Ringo Starr’s EP with The Strokes‘ guitarist Nick Valensi, ‘Crooked Boy’, is now available on streaming after being originally released on exclusive vinyl for Record Store Day.
The four-track EP was co-written with Linda Perry, who Starr previously worked with on the tracks ‘Coming Undone’ and ‘Everyone And Everything’.
“I love what Linda did and I think all the songs are all great but one thing I did ask her was to write me a rocker,” the former Beatles drummer said in a statement. “And that’s ‘Gonna Need Someone’ and I love it! Nick Valensi plays guitars on it — and on all of the EP — and he is great.”
The release of ‘Crooked Boy’ is accompanied by the visuals for one of its tracks, ‘Gonna Need Someone’, directed by Johann Rashid.
More new music from Starr, however, might soon be on the way. In February, he revealed he’d turned his hand to writing country music. “I was gonna do a country EP, but as things are unfolding, it’s probably gonna be like a real CD,” he said in a video update. “Ten tracks, can you believe it? Haven’t done one of them in a long time.”
Meanwhile, Starr also recently said that there is “not a lot of joy” in documentary Let It Be, ahead of its imminent re-release.
Directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Let It Be was first released in cinemas 54 years ago and has been difficult to obtain since – prompting considerable bootlegging. It features footage of the Fab Four while they were writing and recording their 12th and final studio album of the same name in January 1969 at London’s Twickenham Film Studios.
In a new interview with Associated Press, Starr has given his view on the restored version of the doc. “I think Peter Jackson has done an incredible job,” he said. “For me, not a lot of joy in it. It’s from the point of view of the director, and that was up to him. We found 56 hours of unused tape, we found it and Peter Jackson put his heart and soul into it and it works really well. It’s great because you’ll get another chance to see us on the roof.”