RINGO TAKES HIS FANS ON NOSTALGIA RIDE
Former Beatle and his All-Starr Band deliver endearing evening of hits
It was the revenge of AM radio Thanksgiving Monday at the Jubilee, and Ringo Starr was but one of seven happy men unpacking serious lite-rock credentials in a sometimes cornball but ultimately comforting and endearing show. Did you ever dream you’d see a member of the Beatles drumming to Toto’s Africa or Mr. Mister’s Broken Wings? Is your bucket list near complete after dancing to Tito Puente’s Oyo Como Va along with Todd Rundgren dressed as a monochromatic space caterpillar? Would you believe you’d ever hear a credible version of Rosanna and not be scraping some coast on a confining, overpriced cruise ship? And what do you know: super-brief, pillowy-soft guitar solos still exist outside of bro country!
For four years now, this iteration of Starr’s All-Starr Band has been wandering the world, here including Rundgren, Mr. Mister singer Richard Page, Toto guitarist Steve Lukather, ex-Santana keyboardist Gregg Rolie, Bread’s saxman Warren Ham and one-time David Lee Roth drummer Greg Bissonette, who as Ringo pointed out, held the night together — though almost half the band was playing skins at one point or another under a glimmering backdrop of single-R stars. The gorgeous building was all but sold out.
“Come on, don’t be Canadians,” a stunningly fit-and-young-looking Starr joked, urging us to get off our asses. He’s 75 and could seriously pass as a 50-year-old ... OK, maybe one who spends all his time at a bar and smokes a lot, but still!
Opening with Carl Perkins’ Matchbox and playing the swing-number Act Naturally deep into the night, the long set ranged from country to ’80s pop (which is what country has been for 20 years, anyway) to historical landmarks like Photograph, I Wanna Be Your Man, and our Blue Meanie prime minister’s arts-gala singalong favourite, With a Little Help From My Friends, to which Starr did his all-night, left-right polka dance — basically laughing through the song. “If you don’t know this one you’re at the wrong venue,” Starr smiled with Liverpool DNA through his sunglasses.
Don’t Pass Me By was much better, Yellow Submarine done with an almost obligatory shrug, a singalong children’s song known pretty well everywhere on the planet to this day.
The Santana songs were actually the night’s sneak-attack highlights, mostly because they kept to the first two albums. Evil Ways was great, Black Magic Woman of course, and Rolie and Lukather were hilariously pushing each other around as that mutated into Gypsy Queen.
With a little “imagination juice,” it was fun to picture this same formula repeated in crumbling Rogers Place in OverPrice District 25 years from now, a superband led by Rihanna including Trent Reznor, Beck Hanson, that super-annoying guy from City and Colour and a hologram of CJ from Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. Meh, maybe not — with the demise of radio’s one-time stranglehold on our subconscious, this sort of jolly buffet merry-goround concert is unlikely to exist even in memory by 2040. What are you going to have, a podcast reunion with your favourite apps?
Still, for moments of historical nostalgia, nicely augmenting Paul McCartney’s recent appearance and tying in with Yoko Ono’s Churchill Square forest of wishes and the Imagine Peace banner on City Hall during Nuit Blanche, Ringo’s seven samurai singing Give Peace a Chance as their encore was a nice candle burning in the endless smoke of a world stupidly at war.
And, I have to admit, it was nothing short of hilarious watching security repeatedly escorting people in their 60s back to their seats, telling them to calm down. Listen, squirt, there used to be this thing called revolution ... ah, never mind, you’ll see soon enough.