Ringo Starr on Looking Back with New Album “Long Long Road”: 'I Was Reflecting' (Exclusive)
Ringo Starr on Looking Back with New Album “Long Long Road”: 'I Was Reflecting' (Exclusive)
Staff AuthorTue, April 28, 2026 at 10:45 PM UTC
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Credit: Henry Diltz -
Ringo Starr's lifelong love of country music comes full circle on Long Long Road, a rootsy follow-up to his acclaimed 2025 album Look Up
A chance 2022 meeting with T-Bone Burnett sparked a creative partnership that reconnected him with the genre he first explored on 1970's Beaucoups of Blues
Blending Nashville musicianship with personal reflection, the album finds Starr embracing his past with warmth, humor, and a forward-looking sense of gratitude
One day in the late 1950s, a country-obsessed English teen named Richard Starkey paid a visit to the US Embassy. He dreamed of emigrating to Texas to immerse himself in the American music that he loved. "The plan fell through because they gave us more forms to fill in,” he later admitted, “and as teenagers we did not want to fill in any more forms!" In one of rock's great sliding doors moments, he chucked the paperwork and stayed in his native Liverpool — where he adopted the name “Ringo,” evoking Western outlaws like Johnny Ringo and movie gunslingers like The Ringo Kid. The cowboy-coded nickname reflected his musical tastes, and he poured that passion into a string of increasingly popular local bands.
You probably know the rest of the story.
Country music is foundational for Ringo Starr. Some of his earliest vocal performances for the Beatles were covers of Buck Owens and Carl Perkins classics, and the first song he wrote for the band, “Don't Pass Me By,” plays like a saloon singalong banged out on a honky-tonk piano. In the wake of the Fabs' split in 1970, he traveled to Nashville to cut the highly regarded Beaucoups of Blues, which would prove to be his only full-length foray into his beloved country sound for more than half a century.
This changed in 2022 with a chance encounter with legendary producer T-Bone Burnett, the Godfather of Americana and bona fide Texan, at a small gathering at a Los Angeles hotel. It was yet another sliding door moment, which led him back to the rootsy music he loved.
Ringo Starr and T Bone Burnett in the studio, 2026Credit: Scott Ritchie
Their meeting soon blossomed into a collaboration, with Burnett producing and writing the bulk of songs for 2025's Look Up. Boasting a host of Nashville's finest players and a bumper crop of special guests, the album was widely hailed as Starr's best in decades, earning him a No. 1 on the U.K. country charts.
Their follow-up, Long Long Road, lands like a highly anticipated sequel, with a similar vibe and many of the same characters, but an all new adventure. While much of the instrumentation was tracked in Nashville, Starr's homespun drawl is made extra authentic by the fact that it was recorded in a converted guest house studio on the Beverly Hills property he shares with wife Barbara Bach. (The couple celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary this month.) More comfortable as a bandmate than a frontman, he receives plenty of assists from the likes of Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle — both of whom lent their talents to Look Up — as well as Sheryl Crow and St. Vincent. Far from pastiche, the result balances modern sounds with old-fashioned lyrical storytelling, creating the perfect vehicle for Starr's amiable persona.
These records with Burnett are the kind he was born to make — a sunnier alternative to the American series Johnny Cash recorded with Rick Rubin, but less morbid and far less self-serious. This playfulness is apparent on rock photographer Henry Diltz's cover shot, which features Starr in a ruffled purple Carnaby Street shirt familiar to Beatle obsessives as the same one worn during the 1968 sessions for the White Album. The wardrobe choice sent (very specific) sectors of the internet into a frenzy, and the fact that it still fits is a testament to Starr's healthy vegetarian diet favoring broccoli, blueberries and goat cheese.
Literally and metaphorically, Starr wears his past lightly. Rather than a Cash-ian meditation on mortality, Long Long Road finds Starr looking back at his own journey with a sense of wonder. As he sings on the country revamp of 2005's self-penned “Choose Love”: The long and winding road is more than a song.
The music icon sat down with PEOPLE in Los Angeles to discuss the winding road that led him back to country music and why, at 85, he's still eager to see where the road goes next.
Ringo Starr at the Dawnbridge estate designed by Tony Douquette, 2026Credit: Henry Diltz
First and foremost, congratulations on this wonderful album. It's fitting that we're talking about it here at the Sunset Marquis hotel, because this is really where the collaboration with T-Bone started, right?
Yeah, it started here. Olivia [Harrison] was having a reading for a book of poems she wrote for George, [Came the Lightening]. Fifty of us were here, and T-Bone was one of them. I've bumped into him since the ‘70s, so he wasn't a stranger, but that got it all rolling. If he hadn't been there, I'd been on some other road!
How did this run-in become a collaboration?
I asked him for a song, because I was doing these EPs throughout the pandemic. And he sent me a country song. How dare he!? [laughs] What's he talking about — country? I was shocked! It was the most beautiful country song in the world, and I decided I wanted to do a country record. He came into town and I asked him to produce it. I thought it was going to be an EP, but then I said, “How many songs have you got?” He said, “Nine!” and smacked them down on the table. So then I said, “Let's do an album.” And that's how it started.
