Ringo Starr: Ringo the 4th : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Arif Mardin's production on Ringo the 4th is so rich and carefully laid out that I wish it hadn't been squandered on a "personality voice" that can scarcely carry a tune. Four years ago, producer Richard Perry's concept of Ringo as the unspoiled Beatle partying in Hollywood seemed plausible and somehow reassuring. But the best parties just happen, they can't be replayed, no matter how careful the planning. Ringo the 4th, the third spinoff from that concept, sounds as enervated as it does pompous and calculated.

By trying to elevate the tone of the party, Mardin has succeeded only in underscoring Ringo's ineptitude. The setting for "Drowning in the Sea of Love" is so massive that Ringo sounds like he's in peril. It's not an intentional joke; the tracks demand a singer of consequence. "Out on the Streets" and "Simple Love Song," two of six Ringo collaborations with Vini Poncia, barrel along in the style of "Oh My My." But where the prototype sounds genuinely high-spirited, these seem elaborately contrived. "Wings," a simple blues, is done up in the lofty style of B.B. King's studio work with Bill Szymczyk. But unfortunately, Ringo and David Spinozza, not King, are the singer and guitarist.

The paradox in recording Ringo is that he requires substantial arrangements to compensate for his voice; at the same time, a light touch is needed to accent his drollness. Mardin supplies plenty of substance, but no real humor, only gusto. Lacking humor, Ringo the 4th adds up to little more than the seedy extravagance of an exiled aristocrat whose legend resounds ever more faintly.