Beatles legend Ringo Starr's country music album was inspired by another music icon

Ringo Starr has gone country after all these years.

At Ringo's Annual Peace & Love Birthday Celebration at Beverly Hills Garden Park, the Beatles legend revealed what inspired the genre shift. Starr credits T Bone Burnett, the Grammy-winning country icon, telling Fox News Digital, "I met him [when] Olivia Harrison was reading poems for George. There was about 100 of us there listening, and he was one of them, and I bumped into him [off and on] since the '70s.

"He said, ‘What are you doing? I said, ‘Oh, well I’m doing this, EPs [extended play albums, which have more tracks than a single, but less than a record]. I’m getting people to write a song, put some music on it."

Ringo Starr decided to produce a country album after a chance meeting with a fellow music icon.

Starr had some pop songs written but said Burnett's song was "absolutely one of the most beautiful country songs I ever heard. So, I thought, ‘I’m going to do a country EP.’"

But when he spoke to Burnett about doing more tracks, he revealed he actually had nine songs, so Ringo said, "I thought let’s make a real CD, so I’m back making a CD."  In an interview earlier this year with Variety, Burnett had similar praise for Starr.

"He’s such a beautiful singer. Ringo was in a band with two of the best singers in rock ‘n’ roll history, so people never took him as seriously as a singer as they should," Burnett told the outlet.

Source: Elizabeth Stanton, Larry Fink/foxnews.com

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