When someone's playing a song for you to consider recording, what is it that you're looking for? How do you know a song is right for you?
It has to be something I can feel. I mean, [for Look Up], T-Bone gave me more than nine, but there were a few that just weren't me. And on Long Long Road we did six of his — but he gave us 12! He's always writing…or so he tells me.
I love the Carl Perkins song you recorded for this record, “I Don't See Me in Your Eyes Anymore.” I'd never heard that one before!
I hadn't heard of it, either! T-Bone found it. And as I tell everybody, the first two songs I recorded with the Beatles were Carl Perkins songs: “Matchbox” and “Honey Don't.” [Editor's Note: Don't forget “Boys”!] I love Carl. I just felt him.
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It's a gorgeous song, but the lyrics are so sad! A few songs that T-Bone wrote for the album are also pretty devastating. Like “Why” — ”Why do we lie? Why do we cry?”
One of the saddest lines was “Why do we die?” I wouldn't sing it! I made it “Why can't we fly” and then sent it back to him! [laughs] But that's country, isn't it? Like, you're in the bar, the wife's left, the dog's dead and you don't have any change for the jukebox. I got into [the genre] with Hank Williams and all those people. There was a sad aspect to country music.
If there's somebody right now who's living out one of those slow country ballads and dealing with a little heartbreak in their life, what's your advice to them?
Play it a bit faster! I'm not all that good at advice, but move forward. That's the thing. Move forward and move on — on down the road. That's why this [album] is Long Long Road. I was reflecting on myself. This has been a long, long road with a few bad moments but lots of great moments. I'm blessed.
I love the songs that you co-wrote on the album. They have a lot more optimism — especially the title track. “Open your heart, open your mind, and let it flow in. Don't be attacked by your thoughts, Let them come in and let them go.” That sounds almost like meditation.
I wrote that years ago. A thought comes into your head and we hang onto it. Suddenly we can't sleep: I'll do this, I'll do that. What if this happens, what if that happens? You're just laying there in hell! I was advised to let those thoughts come in but then let them go out. It's meditation, which I got from the Maharishi. I do that pretty good now, after a lot of years.
I read you've been meditating every day since 1992. How has that influenced you creatively?
Well, maybe not every day. I think I was off last Thursday — I called in sick to meditate. [laughs] You tend to hang onto things that have happened along the path of life, and that's certainly one of them. It was a great moment when I met the Maharishi and we hung out with him [in 1968]. I meditated for four or five years and then stopped. Then I started again in 1992, and also became a vegetarian again, too. Linda McCartney said, “Don't eat anything with a face, Ringo!” It's interesting that was the year I became vegetarian and began meditating again.
Life is cyclical, I guess. Country music is a part of your roots, too. Does this album feel like a kind of homecoming for you?
I've always loved country. I did a country album 50 years ago, [Beaucoups of Blues]. That was great because it just came about [by chance]. George [Harrison] was making a record and I was playing on it, after [the Beatles] had broken up. He had called this guy Pete Drake from Nashville to come over and play on it. And for whatever reason, we sent my car to Heathrow airport to pick him up. And he comes in and says to me, “Hey, I see you like country music” — because I had a lot of country cassettes in the car. “You gotta come to Nashville and make a record.” I said, “I don't think so, I can't spend months in Nashville.” He said, [Bob Dylan's] Nashville Skyline took two days!” So I went to Nashville and did a record in two days. We got up in the morning, talked to the songwriters and we found songs, and in the afternoon we recorded them. That was a really good experience.
[Pete Drake produced], and he always called me “Hoss.” One of my favorite memories was when I was singing the song and he felt I wasn't putting enough emotion into it. So he gets on [the talkback] and goes, “Don't make me come out there and tread on your toes...” [laughs] “Okay, Pete!” And we put a bit more emotion into it.
I can't imagine [Beatles producer] George Martin ever said that to you.
No! [laughs]
This question isn't going to win me any Pulitzers, but I gotta ask about the shirt. Everyone's talking about the shirt you wore on the cover of Long Long Road.
Everyone loves the shirt. The shirt is the biggest thing on this album! I got up in the morning, I picked that shirt and I picked that jacket, and Henry [Diltz] took the [cover] photo. That's life!
I had the pleasure of seeing some of your gear at the Jim Irsay auction a few weeks ago — including the drum head you played on The Ed Sullivan Show.
I'd like it all back. [laughs]
I'll make some calls…You auctioned off many of your mementos in 2015 to raise money for your Lotus Foundation. Are there any items from that era that were particularly precious that you kept?
There's one funny thing. I had the first version of a home video recorder in England. It was a big box and a camera on a six foot wire. John [Lennon] would come over, because we lived in the same neighborhood, and we filmed each other doing this kid's show. “Here's the little doggy and kitties…” [laughs] We did all this craziness. I put it away for safety and hung onto it. I was frightened to do anything with it. because it was John, you know? John and me, together, doing this madness. This was back in ‘66 — long ago. Like five years ago, I found this guy who could take it off the tape and put it on a CD. He did, and it was a live show of Pink Floyd. I taped over me and John! Those days could be like that. Quite forgetful…
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