Ringo Starr - Crooked Boy (2024)

Ringo Starr turns 86 this year, and yet he never stops working. He continues to record albums and EPs and goes out on the road annually with his all-star band. Not bad for someone who was so sickly as a kid that many people believed he wouldn't survive to adulthood.

Starr continues to collaborate with some of the top musicians and producers in the business and he mostly lets them run his recording sessions. I don't know if he lacks the confidence or the skills needed to take more control of his own work or whether he just enjoys the camaraderie and teamwork.

Last year, he and T-Bone Burnett worked together on Look Up, Starr's very good, heavily country influenced, full-length album. Previously, for his 2024 EP, Crooked Boy, he turned the sessions over to Linda Perry, who's best known for "What's Up," by the alt-rock, one-hit wonders 4 Non Blondes back in 1993.

Perry gave Starr a couple of songs for two of his earlier EPs. Then she asked him if she could write and produce an entire EP for him and this short set of tunes is the result. The legendary drummer allowed her to be the five-star general of the sessions. She even recruited the band that included Nick Valensi, best known as lead guitarist for The Strokes. All Starr had to do was sing and play the drums.

The four-song set is only 12:14 long and is a pop-rock delight, especially "Gonna Need Someone," a track Perry wrote when Starr specifically asked her to write a real rocker for him. "February Sky" was selected as the sessions' featured single.

The Liverpool native can make very good music when he's not trying to be cute and cuddly Ringo in the studio. These late career works show the classic rocker isn't stuck in his era and is open to fresh ideas.

The EP's cover is a photo of a 23-year-old Starr in an unposed shot taken when The Beatles relaxed in Miami following their debut American TV appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show during their first trip stateside.

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