Musical Thoughts: Paul & Ringo

February 16, 2012

“You either die a hero or live long enough to release too many albums.

You either die a hero or live long enough to release too many albums.

You either die a hero or live long enough to release too many albums.”

The above is the contents of a letter I’ve been sending to Paul McCartney for as long as I’ve had the ability to dictate to my butler. I also sign it ‘John Lennon’s Vengeful Ghost’ or ‘The Phantom Limb of Heather Mills’ in the hope that it might make more of an impact.

But this year I paused just before I sprinkled in the living beetles which I like to include in the envelope. Because Mr McCartney has just blessed the world with a new album, the title of which left me unable to breath.

It’s called ‘Kisses on the Bottom’, a moniker I was hesitant to Google for fear of what links might appear, rendered in an accusatory blue. But if you think about it, ‘Kisses on the Bottom’ might be the most apt album title of all time. Because EVERYONE has kissed a bottom. I don’t care if you’re a raven-haired spinster or a chino-wearing stud. The chaste or frigid amongst us will have found it hard to resist the draw of a velvety baby bum at some point, probably after sucking on its toes and threatening to eat its ‘wittle chubby piggy-wig fingouwrs’. And for everyone else, well an arse is an arse.

Octopus horticultural enthusiast Ringo Starr also has an album out this year, appropriately titled ‘Ringo 2012’. This isn’t funny so much as perfunctory. It sounds like he’s setting himself up as a kind of sporting tournament or expo. Thousands of people will arrive, all trying to see who is the best Ringo around. In the end the answer will be irrelevant, because of all the love-making and sunglasses. I wouldn’t be surprised if his grinning face is carved into a hidden Mayan temple above some text which roughly translates as ‘Shit just got real’.

‘In Liverpool’ is the album’s exemplary track, in the strictest sense of the word. One of the opening lyrics sums up not only the song or the album, but Ringo ‘Richard Starkey’ Starr as a whole:

“The rain never stopped but the sun always shone in my mind.”

Ringo keeps mentioning his mind throughout the song, as if cultivating an intellect which isn’t apparent to anyone but himself. The bridge rips off the melody from The Kinks’ ‘Waterloo Sunset’, right down to the ‘ooh lalas’, and this nostalgic, copyright infringing look at Starr’s childhood rolls crudely on. Like a hoop being pushed down a road with a stick, like what they had back in them days.

The song builds up to the final chorus with Ringo asking “How was it for you?” again and again. I couldn’t help but imagine him rearing up over me, sweat dripping from his nose as he asks this question in increasingly urgent whispers. In this fantasy, I’d blow the hair out of my woman’s face and say the following:

“To be honest, Ringo, I’d rather have Paul McCartney kissing my arse.”

Read more of Joe’s musical thoughts here.