  Ringo Starr (Sun Media photo) |
NIAGARA FALLS, Ont. — Ringo Starr says playing with his old Beatles bandmate Paul McCartney on Starr’s 2010 album, Y Not, came naturally — despite the passage of time since they’d actually been in a recording studio together.
Macca came to Starr’s L.A. home when he was in town for the Grammys in 2009 and laid down bass on the song Peace Dream and spontaneously sang backup on Walk With You.
“It was exactly like riding a bike — he’s a really fine player and so am I,” said Starr, 69, at Fallsview Casino Resort on Wednesday in a chat with QMI Agency after a news conference to introduce the 11th version of his All Starr Band.
Starr and his players launch their 31-city North American tour on Thursday with two back-to-back sold-out shows at the venue overlooking Niagara Falls.
“We go back, WAY back,” continued Starr of McCartney. “And it might be several years since we’ve played with each other but it’s not several years since we’ve met. He’d come over to the house or I’d gone over to his, you know what I mean? We have hung out. For me it was an incredible pleasure to have him on the record.
But Starr later emphasized there are no future plans for collaborating again any time soon.
“I think, yes, Paul and I are in deep negotiations, we’re going to do a full tour of the continent,” he said laughing. “No, we’re not. He’s got his band, he’s busy. I’ve got my band, I’m busy. We have no plans.”
Still, speaking of The Fab Four, The 4 Complete Ed Sullivan Shows: Starring The Beatles, will be released on Sept. 7.
“I read in the paper that they’d found some tracks that had never been out,” Starr told QMI Agency.
“I hope they send me a copy.
“You know the story has been well documented. By the time we got to America, we had a No. 1. You can’t plan it. It was like a magic moment and to get to New York, to get to America, you know I’m a musician, it’s from America, it was great!”
Y Not, which saw Starr producing himself for the first time, includes collaborations with Eagles member Joe Walsh who is Starr’s brother-in-law (he’s married to the sister of Starr’s wife Barbara Bach — “I mean everyone should have Joe Walsh as their brother-in-law!” he joked), Ben Harper, Van Dyke Parks, Glen Ballard and Dave Stewart and his Canadian singing protege Cindy Gomez,
“It was a great departure for me to work with all these different writers,” said Starr, adding, “Cindy is incredible.”
Somewhat of a surprise though is the appearance of young British soul star Joss Stone, who co-wrote and sings a duet with Starr on Who’s Your Daddy.
“I had the thought of “I need a girl to be a bit angry with me,’ ” Starr said. “(The engineer who had worked with her) mentioned her and we called. All we do is make a phone call and she found time, she came over, and what was great was it was just the moment — she was having a bad day with the boyfriend, so we wrote that song in an hour. We did two passes, and we said goodbye.”
Starr will turn 70 in style on July 7 with an All Starr Band show at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, but said the number itself doesn’t mean anything to him.
“I’m not going to hide from it, I’m too well-documented for that, though I feel like I’m 24,” he told the news conference on Wednesday. “And I thought, ‘Well, let’s celebrate it, let’s go!’ We’re still up there standing and we’re still doing it.’ Like, B.B. King is my hero and I have this line about B.B. King because he’s still playing but he is sitting down, ‘Hey I’m sitting down already!’
“We’re blessed, we musicians, as far as I’m concerned. As long as I can hold a stick, it can go on forever. It’s great. It’s something you don’t have to retire from.”
jane.stevenson@sunmedia.ca
