Why Ringo Starr’s Underrated 1983 Album Failed To Gain Release in America and England

These days, when the four members of the group are regularly exalted by fans and the press, it’s hard to imagine a time when any of The Beatles were professionally struggling. Would you believe that one of the group once couldn’t even get a completed solo album released in America or the United Kingdom? Ringo Starr was the unfortunate Beatle who suffered through that scenario. In 1983, his album Old Wave never made it to the most important musical regions in the world.

Ringo’s Rough Patch

For a moment in the 70s, Ringo Starr could make the legitimate claim that he was the most successful solo artist in The Beatles. Considering he was only a sporadic songwriter, his success rate in the first half of the 70s was incredible.

Starr surrounded himself with the best people and received some excellent songwriting help, often from his former Beatle bandmates. But as the decade progressed, he struggled to sustain anywhere near the level of success he enjoyed with the back-to-back albums Ringo and Goodnight Vienna in 1973 and 1974, respectively.

The death of John Lennon in 1980 shook Starr to the core and interrupted the making of his 1981 album Stop And Smell The Roses. Starr had to battle his record labels to get that album released in the version that he wanted to hear. At the end of the process, he found himself a recording free agent.

‘Wave’ Goodbye

Starr’s solution to his career malaise was to focus on working with a single main collaborator for the entirety of an album. He settled on Joe Walsh, the Eagles guitarist and solo star who, in later years, would become Starr’s brother-in-law. The two worked primarily at Starr’s Tittenhurst Park estate in England, with occasional stints in Los Angeles, throughout 1982.

Most of the album was recorded with the same core group of players. But Starr did relent and go the all-star route on some of the tracks. For instance, “Everybody’s In A Hurry But Me” emerged from an impromptu jam including Eric Clapton and John Entwistle.

Ringo Starr had the album, cheekily titled Old Wave (instead of New Wave), ready to go by the middle of 1982. But he couldn’t secure a deal to release the album in the US or the UK. He nearly had it ready to roll in America. But Boardwalk Records, which had released Stop And Smell The Roses, balked after label chief Neil Bogart died.

A Good Album Nobody Heard

Old Wave finally earned release in countries like Germany and Canada in 1983. Truth be told, fans in England and America missed out on a solid Starr record. Walsh did a nice job of focusing the sound. And the material was better on the whole than some of Ringo’s work in the second half of the 70s.

Highlights include the bouncy “In My Car”, which you could easily imagine as a minor 80s hit if it had been released wide. “Hopeless” taps into Starr’s enduring ability to play the sad sack. And the ballad “As Far As We Can Go”, written by top songsmith Russ Ballard, is a respectable lighter-waver.

The neglect of Old Wave from the two countries that once embraced Starr convinced him to put his solo career on hold. He also took the time to clean himself up from substance abuse issues that had been plaguing him. Ringo finally resumed his solo career with Time After Time, a star-studded comeback album released in 1992.

(Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)