing “Don’t Hang Up” which is a real story song about two people and a guy in a rock & roll band and we wanted a woman with . . .

MARK: Balls

RINGO: Balls, Chrissie, if you’ll use the expression. My daughter knew Chrissie better than I did. I asked her for Chrissie’s number and we invited her to spend the day and see if she’d liked to do it. She was great because she made her part her own. She changed it and made it better. We were very open to her ideas --we’re not in the Army here.

MARK: I love Ringo’s drumming on that. I’ve produced a lot of people but I’ve never known the right hand of a drummer to be any greater. Listen to the way he plays the bell and the cymbals. Usually cymbals are considered just a violent instrument just to crash at the top of the chorus. There’s finesse to how Richie plays that a lot of those darn kids should listen to and learn from.

ME AND YOU

RINGO: Our songs happen when they happen. There are no set patterns. It’s organic . . . like the food that I eat.

MARK: Steve Dudas had the chord changes there and a lyric for a verse. I played it for Ringo and somehow we ended up sitting in a car writing the song from there. Just two romantic guys together in a car pouring their hearts out.

SATISFIED

RINGO Gary Nicholson had the first verse for that one. It was all about “I won’t be satisfied” and yet again I’m always trying to take a turn to the positive. So the last verse is mine where I will be satisfied. That’s a great example of going from being the teenager who’s never satisfied to a place where you can feel grown up and satisfied. But you have go through a lot of life to get there.

MARK: This is also the one when Ringo pulled out some very special guitars and let us play them.

RINGO: Three of my great friends gave me guitars and I brought them out for this song and let the three boys play with them.

MARK: We switched guitars on every verse so we all got to play them. And Rose Stone — who’s been on all our albums — came in with her girls and gave us that great Wall of Sound ending.

CHOOSE LOVE

RINGO: Love rocks, and that song rocks too. Love doesn’t have to be a dirge. Love is up and so is this song. That’s the theme of the record and we mention some songs that I love in it. This is our love album. Why not choose love? Name a better choice. And yes, I do sing, “You’ve got to pay your dues/If you want to sing the blues.” If you listen to my albums they all have some illusion to either “It Don’t Come Easy” or “Back off Boogaloo.” It’s somewhere in every one.

THE TURNAROUND

RINGO: That’s telling people when you’re down, turn it around. You can get back up again.

MARK: “The Turnaround” was built on a jam. We were in the studio after lunch and Steve Dudas had his guitar plugged into Ringo’s odd amp.

RINGO: I get more odd things than (even) things these days.

MARK: Ringo doesn’t want the Marshall Amp — he wants the Meatball Amp. On the spot, this groove appeared and this song emerged. Ringo was talking about back in really old days with Rory Storm, the one song he got to sing was “Alley Oop.” So at the end of “The Turnaround,” Ringo doesn’t sing that song, but he lets you know that he has sang it.

RINGO: You have to be careful. The last record we borrowed that bit from “Let ‘Em In.” So I called Paul and said, “I’m doing this, okay?” He said, “Well, call the publishers” I said, “No, I’m calling you.”

FREE DRINKS

RINGO: That’s us boys who are over 21 trying to write a disco Ibiza record and it turned into this surf spaghetti western. Because I live in the south of France half the time, I was mentioning places over there. It became one of our traditional travelogue songs. Then Steve Dudas did this “Fistful of Dollars” guitar line and we all cheered.

MARK: When I heard that disco beat, I was nervous for a moment. I was like, how are we going to pull this one off?

RINGO: “Free Drinks” started with a loop I made in Monoco on an old synth I have there, and it only got loopier, like the song.

By David Wild

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Ringo Starr - Choose Love