REVIEW: Ringo Starr and His All Starr Band @ Chateau Ste. Michelle

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Below is an unedited review of Saturday's Ringo Starr concert scheduled to run in today's print edition of the P-I.

Music review
Ringo Starr and His All Star Band
Where: Chateau Ste. Michelle
When: Saturday

By Travis Hay
Special to the P-I

WOODINVILLE -- Ringo Starr got by with a little help from his friends Saturday night at Chateau Ste. Michelle.

Those friends were Starr's All Starr band, a band assembled to tour with the world's most famous drummer. This incarnation of the band (the 10th to date) included an excellent group of musicians Starr must have rescued from the casino circuit, including: Billy Squire, Colin Hay of Men At Work (and of no relation to this journalist), Edgar Winter, Gary Wright, Hamish Stuart of Average White Band and Greg Bissonette.

As with all of the All Starr Band tours, each of the band members performed hits from their respective catalogs. This meant Squire sang "The Stroke," Hay performed " Down Under," Wright belted out "Dream Weaver" (a song he said George Harrison partly inspired), Stuart led the band on the funky "Pick Up The Pieces" and Winter's monstrous "Frankenstein" made an appearance. (Note: The title of Hay's song has been corrected since original post -- th)

All of those performances were fantastic and got the crowd dancing, but the star of the show was, naturally, Starr himself. Donning his trademark sunglasses, Starr wore a bright, boyish smile on his face the entire night. He sang lead vocals on about half of the band's more than 24 songs.

Starr's autobiographical "Liverpool 8," a song that chronicles his life beginning with his days as a sailor and working in a factory, and "Never Without You," Starr's tribute to Harrison, showed up near the middle of the set.
Although he never directly mentioned The Beatles -- Starr jokingly referred to them as "that other band I used to be in" -- the songs of the Fab Four were the highlights of the show. "Act Naturally," "I Wanna Be Your Man" and "What Goes On" were on the set list, as was "Yellow Submarine," which turned into one giant crowd sing along.

The night came to a close with "With A Little Help From My Friends," which was perfect given the circumstances, and Lennon's "Give Peace A Chance."

Posted by at July 21, 2008 2:30 a.m.

Comments

#153270

Posted by rustythedog at 7/21/08 10:16 a.m.

Ringo is the "poor man's Paul"

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#153322

Posted by unregistered user at 7/21/08 12:27 p.m.

Ringo was more fun than Paul's show. Fun is really hard to come by these days.

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#153368

Posted by unregistered user at 7/21/08 2:06 p.m.

Ringo doesn't have the music catalog that Paul can trot out, but he was nonetheless very entertaining, and much wittier in connecting with his audience (I loved his eschewing of an encore!). His selection of All Starrs is an example of the high level of musicianship each brings (I was especially impressed with Edgar Winter on various instruments). I'm glad I finally made it to see Ringo...I saw Paul with Wings and Harrison's Dark Horse tour. Three out of four ain't bad!

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#153546

Posted by diggity dog at 7/21/08 7:36 p.m.

I find it sad that a music critic doesn't know Men At Works song was "Down Under" not "Land Down Under".

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#153845

Posted by commonsensethinker at 7/22/08 1:31 p.m.

This was a great fun show... if you did not go you really missed out on a great evening.

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#154070

Posted by Travis Hay at 7/22/08 8:03 p.m.

Thanks for pointing out my mistake diggity dog. I have since corrected this post.