RINGO TALKS NEW ALBUM, ALL-STARR BAND AND THE BEATLES

A recent interview with Ringo- in a Canadian newspaper exclusive - begins with a “hospital handshake” (elbow to elbow to prevent germs spreading) while he’s on the road with his All Starr Band but ends with a “peace and love” hug.

Ringo can’t help but promote his mantra that includes him throwing his 74th birthday at Capitol Records in L.A. on July 7 with a “peace and love moment” at noon.

“You can’t demand peace and love,” said Starr, who launched his latest North American All Starr Band tour earlier this month after five days of rehearsals at Casino Rama, about two hours north of Toronto.

“My thing is I do it all the time. I love peace and love. I have the dream that one day, one minute, the whole world will do it and we will all be in love... I was watching the Today show and Pharrell was on and he did the peace sign so I just like to see people doing the peace sign.”

Starr had good reason to be careful when initially greeting interviewers given his Beatles bandmate Paul McCartney was recently hospitalized with a bad virus that caused him to cancel his entire Japan tour.

“I spoke to Paul,” said Ringo. “Actually, it was weird ‘cause I don’t know the time difference in Japan, I didn’t even look, anyways I just thought, ‘I’ll just leave a message.’ And he picked it up. And I said, ‘Oh, how are you doing?’ And he said, ‘I’m fine. You just woke me up.’ And I said, ‘Well, you picked up the phone!’ Ha, ha! So anyway, he’s doing good. And then I talked to him when he got to England. He’s fine. He’s on the mend.” (Since this interview, Macca has cancelled two more weeks of U.S. tour dates to continue his recovery.)

The two surviving Beatles recently performed together on the Grammys earlier this year which was followed by an all-star salute to the 50th anniversary of The Fab Four landing in America the following night.

Ringo said he was pleased with both occasions.

“It’s always fun when we play together but the show was great,” he said. “We were just in that audience like watching the show, but we knew all the songs. But no, it’s always a thrill for me to play with Paul. He did his show. I did my show. Then he’s forced to do A Little Help From My Friends with me if we’re together and then he forced me to do Hey Jude.”

Starr says there’s no “new” Beatles material still to come but “there’s many ways of delivering it. It’s coming out in vinyl. It’s coming out in mono. It’s like it’s gone full circle. It started on vinyl it went to cassette, CDs and now it’s back on vinyl. I love vinyl because I’m from the vinyl end. It took me years to listen to CDs because it was too clean. I really had to listen and listen and listen until I could relax behind it. But I have a huge vinyl collection at home.”

Ringo, whose only other Canadian date is July 15 at Vancouver’s Hard Rock Casino, currently sees no end in sight for his music career.

He just added a bunch of October shows in the U.S. after playing in New Zealand, Australia, Japan and South America last year.

And he’s got nine songs for a follow up to his last album, Ringo 2012, and says being behind a drum kit is where he belongs, full stop.

“I keep saying B.B. King’s my hero and he’s a lot older than me (88) and he’s still doing it and yeah he may be sitting down but hey so am I,” said Starr.

“I just have this philosophy as long as I am strong enough to lift the sticks I’ll be able to play. And maybe in whenever years from now, I’ll probably end up in a blues band, playing very slow blues. I just decided a long time ago, when I started doing the All Starrs, that I can do this as long as I can do this. That’s how it is.”

Ringo has tweeted out pictures of him recording with various artists for the new record - right now he’s favouring Let Love Lead as a title after one of the songs - due in February 2015, from brother-in-law Joe Walsh to Richard Marx to Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics.

“I’ve sang on six of them. I put brass on, I put guitars on. (All Starr member) Steve Lukather (Toto) and I wrote a track. If you’re in town, I do it at home in L.A., and if you ring the bell and you play, you’re on the record. That’s how it works. We do it in the guest house. I’ve just got a pro-tools set up and in the bedroom we have got two kits of drums and the amp and then we have the board and the vocal mics in the living room.”