photo courtesy of Universal Music

Legendary drummer Ringo Starr is sitting with the legendary T Bone Burnett at Los Angeles’s legendary Village Studios, discussing his Burnett-produced forthcoming Americana record, Long Long Road, at a press event moderated by Jeff Bridges.The always affable, 85-years-young former Beatle jokes that he’s never felt the need to write an autobiography, because he “doesn’t remember most of the good parts anyway.” But in many ways, his new album serves as an unofficial memoirs collection.

“I was just thinking about the road I’ve taken… it’s so far-out,” Starr marvels. “I mean, what would have happened? Because when I was 18 and a half, I wanted to emigrate to Houston, Texas, because of Lightnin’ Hopkins, the blues player. … I can’t answer these questions, but here we are today, and it worked out really well.”

Obviously, Starr remained in Liverpool, where at age 22 he received a fateful phone call from Beatles manager Brian Epstein asking him, “Would you join the boys?” Starr, who’d been drumming for Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, played his first gig with those boys four days later, and the rest was rock ‘n’ roll history.

“That was one of those lucky decisions, I would say,” he laughs. “I always feel I didn’t go [to Houston] because God’s on my side, but I didn’t go because of the embassy. They gave us forms. They gave us a list of factories we could phone to see if we could get a job [in Texas], because we came from the factory. And then I went back with those forms and they said, ‘Oh, thanks — here’s some more forms!’ And excuse my language, but when you’re 18, it’s: ‘Fuck off, I’m not gonna do that!’ I just ripped them up in front of the guy. But that’s another path I could have taken. Who knew? I took this path, and I ended up here.”

And decades later, Starr ended up L.A. and Nashville, making a country album — actually his third country album, following 1970’s Beaucoups of Blues and his previous Burnett collaboration, Look Up, which was released just last year. And even Starr and Burnett’s clearly prolific partnership came “out of the blue,” when the two old friends crossed paths at Hollywood’s Sunset Marquis hotel back in November 2022, at a private event celebrating George Harrison widow Olivia Harrison’s poetry book.

“This was another great plan that I had nothing to do with,” Starr says. “[Burnett] sent me a great, beautiful country song, and it blows my brain out today. I was like, ‘Country?’ You know, I was expecting him to send a rock/pop song; I didn’t even think it would be a country song. And that’s put us on the path that we’re sitting here tonight. Now we’ve done two albums together. How great is that?”

“All of us have been listening to [Starr] play drums for 50 years, and his feel is in my DNA at this point. It’s in my cells. I always felt we played with a similar field,” explains Grammy/Oscar-winner Burnett, whose pages-long résumé includes Robert Plant’s two collaborative bluegrass albums with Alison Krauss and the soundtracks for O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Cold Mountain, Walk the Line, and Bridges’s film Crazy Heart. Burnett isn’t the least bit surprised to learn of Starr’s long-ago Houston aspirations, saying, “I’ve always thought of him as a Texas musician, because he played so Texas. He’s the swinging-est drummer in the history of the United Kingdom, I can tell you!”

“With the snare drum, or the beat, and I play on the back of that; a lot of the drummers play in the middle, and some drummers play in front of it, and it just feels right to me to play on the back of it. So, there’s always sort of a swing feel to it,” Starr says of his signature style. “I was given a gift. It just came to me. I didn’t make it up. When I was playing, it was always like a body move for the off-beat. … I didn’t read a book or have somebody come over and show me things.”

That swinging style was another happy (or initially, not-so-happy) accident for Starr. “I only do what I love to do because I was very ill,” he explains. “I had TB, tuberculosis, and I was in hospital for about a year. In those days, they put you in bed and let you lay there. There were teachers who’d come around, and they had this music teacher come and she’d have little drums, little maracas, all percussion. She’d point to yellow and you hit the drum, or to red and you’d hit the tambourine or whatever. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was 13 years old and I had this little drum for the first time, and from that, I only wanted to be a drummer. That’s all I wanted to do. I didn’t want to be a guitarist or piano player. I wanted to be a drummer. Our family was not a rich family, but I would go to Liverpool city and look in the music stores, and I only looked at the drums.”

