Ringo Starr: 'I made all my mistakes on stage'

"Call me Ringo." That's what the former Beatles drummer says when asked if we should call him Sir.

He joins us at the swanky Sunset Marquis hotel in West Hollywood where rock stars have gathered for decades in a luxury oasis behind the Sunset Strip.

We're here to talk music – specifically Ringo Starr's new country album, Long Long Road.

But first we deal with the honorifics because although he was knighted in 2018 for his services to music, technically, he says, it's wrong to call him Sir Ringo because he's actually "Sir Richard."

Sir Richard laughs. He just wants to talk music, and he's not worried about formalities or titles. His new album is more Nashville than Los Angeles and he seems more LA than Liverpool as he encourages an American interviewing a British national treasure for the BBC to just relax.

"Peace and love," he says, a soothing catchphrase often used by the 85-year-old music legend who looks, moves and sings like a much younger man.

"I've always loved the attitude of LA," he says, adding that he's had a home here since the 1970s.

"Besides, I love the heat and the light, it's just been a good place for me."

On his new country album, Starr collaborates with the likes of Sheryl Crow, Billy Strings and St Vincent.

And he says that's the way he likes it. He never plays music alone, not even to practice.

"That's how I did it. I made all my mistakes on stage," he says.

Before joining The Beatles, he says he was practicing drums alone as a kid, and the neighbours complained, yelling at him to shut up.

"I think that's what did it," he says laughing, adding that he tells all his grandchildren to stop practising music alone and to get together and join a band.

"If you play piano, bass, saxophone, I will play with you all night," he says. "Get with people."

For Long Long Road, Starr teamed up with legendary producer T Bone Burnett who played guitar for Bob Dylan in the 1970s. It's their second collaboration in less than two years. This time, they co-wrote the album and recorded in Los Angeles and Nashville.

Starr says T Bone knows all the great musicians in Nashville.

"And because they're recording in Nashville, they just pop in to play. It's great."

Country music now is very cool, of course. Even Beyoncé's making country music. Her album Cowboy Carter won the top prize at the Grammys last year, rare for country music.

"She made a great album," Starr says, whose love for the genre goes way back.

So how did he first get into country music in the 1950s and 60s?

Liverpool was "the capital of country music in England," he says, noting that merchant navy workers were bringing in records to the port city from every genre from all around the world, including plenty of country music from Texas.

"Liverpool loved country. I know I loved it," he says.

After finishing school, Starr says he was expected to go to work in a factory. Instead, when he was 18, he and a friend decided to move to Texas to be near the American blues singer and guitarist Lightnin' Hopkins. But he got bored with the paperwork required to emigrate and changed his mind.

"He was the blues guy that got to me," he says of Hopkins, laughing at the thought of how life could have been different had he moved to Texas in 1959.

A prolific songwriter now, he only wrote two songs when he was with The Beatles; one of them, 1968's Don't Pass Me By, is a little bit country.

"We did it in a country fashion," he says, singing a few bars.

"I think it would be more country now if we did it with T Bone."

He says McCartney, Lennon and Harrison laughed at his early writing attempts.

"They'd all be just laughing hysterically because all I'd done is rewritten another song," he said.

"So it took me a while to get through that moment into writing my songs, you know, and in the end they started turning out really good."

McCartney is clearly more impressed with his former bandmate's songwriting these days.

The pair recently collaborated on a duet for McCartney's forthcoming album, The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, which is out next month. The song is called Home to US.

Starr is taking his own new album on tour of the western US in May and June. But now that he's the lead singer, who is the drummer?

"No, I am the drummer," he says, laughing.

They keep two drum sets on stage – for him and drummer Gregg Bissonette, "who takes over" when Starr moves to the front of the stage to sing.

I imagine it's a hard job being Ringo Starr's drummer.

"No, we have a lot of fun. We play together, which is great," Starr says. "So it gives the band a bit of meat."

Starr has been making headlines for decades. I ask him about some of them and whether or not they were really true.

Did he coin the phrase "A Hard Day's Night" - which later became the title of their first movie, a song and album? He sure did.

Was he the first member of the Beatles to smoke pot? "Yes," he says.

"I took the first puff," he adds with a laugh.

Has he really never eaten pizza or curry?

"I never have," he says.

His life has also been covered extensively in films and documentaries. Director Sam Mendes is due to release four Beatles movies about each of the band members in 2028. Barry Keoghan is playing Starr and has been spotted around town with an iconic Beatles-style mop top hairstyle.

The actor came to Los Angeles to meet Starr "to hang out" - not to study his movements.

"It wasn't like one of those in-depth things," Starr says, noting the actor didn't question him on things like "which hand do you use to pick your nose".

"It was none of that. It was just hanging out and saying 'hi'."

He adds that he also visited the film set.

"I had a bit of trouble because I was thinking documentary. They are not documentaries, they are films and I had to get used to that."

He wouldn't elaborate about any poetic licence being taken in the movie.

Is he worried about how it will perform at the box office and which Beatle will be most popular at the cinema?

"No."

He thinks the four films should be viewed in one long marathon day of movie-watching.

"Put us all on," he says. "That would be cool to sit there. Bring sandwiches."