Ringo 2012

Recorded: 2011
Producers: Ringo Starr, Bruce Sugar

Released: 30 January 2012, 31 January 2012 (US)

Personnel

Ringo Starr: vocals, drums, guitar, keyboards, percussion
Steve Dudas: guitar, bass guitar
Joe Walsh, Kenny Wayne Shepherd: guitar
David A Stewart: guitar, keyboards
Michael Bradford: bass guitar
Bruce Sugar: keyboards, piano, horn, organ, synth horns
Benmont Tench: organ
Charlie Haden, Don Was: bass guitar
Van Dyke Parks: keyboards, accordion
Matt Cartsonis: mandolin
Edgar Winter: saxophone, organ
Ann Marie Calhoun: violin
Amy Keys, Kelly Moneymaker, Richard Page: vocals

Tracklisting

Contents

‘Anthem’
‘Wings’
‘Think It Over’
‘Samba’
‘Rock Island Line’
‘Step Lightly’
‘Wonderful’
‘In Liverpool’
‘Slow Down’

Ringo 2012 is Ringo Starr’s seventeenth solo studio album. It features nine songs and lasts less than 30 minutes, making it his shortest album to date.

The album was produced by Starr, and recorded at his Rocca Bella studios in the UK and US. Working titles included Motel California, Another #9, and Wings.

It features re-recordings of two older songs: ‘Step Lightly’, which Starr recorded for 1973’s Ringo, and ‘Wings’, originally on 1977’s Ringo The 4th. It also contains a cover of Buddy Holly’s ‘Think It Over’ which had previously appeared on the 2011 Holly tribute album Listen To Me.

The song ‘In Liverpool’ was his third about his birth city in three consecutive albums, following the title track of Liverpool 8 and Y Not’s ‘The Other Side Of Liverpool’.

I came to the conclusion a while ago that I do not want to write an autobiography, because all anybody wants is those eight years from 1962 to 1970, and I would have ten volumes before we got there. So I thought I’ll do it in song, and do vignettes of certain aspects of my life.

Ringo Starr
Newsweek, Spring 2012