And then other surprise development occurred. When Starr’s grandfather lent him the money to purchase his first drum kit (which Starr paid back at one British pound, or about $1.50, a week), Starr played the kit right-handed, even though he was born a leftie. This was because his grandmother “didn’t like me being left-handed, so she made me right-handed … in the ‘40s [lefties] were sort of [considered] in line with the devil, so she made me change. … I just sat on it, not knowing any better, and started playing. If you look at any left-handed drummer, it’s like [the kit is organized] in reverse. And so, I can’t play left-handed, and now it’s been a hundred years. That’s not a plan I could make. I could have sat on the drums the ‘wrong’ way.”

There is, perhaps unsurprisingly given its title, a lot of nostalgia on Long Long Road, which features Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, Sara Jarosz, St. Vincent, and Sheryl Crow, the latter guest star being longtime Crow fan Starr’s personal request. For instance, there’s the pre-Beatles skiffle vibes of “Baby Don’t Go”; a doo-wop/Merseybeat-inflected cover of Charlie Rich’s “I Don’t See Me in Your Eyes Anymore” with Ringo in full crooner mode; the Everlys-esque harmonies on “Why”; the mix of vintage gospel and ‘60s psychedelia on “My Baby Don’t Want Nothing”; and the Cash/Carter-style interplay with Tuttle on “She’s Gone,” a classic cry-in-your-beer country waltz (featuring a line, “You never read my letter,” that amusingly but probably unintentionally references the plot of Starr’s Simpsons episode).

And there’s also a lot of sing-songy simplicity and positivity on this album — silly love songs, if you will — particularly on the three tracks co-written by peace-and-love ambassador Starr himself. A countrified update of his 2005 song “Choose Love,” with St. Vincent art-rocker Annie Clark doing harmonies, mentions the “long and winding road” Starr has journeyed; another sweet Tuttle duet, the Fleetwood Mac-like “You and I (Wave of Love),” is unabashedly Starry-eyed in its sentimentality, indicating that he still really believes all you need is love; and the reflective title track and coda, featuring Crow, shifts from lush harmonies evoking the Beatles’ friendly rivals the Beach Boys to positive-affirmation spoken-word that feels like a motivational-speaker mantra.

At one point in that latter song, Starr confessionally sings, “I look in the mirror, and wonder where I’ve been.” And his deeply felt drumming throughout Long Long Road underlines every meaningful word. “When we were recording this stuff, Ringo would play a fill and I would think, ‘Oh, he’s gone into the chorus too early,’ or ‘He’s gone into the chorus too late.’ I would always think he was doing something ‘wrong’ until he finished,” Burnett chuckles. “And then I realized, oh no, he was just playing. And it is emotional. I feel that. [He’s] playing the lyrics, playing the feeling of what’s going on.”

“[That’s] the interesting thing about the way I play, because it’s an emotional moment to do a fill,” adds Starr. “And I can’t ever double-track it. I don’t do it twice, what I’ve done, because it’s feeling to the song to where I am at the time. In that space… my playing is an emotional state of mind.”

As Starr prepares to release his introspective new album — as well as appear on his former bandmate Paul McCartney’s own upcoming nostalgic album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, on a duet title “Home to Us” — he has many reasons to feel emotional, and much to celebrate.

“The Long Long Road is me going through my things about my life, how it started out and where it ended up. And some of it’s bad, of course, but for most of it, I’ve been a lucky human being,” he grins. “I got to do what I love to do.”

This story originally ran on Gold Derby.

This week brings us a new album from Ringo Starr, who’ll also appear on his former bandmate Paul McCartney’s The Boys of Dungeon Lane album coming out May 29. But real Fab Four fanatics will be excited to learn they may soon hear a new collaborative album featuring another Beatles drummer, Pete Best.

