Nashville Starr

Thirty-eight years ago, surrounded by gently weeping pedal steel and a host of Nashville cats, Ringo Starr hunkered down in a cramped Music Row studio for two days to sing of heartache, loss and Beaucoups of Blues. “It was great with Pete Drake and all those Nashville writers and Nashville pickers,” says Starr by phone, reflecting on those hot Music City nights nearly four decades past.

Although Starr directs praise to the steel guitar wizardry of the late renowned session player Drake and the sea of pickers and grinners he worked with back in 1970, he has reason to be proud of his own Nashville achievements. He came here to make a different-flavored record than his solo debut Sentimental Journey, or those he’d made with his three Scouse mates who’d made it to the toppermost of the poppermost before imploding into what George Harrison sourly serenaded as the “Sue Me, Sue You Blues.”

It was Starr’s first visit to Nashville. Four years earlier in 1966, when The Beatles made their way South on tour, they chose Memphis over Nashville for the eighth date of a 14-city U.S. tour that would be their last. In fact, the only time The Beatles had “appeared” together in Nashville was when A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, Let It Be and Yellow Submarine played in theaters, or when they visited living rooms thanks to Ed Sullivan and other variety shows. And four years after Starr’s stay here, Paul McCartney would follow suit, spending six weeks in Wilson County and Nashville, while writing and recording with Wings.

But what made Starr’s visit in the summer of ’70 so memorable was not that it came two months after The Beatles announced their breakup. According to Charlie Daniels, whose guitar work on the sessions contributed to the resulting pure country sound on Beaucoups of Blues, it was remarkable that Starr left the rock pretense back on Abbey Road when he settled in at Music City Recorders on 19th Avenue South.

Instead, he enjoyed what Daniels describes as “pretty typical Nashville sessions. You know, three songs in three hours. It was go in, sit down and work. Here’s the songs, here’s the chords, let’s get it done. It was not a Beatles-type leisurely session. It was work.”

That whirlwind trip’s result, on which the “Octopus’s Garden” and “Yellow Submarine” voice found perfect harmony on an unapologetic country album, was largely overlooked at the time. But it has aged remarkably well and deserves a spot on the shelf with the best of the Fabs’ solo efforts—some now call it a pre-hip precursor to what is embraced as the alt-country movement.

But back then, players didn’t know what to expect from playing with a member of the world’s biggest pop band. Drummer D.J. Fontana says when the sessions were arranged, he and his A-plus list of session cohorts were looking forward to the paychecks, but not necessarily to working with a rock superstar.

“We were thinking he was going to be a jerk,” says Fontana, the 76-year-old Antioch resident who rose to his own brand of stardom as drummer for Elvis Presley’s Blue Moon Boys. “I mean, The Beatles, the No. 1 act in the world,” Fontana says. “This guy’s got all these big monster records. But he came here and it was, ‘Whatever you guys want to do, let’s do it. You guys play the way you’ve been playing and I’ll try to catch up.’ ’’

Starr, caretaker of the heartbeat of history’s most important rock ’n’ roll band, embraced his country soul when he arrived in Nashville that June. Other rockers had come here to take advantage of Music Row’s well-stocked expertise. Few, if any, had settled in for an old-fashioned Music City recording session. That it was one of The Beatles—the little combo that invented the trippy, months-long recording process for their later albums—who sought country music’s no-nonsense, workmanlike approach was an unexpected delight for the pickers.

“It was a great time, working with him,” says Charlie McCoy, who, like Daniels, had recorded with rock icon Bob Dylan when he concocted his thin, wild mercury sound on albums fashioned on Music Row.

For Starr, coming here meant complete and carefree immersion into Nashville session style, mystique and technique. With his generous chuckle as punctuation, the former Beatle recalls the Beaucoups of Blues recording method.

“We’d find five songs in the morning and then we’d record five songs at night,” he says. The “we” in this case was producer and steel guru Drake and Starr, who shuffled through song contenders to start their day and finished those cuts by the next sunrise.