Ringo Starr’s new album Look Up returns the former Beatles drummer to his love of country music, particularly classic country. “I like old country, old style, and that’s what we’ve got,” he tells Rolling Stone in a new interview.
But Starr also raised our eyebrows when he revealed he was a fan of the eclectic country artist responsible for songs like “Hellbilly,” “Mississippi Mud,” and “Crazed Country Rebel.”
“Just to mess up everyone’s mind and brain in Nashville: How is Hank the 3rd doing?” Starr asks, referencing Hank Williams III, the grandson of Hank Williams who mixed heavy metal with outlaw country for a series of albums beginning with 1999’s Risin’ Outlaw. After releasing a pair of records in 2013, the country LP Brothers of the 4×4 and the punk project A Fiendish Threat, Williams went off the grid.
“I liked the records he made. It has an edge,” Starr says. “I started with Hank the first and I sort of went over Hank the second and got to the third.” (Hank 3 is the son of Hank Williams Jr.)
Starr likes to talk about “edge” when discussing his preferred type of artist, including the vocalist he cites as his all-time favorite: Kitty Wells. “God bless her. I loved her because she had an edge,” he says, going on to cite other rough-hewn singers and songwriters. “We all ended up loving Waylon — he was a rock-country star, really — and we all love Willie to this day.”
While recording Look Up with producer T Bone Burnett, Starr worked with a new crop of edgy artists, including the blues-rock duo Larkin Poe, bluegrass iconoclast Molly Tuttle, and fast-fingered picker Billy Strings. “Molly has a great voice, and Billy is an amazing guitarist,” Starr says. “Someone was telling me he [played] heavy metal before. I never heard that part.”
Some of those artists are expected to appear at Starr’s upcoming concerts at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium on Jan. 14 and 15, which are being taped for future broadcast. “We’re going to do a live show and I’m getting excited because I want to hear ‘A Little Help From My Friends’ in a country style,” Starr says. “And ‘Octopus’s Garden,’ of course.”