“So, we recorded this album together for the [91X] radio station… we did about six songs together, but we haven’t done anything with it,” reveals Christopher Leyva, leader of the intercontinental glam-rock collective Falling Doves.

Leyva exclusively tells LPTV this news while sitting with his rotating bandmates at Studio City’s Licorice Pizza Records, during a celebration for Falling Doves’ 10th anniversary. Leyva, a “100 percent Mexican” San Diego/Los Angeles native, has been living in Liverpool more much of those 10 years — after Falling Doves were on a Liverpool layover during their European tour, headed to Sweden, and the airline lost their luggage.

“We were stuck in Liverpool for a week, and we just fell in love with the people there. … The thing is the culture over there is so great, very much just into music,” Levya gushes.

Eventually, Leyva became pals with Liverpool’s Best, who was famously the Beatles’ drummer from 1960 to 1962, playing with them during their developing Hamburg era, before he was sacked by Beatles manager Brian Epstein and replaced by Starr.

“We were working in this documentary where they grabbed a band and they took us on the same route to Hamburg, the way the Beatles went, and for part of it we got to spend time with Pete to learn about everything that we needed to do in Hamburg — which I’m not going to go into detail about, because I don’t know who’s watching this [interview]!” Leyva chuckles. “But I will say became good friends, and he said he’d come play for me on my birthday, as my drummer. He kept his word, flew down San Diego, and we did a mini-tour.”

Leyva, a rock ‘n’ roll lifer himself, got to spend a lot of quality time on the road with Best, who had sadly become a punchline or cautionary tale because of his unluck Beatles firing. And Leyva got to learn about how Best recovered from the setback.

“To be honest with you, you can learn a lot about a man by drinking with him for a week straight,” Leyva says. “You can’t just go and ask, but the more time you’re with them, they just themselves start telling you stories. And so, [Best] did go through a really rough period. But I think he had everything that he wanted to begin with. And as the years progressed, he saw how some of [the Beatles’] lives kind of went, and he became a civil servant, but he lived a good, moderate life. And he got his due in the ‘90s [when he received substantial royalties from the Anthology project]. But he’s such an optimistic dude. And he’s such a powerful drummer, actually.”

Leyva and Best got so close, so quickly, in fact, that during that whirlwind Falling Doves/Pete Best tour he even tried to facilitate some sort of comical Ringo Starr/Pete Best collaboration.

“That same weekend that he came to my birthday, Ringo was playing at Humphreys [in San Diego]. So, I went over to say hi to Ringo, and I felt horrible, because it’s like cheating on your girlfriend! That’s kind of how it felt,” Leyva chuckles. “So, the whole weekend I was going back and forth between Pete and Ringo, hanging out, then I was drinking a little bit too much and I was smoking weed with Ringo and some of his … I’m not supposed to say that! I was smoking some weed with some of his friends. So, I just threw out this wild idea and I said to Ringo, ‘I’m shooting this music video. Let’s pretend that you’re playing the drums, and then Pete Best kicks you off the drum kit.’ And he laughed and he said, ‘That’d be funny!’ But then I said the same story to Pete… and that wasn’t that funny. No, [Best] didn’t like that at all! So, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m fucking with you, man! I’m messing with you.’”

Faling Doves ended up hiring a Ringo impersonator for the video instead, but there didn’t seem to be hard feelings on either side. And while Starr is of course widely and historically considered to be the better drummer of the two, Leyva continues to be impressed by Best’s under-appreicated skills.

“I’ll tell you a funny story. First day he walks into our studio, because we’d never jammed with him, I tell the guys, ‘Hey, let’s go a little easier on this old guy.’ And he gets in the drums and wow, he plays like Marky Ramone — hard, like boom! It’s a different ball game. Ringo’s a great drummer, but [Pete] really is a punk drummer,” Leyva marvels.

