Ringo Starr has a new country album to promote, and in an interview with Variety he talked about the near-fatal illness that forced him to cancel shows, and recalled how he was always the “country guy” in the Beatles.
The new album Look Up is due out in January, and features guest spots from singers including Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle. However, the former Beatle, now 84 years old, said he didn’t want to put big celebrity names on every track, calling out rapper Post Malone for using feature tracks.
“I didn’t want to do one of those records like Post Malone just did, where there’s a face card added onto every song, because I felt it was beneath Ringo,” he told Variety. “Really, why throw celebrity at Ringo Starr?”
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He also talked about surviving a serious recent illness, saying that it wasn’t COVID as reported. The sickness caused him to cancel remaining stops on his Ringo Starr and his All-Starr Band Tour, according to the article. Starr said he had a high white blood cell count of 12,000, which can mean an infection or inflammation. He described it as “a mad thing eating my body.”
“That’s what saved your life—they were fighting the attacker. And so with pills and medication, I got over it in two weeks,” he told Variety.
T Bone Burnett has helped Starr produce his new country album, and said that after seeing Starr’s energy during a show, “I think he’s got plenty of miles left in him.”
“I saw him play at the Ryman a few months ago, and, he took a break in the middle and his dressing room was upstairs, and he ran up the stairs,” Burnett said in the interview.
Starr also talked about the new Beatles documentary set to be released in November, titled “Beatles ’64.” The documentary, directed by David Tedeschi to be aired on Disney+, has Starr listed as one of the producers.
“Honestly, it’s a little hard now,” Starr said. “There’s only Paul and I, and it was the four of us…”
