The Empress
RIngo Starr was always the joker in the pack in the Beatles. An innovative and talented drummer, though routinely mocked by anyone who isn’t a drummer, and not usually considered creatively with Harrison, Lennon and McCartney, he was a core part of the Fab Four. And when it came to solo recordings with the demise of the Beatles, and Harrison, Lennon and McCartney went off to do their songwriting legend stuff, Ringo cut an album of popular standards with a photo of The Empress in Liverpool on the front.
Red of tooth and claw rock critics gave, and give, the album a hard time, but it seems to me to reveal something important about Ringo and, by extension, the Beatles: their roots in a much broader musical scene than rock’n’roll. In Psychedelia and Other Colours, Rob Chapman observes that the effect of dropping acid on McCartney and Lennon was to release their inner scouser. Is it too fanciful to suggest something similar is going on here? McCartney wrote Penny Lane and Eleanor Rigby, both of which draw on a songwriting sensibility deeper than rock’n’roll; RIngo is just more overt in his call back, and the album cover is a big clue to what’s going on.
Is Sentimental Journey a good album? It depends how you judge it. John Lennon called the record an embarrassment, but Lennon was a git and a poseur. The arrangements and big-band playing are better than Ringo’s vocals, which have charm but not much else; on the other hand it’s the sound of a wealthy man with talented friends making a record for his Mum of the songs she loved and which shaped him as a young musician. And I’d take any track on this over Imagine any time; eight days a week, you might say.
As usual, you’ll find it on Spotify and also as a YouTube playlist.
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