Leyva “didn’t want to do a bunch of Beatle covers,” so they let Best pick the songs, including one of Falling Doves’ originals, “Glass of Wine.” The resulting Falling Doves/Pete Best 91X mini-album, recorded live at San Diego’s Iacon Sound, remains unreleased — Leyva says Best is negotiating with NAMM to put it out — and while Best officially retired in early 2025, Leyva doesn’t rule out him eventually making some live appearances to promote the record.

“Yeah, we’ll bring him out. As long as you bring him with his wife, he might come out,” Leyva quips. “He’s never going to stop drumming. He drums. He loves it.”

Ringo Starr held his first annual Peace & Love Birthday Celebration back in 2008, but as he celebrated his landmark 85th birthday during possibly one of the most troubled years of his long life, he reflected on why his message is still relevant, and why it might be more important than ever.

“Well, I think it was as important in the ‘60s, but it sort of came from when hippie-dom started to take over and a lot of people are doing kind things. And there’s still a lot of that going on, but we’re overshadowed right now,” the Beatles drummer said Monday during his birthday bash in Beverly Hills. Starr also stressed that even regular folks who, unlike him, don’t have a massive platform and can’t have their benevolent messages literally broadcast in outer space, still have a voice.

“You have the platform. You get out of bed and you go, ‘Peace and love,’ you know what I mean? … If you’re doing that, you’re not thinking of anything else. That’s why on my birthday it’s important, because we’re all doing it at noon. So, imagine how many people are doing it today, never mind how many have [already] done it today, because in Australia and New Zealand, it starts down there — and we end in Russia, with peace and love!”

Thirty-eight global Peace & Love celebrations took place across the universe Monday (along with one out-of-this-world celebration, as Starr’s message was beamed to the moon via Intuitive Machines through Goonhilly Earth Station), with the legend encouraging fans to think, say, or post #peaceandlove at noon their local time. Starr’s in-person Beverly Hills celebration featured the city’s mayor, Sharona R. Nazarian, declaring July 7 “Ringo Starr Day,” stating, “Today we celebrate you, your music, your spirit, and your message of peace and love that echoes far beyond the stage — and today, quite literally into space. In a world that feels so divided, how beautiful that we can come together right now to celebrate peace, love, and Ringo Starr.”

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During his pre-cake-cutting speech, Starr, who has lived in Beverly Hills since 2014, marveled that as a young boy growing up in working-class Liverpool, “I couldn’t dream of ending up here. … I love it here [in California]. I love the people. I love the attitude. The peace and love that’s shown in this state is incredible.” He then quipped, “And all the other states are trying! Oh, I’m only saying that because I’m here, don’t worry.”

Starr’s L.A. celebration included an outdoor concert emceed by T Bone Burnett (who produced Starr’s recent country album, Look Up) with performances by Jackson Browne (“Act Naturally”), Molly Tuttle (“Octopus’s Garden”), Sam Phillips (“Photograph”), Lucius (“Yellow Submarine”), and Starr’s dear friend and brother-in-law, Joe Walsh (“With a Little Help From My Friends,” plus the all-stars). Comedian/musician Fred Armisen, who declared “there is not a greater drummer in the world” than Starr, did a Ringo drumming impersonation that seemed to get the birthday boy’s seal of approval, and during a finale of the Beatles’ “Birthday,” Starr called his Beatle pal Paul McCartney and put him on speakerphone, according to an inside source.

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Beverly Hills attendees included Starr’s wife, Barbara Bach, and her sister, Marjorie Bach (who is also Walsh’s wife, which prompted Walsh to joke about worrying it would be “incest” if he married his best friend’s sister-in-law); Starr’s son, Zak Starkey, and many members of the extended Starkey family; Diane Warren; Linda Perry; Steve Lukather; and Matt Sorum.

When Sean Ono Lennon, the only child of John Lennon and artist/activist Yoko Ono, was growing up, his father’s third solo album, Mind Games, was “just sort of the lore of my family; his music was always playing in the house,” he tells Gold Derby. Mind Games eventually became not only his favorite John Lennon album, but also one of his favorite albums, period, of all time. It was only when Sean began working on Mind Games — The Ultimate Collection (Super Deluxe Edition) that he realized the album had been poorly received and generally misunderstood by both critics and fans at the time of its 1973 release.

