Ringo Starr Gets a Little Help From His Friends on New Album, ‘Look Up’: ‘It’s Far Out’

Ringo Starr is in a playful mood. He’s modeling cowboy hats in his hotel suite in Los Angeles. First, he dons a white cattleman’s crease style before running into his bedroom to switch to a black version with a feather.

“I’m doing a Western thing. I need a couple of cowboy hats,” he says, of the items he procured off the internet.

His “western thing” is his new country album, Look Up, out today  (Jan. 10) through Lost Highway/Universal Music Group Nashville. The T Bone Burnett-produced set is Starr’s first full-length album in six years after releasing a series of EPs.

Starr and Burnett ran into each other at a 2022 event and Starr asked the noted songwriter/producer, whom he had long admired, if he had a song for him to record. “In my head, I was talking pop-rock, because that’s all I’ve been doing if you listen to the EPs,” Starr says. “He sent the song with a note that read, ‘Dear Ringo, here is the first song I’ve come up with for you. If you dig it, there are a couple of guys down here [in Nashville] that I would put on it and finish it.’” Starr was surprised and awed as he played the demo in his Malibu studio: “It was a beautiful country song,” he says.

Starr liked the Western-flavored, loping “Come Back” so much he started creating a country EP, including writing the set’s closer, “Thankful,” a pedal steel-drenched love letter to his wife of 43 years, Barbara Bach. (Her reaction to the song? “She loves it. She actually loves this album. I haven’t met anyone yet who doesn’t like it, it’s far out,” Starr says. He asked Burnett if he had any more songs and Burnett whipped up nine more and the EP expanded to an 11-track full album.

Starr’s love of country goes back decades. The Beatles famously remade Buck Owens & The Buckaroos’ “Act Naturally” on 1965’s Help album with Starr on lead vocals. But way before then, Starr’s musical sensibilities leaned toward Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb and Kitty Wells.

“I did love country music before I was in the band,” says Starr, who tried to move to Texas when he was 18 because of his fondness for country and blues music. “We got plenty of it in Liverpool, because the lads who were in the merchant navy would bring not only rock and roll over, but country — and when country bands went on tour in England, they always played Liverpool.”

In 1970, Starr released his second solo album, Beaucoups of Blues, a country album he recorded in Nashville with noted country producer/musician Pete Drake, famous for his work with Tammy Wynette, Bob Dylan and Charlie Rich. Like Look Up, that album came about organically. “We were working on George Harrison’s album, and George asked Pete to come over [to England]. Pete landed at Heathrow and there’s some problem with the cars. I said, ‘Send my car to pick him up.’ He came in my car and then he came over to me and said, ‘Hoss, I see you like country music, you’ve got a lot of country tapes in your car,’ which I did!” He then recorded Beaucoup over three days in Nashville.

Burnett recruited leading Americana, folk and bluegrass music virtuosos including Alison Krauss, Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, Larkin Poe and Lucius to appear on Look Up, many on multiple tracks. Burnett deliberately stayed away from the trend of pairing veteran artists with a raft of current pop chart toppers to appeal to the broadest possible audience. Instead, he wanted to “create that bridge between what Ringo did 60 years ago and what they’re doing today,” he says. “And it all comes from the same place. It’s all part of this extraordinary story of American music.”

The first song released from Look Up, “Time on My Hands,” features classic country elements of heartbreak and lost love over an aching pedal steel, but like many Starr songs–and reflected in the album’s title — ends on a positive note.

“If you listen to a lot of my songs, not only the country but the pop songs, the last verse is always an up,” he says. “That’s what I want to present–there’s a break in the clouds and the light comes through.” While Starr says he has had to ask other writers to rework songs to end them on a positive note, all of Burnett’s compositions already moved toward Starr’s “peace and love” mantra on their own.

Burnett was more than up to the task of writing for the Beatle. “I’ve been studying Ringo’s voice for 60 years,” he says. “The song that was the key to me for how to write for Ringo was ‘Easy for Me,’ a Harry Nilsson song that he did on [1974’s] Goodnight Vienna. He sounds so beautiful on it.”

For inspiration, Burnett also looked back to a sequence in A Hard Day’s Night, when Starr “puts on an overcoat and a cap and takes his camera out and goes down Portobello Road and just feels life. I wanted to go back to that moment for who Ringo is and not just have him be the happy-go-lucky character of ‘Yellow Submarine,’ but to touch that part of him that’s resonated so profoundly.”

Starr’s full-bodied vocals are among his best in years, displaying both a strength and ease. Burnett deliberately penned tunes in Starr’s sweet spot to highlight his voice. “I tried to write songs that he could sing in his sleep,” Burnett says. “That’s the first thing: getting the range right, getting the emotional [tone]. Ringo has really clear diction and he has a beautiful tone.”

