Ringo

The idea, back in 1980, was to resurrect Ringo Starr's recording career by the same method that it had been launched with the Ringo album in 1973 – by having his fellow Beatles and other well-known friends help out. John Lennon was working on a song called "Nobody Told Me," and George Harrison had one ready to go…

Given the disappointing sales of the previous two All-Starr Band live albums, Ringo's star wasn't bright enough to get this release out on a major label or even a conventional label. As a stopgap, it was available only in Blockbuster Music stores for a brief time – at the rock-bottom bargain price of 5.99 dollars – and further volumes were not forthcoming. A shame, actually, for this was the best of the three All-Starr albums up to that point, representing what was probably Ringo's finest all-around group of the 1990s. Recorded in Tokyo's Nippon Budokan Hall, this round robin of golden oldies sounds like a straight transfer of the concert, following the order of the first part of the show with the rest presumably saved for the unissued volume two.

Ringo Starr went back to work in the summer of 1989 fronting a tour of rock stars who, like him, had become golden oldies. Ringo sang hits like "It Don't Come Easy" and "Photograph," Dr. John sang "Iko Iko," Levon Helm of the Band sang "The Weight," his bandmate Rick Danko sang "Raining in My Heart," an old Buddy Holly tune, Billy Preston sang "Will It Go Round Iin Circles," and Joe Walsh sang the Eagles' "Life in the Fast Lane."…

Hard as it is to believe but there has not been a proper Ringo Starr hits collection since the first, 1975's Blast from Your Past – that's not counting 1989's Starr Struck: Best of Ringo Starr, Vol. 2, which was designed as a companion to that earlier set – until 2007's Photograph: The Very Best of Ringo Starr…

Delivered during the dawning days of 2012, Ringo 2012 is a state of the union address from the beloved Beatle, a brief telegram of all the sounds and sentiments important to Richard Starkey as he begins his 72nd year…

A follow-up compilation to Blast From Your Past, Starr Struck gathered together the better tracks from Ringo Starr's less successful albums originally released between 1976 and 1983. "A Dose of Rock 'N' Roll" and "Wrack My Brain" were Top 40 singles, and the album contained specially written songs by Ringo's Beatle colleagues…

A selection of highlights from Ringo's latter-day albums for Koch, 5.1: The Surround Sound Collection is designed as a sampler for audiophiles and it should please most of that crowd. This concentrates not on his steady stream of live recordings but rather his strong latter-day solo albums – records that draw heavily from the lush sound of latter-day Beatles, so they lend themselves well to being opened up via Surround Sound…

Within the span of five years, Ringo Starr was able to muster up seven Top Ten singles, with three of them coming from the self-titled Ringo album. Taking all of these tracks and adding three more, Blast From Your Past ends up being a worthy ten-song collection of Starr's best solo tunes…

The former Beatle performs with a group of professional musicians (drawn from the revolving group known as the "All-Starr Band") at a concert presented at the newly restored Genesee Theatre in Waukegan, Illinois, and broadcast in 2005 as part of the Soundstage series jointly produced by WTTW, the PBS station in Chicago, and HD Ready.

It's hard to judge Ringorama, Ringo Starr's 12th proper studio album, by most standard critical criteria. Even comparing the record to his previous solo work doesn't quite work, since so many of his albums are so driven by his persona – a combination of his actual personality and what his team of collaborators (always including a bevy of guest stars, of course) perceive his persona to be. Apart from 1973's towering Ringo, and its good follow-up, Goodnight Vienna, Starr was never consistent, partially because of his decadence in the '70s, but also because he never relaxed – he was always shooting for the charts and shifting his collaborators seemingly haphazardly…