Ringo Starr 10: Old Wave

Movie roles may not have been coming his way, but Ringo Starr knew he could still make music, so he did. Rather than do the grab-bag all-star route that didn’t help Stop And Smell The Roses, he decided to keep it simple and let Joe Walsh, doing fine without the Eagles, handle the production. They even wrote most of the songs together, and Ringo played most of the drums. But such was his diminished importance to the music world that Old Wave was released in no markets larger than Canada and Germany. It’s too bad, because the album was well-made (in the house he bought from John Lennon with the studio built to record Imagine) and didn’t try to sound contemporary, but just rock like we knew he could. Yet the quest to maintain an album’s worth of tunes remained an uphill one.

“In My Car” is charming despite itself, and “Hopeless” has some appreciated aw-shucks humor, driven by Gary Brooker’s piano; Chris Stainton is also in residence. His personality continues on “Alibi”, featuring Mo Foster’s fretless bass, though “Be My Baby” has a little too much of Joe’s trademark talkbox all over it, and goes a little long. Of course it wouldn’t be a Ringo album without an oldie or two, and the first one is the Sir Douglas Quintet’s “She’s About A Mover”, wherein he’s backed by the 11-piece Hollywood Rock and Roll Revue, featuring Freebo on tuba.

The Lieber-Stoller rarity “I Keep Forgettin’” starts the next side; Ringo hams it up and adds unique percussion alongside Ray Cooper. We do wonder if this version inspired David Bowie to do his own version a year later. “Picture Show Life” is a curious one, contributed by Elton John’s and Queen’s manager, but the “Hollywood is tough” lyrics suits Ringo’s solo brand. Even though it’s slathered with synthesizers simulating an orchestra, “As Far As We Can Go” is a lovely piano ballad left over from an earlier recording project. The obligatory jam session is “Everybody’s In A Hurry But Me”, an instrumental featuring Eric Clapton and John Entwistle (not long after Joe Walsh had produced his own album). “Going Down” is more musically interesting, but just as sparing on the lyrics.

Save for imports and bootlegs, Old Wave wouldn’t get anything close to worldwide attention for another ten years, when it got a reissue, complete with detailed liner notes and a bonus track in the original recording of “As Far As We Can Go”. But that didn’t help at all back in 1983. Fortunately for Ringo, he was spending a lot of time with Paul McCartney on his projects in the meantime; unfortunately, those projects were Pipes Of Peace and Give My Regards To Broad Street. His own stock wouldn’t rise again for a few years yet either.

Ringo Starr Old Wave (1983)—2½
1994 Right Stuff reissue: same as 1983, plus 1 extra track