The most memorable guest musician Ringo Starr ever worked with: “The biggest spliff”
In the greater context of The Beatles’ solo careers, Ringo Starr is a bit of an odd case study. Although he has made some stellar singles throughout his 1970s run and still packs venues to this day with his All-Starr Band, there’s a good chance that a lot of fans are coming for the sheer spectacle of seeing an actual Beatle than learning every single song that he’s going to play onstage. In his prime, though, Starr was unstoppable, and even with a little help from his friends, he remembered that one studio session turned into one of the biggest parties he ever had.
Upon revisiting his greatest material, Starr has always been able to coast by on the massive good-time spirit in his songs. While the phrase “peace and love” has become something of a catchphrase for him these days, you really do believe that love is the answer listening to some of his best material, whether that’s the swagger of ‘It Don’t Come Easy’ or ‘Photograph’.
But sometimes, judging one of Starr’s albums can come down to who he’s working with. He never claimed to be the greatest musician in the world, but by surrounding himself with incredible talents like Elton John, Eric Clapton, and his former Fabs, albums like Ringo and Goodnight Vienna are still stellar pieces of 1970s pop music, but pop was never Starr’s forte. He was still an avid fan of country music, and it didn’t take long for some of his friends to find their way into the studio.
Despite Goodnight Vienna having song contributions from John Lennon, like the title track, ‘No No Song’ was Starr’s first collaboration with country music veteran Hoyt Axton. The tune is far from the most intelligent bit of wordplay that Starr ever sang, but the message is downright laughable when you think about what was going on behind the scenes.
Since Starr had lived through the neverending party going on during the Summer of Love, this was supposed to be a song talking about the comedown from being a party animal, with him singing about how tired he is, spending every one of his mornings waking up on the floor. If Starr is to be believed, though, the party never truly ended once Axton got to the studio.
The song may have been a glorified narc anthem for most rock and rollers, but Starr was anything but a choirboy when the tape stopped rolling, saying, “Hoyt Axton was one of them on the Ringo album. We were doing ‘No No Song’ with the biggest spliff and a large bottle of Jack Daniel’s.” While it’s fun to hear Starr cutting loose a bit more in the studio, there was also a sad reality going on in the background.
Because no matter how hard he partied, that was going to catch up with Starr by the time he made his later albums like Ringo the 4th. Aside from his drinking problem, hearing songs like ‘Drowning in the Sea of Love’ and ‘Bad Boy’ from the album afterwards was the moment most people jumped off of Starr’s ship and never found their way to the octopus’s garden ever again.
Still, that doesn’t stop ‘No No Song’ from being a good time every time it comes on. The irony of the session is hilarious in retrospect, but given how well the end result was, Starr could have benefited from having that kind of liquid courage every now and again.
