The Ringo Starr album so “limp” he never even bothered listening to it
While very few people ever expected the solo careers of John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison to be a failure when compared to their output in The Beatles, not many knew exactly what to expect from the band’s least prolific songwriter, Ringo Starr.
Having only written two songs for the band during his time behind the kit, with only ‘Don’t Pass Me By’ serving as an example of him being capable of writing a song without external influence or assistance, nobody was entirely sure of what Starr would be able to produce when separated from the three bandmates whose talents he was able to bounce off.
Of course, nobody was in doubt of his talents as a musician, with his drumming ability having started out as relatively solid, and eventually evolving into being The Beatles’ secret weapon, with his rhythmic patterns being some of the most inventive ever heard in pop or rock music at the time. What the main question about his solo career ended up being was what exactly he was going to do, if not attempt to produce songs at a rate that he wasn’t used to working at?
His first solo record, 1970’s Sentimental Journey, only provided some slight indication of what Starr’s solo output might look like, with it ending up being an album entirely made up of covers of pop standards. Similarly, he took the same approach with his next album, Beaucoups of Blues, which substituted the pop direction for a country style, but was entirely made up of covers once again.
It wasn’t until his third album, Ringo, that he began dipping his toes into writing songs himself, and while he had some assistance with doing this, some of which came from his former colleagues in Lennon and Harrison, it was arguably his strongest solo release at the time, showing a completely different side to his artistry and proving that he was able to thrive without leaning too much into having to perform other people’s material.
However, while this continued to be the case on his next few albums, the songwriting began to show some of its flaws, and appeared to suggest that his scope as a songwriter was incredibly limited, especially when he began to try and write in different styles that he wasn’t accomplished in.
As a result, his sixth studio album, confusingly titled Ringo the 4th, saw him make the ill-informed decision to jump on the disco bandwagon and attempt to reinvent himself, also refusing to get any of his former Beatles bandmates on board to help him with the songwriting. While disco would later prove to be something that McCartney wasn’t too bad at writing, with the Wings track ‘Goodnight Tonight’ enjoying a reasonable degree of success, Starr’s foray into the genre was borderline unlistenable, with him stating that he completely regrets ever attempting this reinvention.
“I’ve made some really limp records,” he later said in a 1998 interview with NME. “That was ’cause I wasn’t there for it. I was there physically, but not mentally or spiritually. I was doing something to get it over with. I haven’t played Ringo The 4th for I don’t know how long.”
He may well have mentally checked out of the sessions, which is something that you can quite easily establish from listening to it, but at the same time, he ought to have recognised that there was a good reason to sticking to the formula of doing what he knows best.
