Sir Paul McCartney has said working with Sir Ringo Starr once again was “a sort of magic.”
McCartney has teamed up with Ringo, 80, on Beautiful Night, a track from McCartney’s 1997 Flaming Pie album which is set for re-release.
Speaking to PA, McCartney said: “I’d been saying to Ringo for years that it’d be great to do something, because we’d never really done that much work together outside The Beatles,”
“One night Jeff (Lynne, Electric Light Orchestra co-founder) suggested, ‘Why don’t you get Ringo in?’ and I said, ‘OK.’ It just sort of happened.”
He added: “I had this song ‘Beautiful Night’ which I’d written quite a few years ago. I’d always liked it but I felt I didn’t quite have the right version of it.
“So I got this song out for when Ringo was coming in, and right away it was like the old days. I realised we hadn’t done this for so long, but it was really comfortable and it was still there.”
“When I wasn’t on the mic, in the solo breaks and stuff, I really made a point of turning round and watching this guy drum. ‘And I’m thinking, my god, you know the memories across this 10-yard gap here, him on the drums and me on the bass, the lifetime that’s going on here’,” McCartney said
“So, you know, it’s a sort of magic. And he and I these days get quite emotional about it, because we should. We ought to. It’s a bloody emotional thing, the years. If nothing else.
“You know, to sit down with Ringo is always a great thing. It’s always worthwhile. It’s always fun.”