“I’d like to sing like Al Green [or] Jerry Lee Lewis,” Starr says. “But, no, this sounds like me, and I love it.”

Burnett also wanted to tap into Starr’s inherent relatability, despite being a member of the most famous band in the world. “Ringo is the most sympathetic of all of the Beatles,” Burnett posits. I mean, Paul [McCartney] is so damn good. Paul’s like the musician of the last century. He and Louis Armstrong. [John] Lennon was such a tough character; he wasn’t particularly sympathetic in the way Ringo is. George was sardonic and brilliant and funny and smart, but he wasn’t sympathetic the same way… I say this without hyperbole: There’s not a single person in the whole world that has generated more goodwill into the culture than Ringo Starr. I had that thought as we were writing this, like, ‘How do you find him? How do you find this the essential parts of this character?’”

Burnett recorded Starr’s drums in Los Angeles with Starr’s longtime collaborator Bruce Sugar producing his vocals. Burnett, with assistance from Daniel Tashian and Dennis Crouch, recorded the other artists in Nashville.

Tuttle, whose last two albums topped Billboard’s Bluegrass chart, says she was “blown away” when Burnett asked her to participate. “Every day going into the studio to work on this record I would think ‘This is the coolest thing I’ve ever gotten to do!’” she tells Billboard. “I felt incredibly grateful for the chance to collaborate with Ringo, who has given the world some of the most amazing music of all time. I’ve also been a fan of T Bone Burnett since I was a child and it’s been a longtime dream of mine to work with him. So, when he approached me about this all I could think was ‘YES!’”

Tuttle initially was slated to appear only on the delightfully shuffling “Can You Hear Me Call,” in which she plays guitar and duets with Starr, but then Burnett and Tashian asked her to contribute to three more songs. “To actually hear my voice alongside his was pretty surreal and I’ll never forget how it felt driving around my neighborhood blasting those songs in my car for the first time,” she says. “I’ve been ‘singing’ with Ringo since kindergarten when we would all sit on the carpet and our teacher would put on ‘Octopus’s Garden,’ but this was next level!”

Burnett’s favorite part of the whole process was, understandably, “sitting 10 feet from Ringo while he was playing drums. Listening to his sound and his touch right there, sitting right with him, rather than through speakers.”

Not surprisingly, Starr did only two drum takes for each song to capture the emotion. “That was enough,” Starr says, nonchalantly. “I was in it and did it.”

The preternaturally youthful 84-year old has plenty of other passions that require his time, including working on his well-received books of photography and spending time with his 10 grandchildren. He grins widely when he recounts the recent birthday party for his three-year old grandchild, sounding like any other smitten grandfather: “We had 30 two-to-five year olds at our house because grandma wanted to show big fun, and we had a bouncy castle and balloon making.” The good news, he adds, was that the party “was from 10:30 a.m to 2:00 p.m. — because they have to nap!”

Though Starr is based in California and his most recent EPs have been released through Los Angeles-based Universal Music Enterprises, Burnett felt strongly that the album should come out on a Nashville country label and reached out to UMG Nashville CEO/chairman Cindy Mabe. “I went to his house to hear his mixes and I really got to feel T Bone’s heart for the project, and the joy he poured into it was visceral,” Mabe says. “He felt that it authentically should emanate from Nashville and the country music community because Ringo has always had a heart for country music. Ringo also recognized the importance of this release coming through a UMG Nashville label to be authentic and connect with different audiences than his past releases.”

Working with the legend has been a thrill. “It’s an honor,” Mabe says. “He’s an icon who changed the world. And as much as it seems so unexpected, it feels like this is where he was meant to be.”

UMG Nashville sent “Time on My Hands” and “Thankful,” which features Krauss, to adult alternative airplay stations, as well as non-commercial radio. Today, the full album will be serviced to country radio. Starr will also play music from the new set live for the first time Jan. 14-15 at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, the original home of the Grand Ole Opry. The shows, which will be filmed for a television special, will have multiple guests, including Tuttle, who will celebrate her birthday with Starr on Jan. 14.

It’s a return to a sacred spot for Starr, who has played the venerated venue four or five times before. “My heart is full,” he says. “The Ryman means a lot to my soul, because most of the acts that I was following [growing up] were at the Ryman.”

Starr’s enthusiasm for country music is one of the strongest marketing tools for the album. “Fans and media are picking up immediately on how authentic this is for Ringo,” Mabe says. “[The album] takes you completely back to the roots of both Ringo Starr and country music.”