The 1992 album that brought Ringo Starr back from the brink: “It was all downhill”
In the early 1970s, The Beatles were all in a strange state. The band had been split for a while in terms of their relationships and collaborations, but the slow, painstaking announcement that the end was for real placed them all in an eerie stagnation.
For Paul McCartney, it was a state of total sadness. “I was depressed. You would be,” he said when suddenly he’d not only lost his band, but he’d lost his friends too. After suing the rest of the group in order to protect their finances, the frosty ending pushed him to wonder if he’d ever make music again.
Meanwhile, the rest of the group seemed to move in the opposite direction. They hit the ground running about as quickly as they possibly could. George Harrison even set the tone for his solo pursuit in 1968 with Wonderwall Music as he was beginning to get restless, whereas Ringo Starr was the first one to release a proper solo debut in March 1970 with Sentimental Journey.
It seems surprising that Starr got in there first, given that he was also the one Beatle who seemed to support the whole crew so vehemently. Starr is regularly found in the credits and album notes on Harrison and Lennon’s work, while McCartney plummeted into a period of creative isolation, making his debut without a single other helping hand.
There’s an argument to be made that Starr simply was desperate to keep busy. He went in hard and fast, but then, by his own admittance, he hit a wall. The clue might all lie on ‘Early 1970’, a song written around the time of his 1973 album, Ringo. “And when he comes to town, I wonder if he’ll play with me,” Starr sings sadly on that tune, finally owning up to just really missing his friends.
It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that after that point. Having hit a peak and finally saying what he needed to say, he lost steam – until regaining it in 1992 with Time Takes Time. An apt title.
“This is the first time since the Ringo album that I put this much energy into making an album. After Ringo and maybe Goodnight Vienna, I started tearing it up and turning up less and less,” Starr admitted to Rolling Stone on the promotional trail of that new record.
“For a lot of those albums, I was just in a hurry to get home – or, more often, someone else’s home,” he said, admitting that he just simply didn’t seem to care. It seemed to be the same apathy McCartney felt at the start, or Lennon fell into before his Lost Weekend shook him up and revived him again. One by one, all of the Beatles seemed to hit this wall at some point, losing motivation after such a long time making record after record, not really dealing with the breakdown of the band.
“In my case, after the Ringo record it was downhill. But we’re coming back now,” he said, determined to dust himself off and pick it up again – whether he actually did is up for debate, though.
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