Ringo’s First Four

From Bono to Paul McCartney, rock is dotted with singers hoping to impress their fathers, but Ringo Starr made a whole album for his mother. It was a daring way to start his solo career, but his first two records were more avant-garde than many realize. He pivoted with Ringo (1973), a pristine pop record featuring contributions from the other Beatles, which started a formula he perfected on Goodnight Vienna, but Sentimental Journey and Beaucoup of Blues show a different side to the singing drummer, a more vulnerable one too. Ringo Starr’s first four albums have just been reissued as limited-edition colored-vinyl LPs.

Free from his bandmates during Sentimental Journey, the singing drummer decided to look back in a better attempt to move forward: “And I just thought of all those songs that I was brought up with, all the parties we’d had in Liverpool at our house and all the neighbors’ houses.” Full of bluster and orchestral flourishes, Sentimental Journey showcased an artist seeking reinvention from the tunes he grew up with. Bee Gee bassist Maurice Gibb arranged “Bye Bye Blackbird”, just as Quincy Jones created a sparky template for “Love Is A Many Splendored Thing.”.

 

Of the covers here, Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust” is probably the best known, given that it was used in an episode of The Crown.  Sentimental Journey wasn’t perfect, but it was a damn sight better than Let it Be, a raw record spoiled by Phil Spector’s “additions.”

Starr went further with the lachrymose undercurrent on Beaucoup of Blues, a country-infused record that gave him a chance to cast off the shadows of The Beatles and cry. Taped over three days, the singer’s second album was a love letter to Country, a style of music he returned to in 2024 with Look Up. Beaucoup of Blues was a step up in terms of artistry, not least because he put so much vitality into the words: specks of misery tied by Peter Drake’s shimmering guitar designs.

 

Listverse was impressed by the album, placing it in their top 10 solo Beatle records: “All in all, Starr proved himself an adept singer, proving the material suited his voice. And laced in the heart of the Country genre, he found his voice, and then some.”

Curiously, Beaucoup of Blues underperformed in the United Kingdom; more happily, it hit the no.35 position on Billboard’s Country Albums list.

By 1973, it no longer made any sense to continue down this abstract route, so he reprised his role as a pop star. As a commercial proposition, Ringo was chock full of hits. It opened with a piano-banger penned by John Lennon (“I’m The Greatest”), a 1950s ditty arranged by Paul McCartney (“You’re Sixteen”), and the gorgeous “Photograph”, a ballad Starr sang at the George Harrison Tribute Concert in 2002. If chart success was what he was after, then it succeeded, hitting US top five.

Concurrent to this resurgence in music, Starr was developing a niche as an actor, delivering a gritty performance as a teddy-boy in That’ll Be The Day. As a record, the third album showcased Starr’s distinctive vocal charge— admittedly limited, but husky and capable of garnering every discernible listener’s attention.

Buoyed by the success, Starr reunited with producer Richard Perry for a sequel effort, Goodnight Vienna. Once again, Lennon rose to the challenge and helped his best friend by penning the title track and arranging a jolly cover of “Only You (And You Alone).”

 

From his humble beginnings as a crooner to rock performer par excellence, Starr showed tremendous growth over four albums, a transformation that plateaued soon after, thanks to the influence of drink.

If there’s a sadness to Starr’s career is that it could easily have been the most interesting of any solo Beatle, but he spent the remainder of the 1970s choosing safer material.

His roles in Sextette, Caveman, and McCartney’s Give My Regards to Broadstreet did little to dispel this facet. But for a while– four records, in fact– he was the solo Beatle worthy of great change.

-Eoghan Lyng

Photo: Tina 63, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons