Ringo at the Ryman - Nashville TN 2025 | Albums That Should Exist

 

Ringo Starr & Friends - Ringo at the Ryman, Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, TN, 1-14-2025

Paul says: Just a few days ago, a commenter (Brett Allen) suggested that I post the "Ringo at the Ryman" concert, which was broadcast on TV in early 2025. I had never even heard of this, but I went to check it out. I discovered this was a really excellent suggestion, so here it is already. Thanks again to Brett for making that suggestion.

In January 2025, Ringo Starr released a studio album called "Look Up." It was the first album since his very first solo album in 1970 that had a overt country sound to it. For his supporting musicians, he picked some of my favorite currently performing musical acts, like Larkin Poe, Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, and Alison Krauss. They appeared for this concert (minus Alison Krauss), plus some other very well chosen guests, like Jack White, Sheryl Crow, and Rodney Crowell. I'm especially gratified to see the prominent role Larkin Poe had. I've been promoting their music for a long time now. It's nice to see them gradually breaking into the major leagues, despite the lack of obvious hit singles or hit albums, but just from building up a following through touring and being really talented.

Oddly, though, two famous guests only appeared on stage to help with the singalongs on the last two songs: Emmylou Harris and Brenda Lee.

Out of the four Beatles, Starr was the one most influenced by country music. This concert was meant to promote his latest studio album, for sure. But it also showed the country influence in his earlier works, including many country-influenced country songs. Starr sang and/or played drums on some of the songs. But for a majority of the songs, he let the guest stars sing lead vocals. About half of the time, he wasn't even on stage.

I was able to find a video file of this concert. Then I converted it into audio format and broke it into mp3s. So I don't think this has been shared as an audio bootleg until now. The music is all unreleased, and the sound quality is excellent. 

This album is an hour and nine minutes long.

01 Matchbox (Ringo Starr with Jack White)
02 talk
03 It Don't Come Easy (Ringo Starr with Sheryl Crow, Mickey Guyton & Molly Tuttle)
04 talk 
05 Time on My Hands 
06 talk (Molly Tuttle)
07 Octopus's Garden (Molly Tuttle)
08 talk (Jack White)
09 Don't Pass Me By (Jack White)
10 talk 
11 Thankful (Ringo Starr with Larkin Poe)
12 Honey Don't (Billy Strings)
13 talk (War & Treaty)
14 Without Her (War & Treaty)
15 talk (Sheryl Crow)
16 I Don't Want to Spoil the Party (Sheryl Crow with Molly Tuttle)
17 talk (emcee & Sheryl Crow)
18 Boys (Ringo Starr with Molly Tuttle, Sheryl Crow & Larkin Poe)
19 Have You Seen My Baby (Jamey Johnson)
20 talk (Mickey Guyton)
21 You Don't Know Me at All (Mickey Guyton)
22 talk (emcee)
23 Act Naturally (Rodney Crowell & Sarah Jarosz)
24 talk (Larkin Poe)
25 I Wanna Be Your Man (Larkin Poe)
26 talk (emcee)
27 What Goes On (Billy Strings & Molly Tuttle)
28 talk 
29 Look Up (Ringo Starr with Molly Tuttle)
30 Photograph (Ringo Starr with Billy Strings)
31 talk (emcee)
32 Yellow Submarine (Ringo Starr & Everyone)
33 With a Little Help from My Friends (Ringo Starr & Everyone)
34 talk 

all songs Ringo except where noted 

 

albums bought when they came out no.39

On November 2, 1973, Apple Records released "Ringo", Ringo Starr's third studio album, in the US. It is his biggest commercial and critical success. 

I loved this album and it contained a few tracks that still haunt me today and ones that I certainly still play

DUIT ON MON DEI!

 

THE "GET BACK" SCENE RINGO STAR FOUND EMOTIONAL TO WATCH by Lucy Harbron

 

Peter Jackson’s Get Back documentary series requires some dedication. With a run time of eight hours, the footage gives fans a behind-the-scenes look at the band as they attempt to make what would be their final album amidst the group’s collapse. As they write the record in real-time, it’s a fascinating watch. But for Ringo Starr, it contains some moments that bring back big emotions.

The energy of Get Back swings between two points: endearment and tension. On one hand, the footage gives viewers a deeply intimate look at the Fab Four’s working relationship and friendship. There are extended clips of the gang messing around, playing songs they used to cover as a teenage skiffle band, or just having a laugh. Witnessing them crafting songs is a surprisingly gripping watch as viewers are left waiting for them to find the words that the whole world knows by now as they write hits like ‘Get Back’ or ‘Let It Be’. 

But the Let It Be sessions were also going on during some of the band’s hardest times. It was clear by the end of the 1960s that the members all wanted out of the group. During Get Back, George Harrison is seen quitting and storming out, while John Lennon and Paul McCartney bicker over the future of the band. It was a point where their personal relationships were stretched to a limit, causing a rift in their collaborative relationship in turn, with McCartney and Harrison especially struggling to see eye-to-eye musically. 

But at the back of it all, from his post on his drumstand, there’s Ringo Starr. The enduring joke about the Beatles’ drummer is that Starr was always simply happy to be there, holding down the beat with his ‘peace and love’ attitude. In Get Back, the musician’s role becomes fascinatingly clear as songs take shape. Really, Starr was tactful and clever. As the rest of the band wrote, his drumming is fuss-free yet foundational. “While they’re writing the songs, I’m holding the tempo. And then, when the song is finished, I can do my stuff,” he told Vulture. Starr always saw the song as a big picture rather than merely focusing on the drums. Instead, he saw his role as one designed to back up the words and the melody, so he wrote his drum parts afterwards. “That’s because I’ll know where they’re going to sing and I try not to play over the singer like some other drummers do,” he explained.

 

But then in Get Back, the footage captures a moment where Starr steps out from his drum kit and into the limelight. During the sessions, the band were also starting to figure out some songs that would eventually live on Abbey Road, including one of Starr’s own tracks.

In the second episode, as the band relocate to their Apple studios HQ, there’s a moment where Starr starts writing ‘Octopus’ Garden’. “It’s emotional for me to watch,” the drummer said of the scene. After first writing some lyrics during a holiday, Starr sits at the studio’s piano with little more than a stream-of-consciousness scattering of phrases while Harrison comes in to help him out with guitar. 

“I got a few of those verses, and when I went back to the studio — because it was in C — George was sitting there and took an interest,” Starr remembered. “He said, ‘F flat, D minor,’ whatever. Nowhere I could go. I don’t know these chords. I’m a 12-bar guy,” he continued, admitting his own limitations beyond his signature instrument. But with Harrison’s help, the two craft the song into the track the world knows it as.

To Starr, this isn’t just a piece of musical history capturing the creation of one of the band’s timeless hits. To him, it’s a priceless piece of footage of not only two collaborators but two friends. “He always helped out, George. It was great,” the drummer said, adding an emotional message of, “I miss him every day.”

✍️ Lucy Harbron

📸 alamy

Ringo recalls the last time he saw George . . . . . .

The Beatles - Octopuses Garden

"No, Can’t do it today. I’ll join The Beatles on Saturday!" - Ringo Starr

RINGO

I love (and loved) Ringo and have all his albums. I loved him from the films onward. I consider him a signatrure drummer of great skill and artistry

 One of my favourite anecdotes is this?

Ringo Logic 101 : 

“I got a phone call from Brian Epstein on a Wednesday asking me if I’d join The Beatles.” 

“I said sure when ? And he said it has to be today. I told him I can’t join today. I’m in another band I just can’t pick up and leave. They deserve some notice.” 

“I’ll join The Beatles on Saturday.”

Ringo Starr Speaking Of The Day Brian Epstein Asked Him To Join The Beatles On The Off The Record HBO Special With Dave Stewart in 2008. 

#beachboysbeatles101

INT: I love the Tom Snyder interview from 1975 where John talks about how proud he was of Ringo’s success.

