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FEATURE
WORTH THE WAITE: Ringo’s
New All-Starr Band by
Shelly Harris
Photos Courtesy Of Crissy Baronak/John Waite OnLine
Waite, best known for
his world-wide #1 one smash “Missing
You” and numerous other solo hits, as well as other top ten
standards such as “Isn’t It
Time” (The Babys) and
“When I See You Smile” (Bad English), will be playing bass and
singing as one of the members of the band which also includes: Sheila
E, Colin Hay (Men at Work), Paul
Carrack (Squeeze), Paul
Rivera (band leader), and, of course, Ringo.
Furthermore, as Waite
accurately elaborates (while just on the eve of flying from his Santa
Monica home to the Toronto tour rehearsals), “It’s like the best of
the best. It’s like
everybody’s best songs for two hours.
It doesn’t let up! We
all go onstage and play together for the whole night. All of us stay
onstage to play to each other’s songs, and play with Ringo.
It’s nonstop hits for like two hours.
And some of them are Beatles’ songs, some of them are Ringo’s
solo stuff, and some of it’s from the new album [Ringo
Rama]. And then
there’s all the All Starr stuff; each guy in the band gets to do three
songs, you know, their greatest hits.
So, it’s a real cross-section of songs, and it’s a very
musical evening.”
A quintessential “confessional” singer/songwriter (who has
been concentrating on – and highly distilling – both skills to new
heights over the past ten-or-so years), Waite allows that being tabbed
for the tour four months ago was “a little stressful at first” not
only because the band members had to learn new 30 songs, but
particularly because he had not regularly strapped on the bass for live
performances since the earlier phase of his career in the ‘70s.
Waite, who has
habitually put artistic integrity at the very forefront of his career
with a new album due out within the month (tentatively titled John Waite, John Waite -- as in “New
York, New York” -- “because so many of the songs are about New
York”), and other prior releases such as Figure
in a Landscape and cut-to-the-bone predecessors like Temple Bar and When You Were
Mine, also comments: “I think [the All Starr Band tour] is the
last thing in the world anyone expected me to do, but I think it’s the
thing that I wanted to do the most this year.
I mean, to play with a Beatle is about as much of an honor as you
can be given as a musician, and I’ve been a gigantic fan of Ringo’s
since I was about ten.”
In fact, despite an already long and illustrious career, there’s a certain kind of remarkable, circular serendipity -- and gratification -- for Waite, a Lancaster, England native, to play finally with Ringo Starr at this stage of the game.
He recalls that, growing up, “I wanted to BE Ringo!
Yeah...I wanted to be a drummer. And I think if my folks could
have afforded to help me out and buy a couple of pieces of the drum kit,
I probably would have just gone straight into the drums because of Ringo.
But it was so complicated getting all of that together; there was no
money. And, after about a year, I wound up playing bass, which was the
next best thing, really... I
mean, it’s wild how it all works out!
We keep talking about Zen, and how things all sort of lock
together, but this is really something that couldn’t be more right.
It’s a great thing.”
For More Info,
point your browser at: www.johnwaiteonline.com
or www.ringotour.com
RINGO’S ALL-STARR BAND performs live on August 12 @ The Rosemont Theatre in Rosemont, Illinois
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“It’s
not really like seeing other people play,” assesses John
Waite about this summer’s edition of Ringo’s
All Starr Band, which appears at the Rosemont Theater on August 12.
“At
one point I was sleeping with the bass guitar,” he admits. “You
know, I’d wake up in the middle of the night and reach for the guitar
and just play a song on it, and fall off back to sleep... So, it’s
just been a lot to take in, but it’s been great fun.