Written by: Richard Starkey, Dave Stewart
Recorded: 2009
Producers: Ringo Starr, Bruce Sugar
Released: 12 January 2010
Available on:
Y Not
Personnel
Ringo Starr: vocals, drums, percussion
Dave Stewart, Billy Squier, Keith Allison: guitar
Michael Bradford: bass guitar
Benmont Tench: organ
Bruce Sugar: keyboards
Ann Marie Calhoun: violin
Cindy Gomez: vocals
‘The Other Side Of Liverpool’ is the third song on Ringo Starr’s 16th solo studio album, 2010’s Y Not.
Starr had written about his Liverpool upbringing on ‘Liverpool 8’, released in 2008. Two years later he delved deeper into the struggles and other darker aspects of growing up in the city.
‘The Other Side Of Liverpool’ focuses on Starr’s time before finding fame with The Beatles. The lyrics discuss growing up with no father, finding support from his close friends Davy Patterson and Brian Briscoe, and playing skiffle in his first band, the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group with Eddie Miles and Roy Trafford.
Liverpool was dark and dreary, but it was great fun to a kid. Davy Patterson, Brian Briscoe and me: we were the Three Musketeers, we were the Skull Gang, and the Black Hand Gang – this little gang of three. We were going to do everything together. We were detectives we were cowboys and we went to the same school; we were really close. Up to ten or eleven it was my world, and all those bomb-sites were paradise. You didn’t feel anything about the people who were bombed in them; it was just a big playground. ‘I’ll see you on the bombie,’ we used to say.