MARK HUDSON: Yeah! Well, you know what’s interesting? Ringo gave me a great compliment one time. I’m very energetic, multi-colored beard, which you can’t see out there in radioland, it’s pretty frightening, and when Ringo sings, I really get him energized because he’s always insecure about his voice, and Ringo always says, 

“I wanna be James Brown. I walk up to the microphone, l’m Bing Crosby.” 

So that Ringo thing that we love so much, he would rather be Little Richard or Stevie Wonder or James Brown. And I always sort of like make him feel like he can hit notes that he never could.  

And one time in the studio he said, “You know, you remind me of John,” because whenever Ringo had to sing a song, he’d get insecure, and evidently, from what Ringo said, that John would come out and say, “Alright Ring! Here we go man!” and he would start this thing like a football player.  

“You can do it! Here we go! Hit that note! With a little help from my friends!” and he would hit the note and he says “John had this thing that made me feel so confident,”and a huge compliment to me, saying that made him feel the same way. 

And it’s only because I quote Lennon, “Nothing you can do that can’t be done.” And I think that was a way of life, and I think that was the way John felt that way about Ringo. And that’s when we look at John’s first solo album, its three guys playing on it: Klaus Voorman, John Lennon and Ringo Starr, and that goes to show you the faith that obviously John had in him, was you know, three guys is pretty naked, and this day and age usually we do things to cover up.

— Interview with Mark Hudson (who produced five studio albums for Ringo) from Beatlology Magazine (May/June 2003 Edition)

RINGO & PAUL :: Rainy Days & Mondays [reflectismo]

THIS IS NICE

RINGO & PAUL: A MINI COMPILATION

More often derided than truly appreciated Ringo as one of the world’s greatest drummers. Name another signature drummer?

I can name him as soon as I HEAR him!

BTW The apocryphal story that has one of the Beatles is being asked if Ringo is the world’s greatest drummer “He’s not even the greatest drummer in The Beatles!” is a pathetic example of a joke! It was said by the risible Jasper Carrott and shows an ignorance of a deceptively simple style/ 

It isn’t!

McCartney offers a further, more emotional reminiscence: “I probably bore him by telling him the moment when the three of us realised he was The Guy. In my recollection it’s at the Cavern and there’s me, John and George — which, right there, is pretty cool — standing at the front doing our thing, facing out on the mics. And then behind us there’s this new guy depping, who we knew we liked — we’d seen him in another band. But now he was playing with us. And it just felt so different. It felt so amazing, and it just locked in with what we were all about. And I have this very vivid recollection of kind of looking at John and him looking at me and looking at George and him looking at me, and the three of us are going, ‘What the fuck, this is fucking amazing!” As McCartney describes this, he wipes his eye. “And as you can see, it gets emotional. There was a moment.” 

Keith Smith, Assistant Engineer: All I can say about Ringo is that you just have to listen and watch him playing drums with Paul on bass, it’s pure synergy. I can’t think of any other way to describe it. He is a completely unique drummer and when they play together it’s as near to perfect and natural as I have ever witnessed. It is something that still to this day hasn’t changed.

McCartney digresses for a moment to describe the most recent example of getting-together-with-Ringo, nine days before this conversation, at the end of his show at Dodger Stadium: “Just the other night we finished our tour in Los Angeles and Ringo got up and we were doing 'Helter Skelter’ together, and when I wasn’t on the mic, in the solo breaks and stuff, I really made a point of turning round and watching this guy drum. And thinking, 'My God, you know, the memories across this ten-yard gap here,’ with him on the drums and me on the bass. The lifetime that’s going on here, and here he is! And I was just listening to him during that song. I was doing my performance but basically [he sings] When I get to the bottom I go back to the top — as I’m doing that bit, there’s normally just the guitars sort of playing, but Ringo did what’s on the record” — McCartney sings the drum part to demonstrate — “building. So I’m going, 'Oh yeah, great.’ So you know it’s a sort of magic.”

“It’s always a special experience to play with Paul,” says Ringo now. “I love Paul and I love his playing and, you know, we spent a lot of time together in the sixties.”