So, now that the Mind Games project has been nominated for Best Boxed Set or Limited Edition Package at this year’s Grammy Awards, Sean feels “very vindicated, because I always felt that Mind Games was one of [John’s] best albums and it wasn’t fully appreciated at the time. … I think every song on the record is very beautiful.”

Sean, who was just 5 years old when his father was murdered, describes working on the six-disc Mind Games box (which includes stripped-back Elemental Mixes, instrumental Elements Mixes, track-by-track audio histories called the Evolution Documentaries, raw studio mixes, and outtakes) as an “almost spiritual journey” and “the kind of work that is very good psychologically for me to do,” because his appreciation for this particular album goes beyond the actual music.

“I think what these [songs] represent to me is very personal, very intimate, because my parents were going through a kind of breakup. I mean, it wasn’t a breakup, but I say a separation around that time,” Sean explains, referring to the much-mythologized “Lost Weekend” between the summer of ’73 and early 1975, when John was living in Los Angeles and dating May Pang. And so, delving into the Mind Games archives helped Sean set the record straight in another way.

“The reality is, it was a separation, but it’s not like [my parents] ever lost each other,” Sean stresses. “On a lot of the outtakes of the recordings, you can hear my mom on the tape, talking and helping him finish the song. … You can hear my dad talking about how much he loves my mother. Even on the album cover, you can see that my mother is sort of this towering mountain in the distance that dwarfs him and he’s this little kind of lost figure in this field. You can tell that he’s trying to find her again, or in a way she’s the compass by which he navigates the world.

“The result of that, obviously, is they get back together — and then I’m born nine months after that!” Sean added with a laugh. “So, I think it has a personal kind of meaning and sentiment for me as well.”

photo: Getty Images

Sean, now age 49, is well aware that virtually anything Beatles-reissue-related will be divisive, but along with the Mind Games Grammy nomination, he’s pleased that the project has been praised by his peers in general. “No one I really respect has been upset about it!” he chuckles. And he is already planning Ultimate Editions for other John Lennon albums. “I think my dad is one of the most important composers of the century that he lived in, so I’m going to treat every single solo record as if it’s the most important record in the world,” he asserts. “It feels like I’m doing the right thing. I’m trying to do good by my own father. And at the end of the day, that leaves me feeling good and proud.”

Below, Sean Lennon opens up about the “forensic, anthropological dig” that went into Mind Games — The Ultimate Collection, dealing with detractors, the recent groundswell appreciation for his mother’s work that has been “a long time coming,” taking over the stewardship of his late father’s work, and much more.

LYNDSANITY: Congratulations on your Grammy nomination!

SEAN ONO LENNON: Thank you so much. I’m really surprised and it’s a great honor, but at the same time, this L.A. fire situation is really overshadowing the whole thing, to be honest. It’s really frightening what’s going on. I can’t believe that it’s happening. At some point I thought maybe the Grammys weren’t going to happen, but I realized that they’re going forward, and I guess it’s good to not let a tragedy interrupt life. It’s good to try to keep living and working.

It will be a different Grammy Awards this year, for sure, but I’m still happy that you’ve been recognized for your hard work on the Mind Games. It’s your first Grammy nomination, and for such an important project that’s so near and dear to your heart. That must feel amazing.

Yes, and the real amazing coincidence is that I get to go to the Grammys for my first nomination for working on my dad’s album the same year that the Beatles are up for two Grammys for a song that my dad wrote [“Now and Then”]. That does feel really beautiful, actually.

I don’t know if a lot of people expected a Beatles song, particularly one that was put together under such unique circumstances, to be up for Record of the Year in 2025 against all these current pop artists.

It’s pretty remarkable, honestly, that the Beatles are still able to get Grammy nominations after all this time. In terms of Mind Games, I feel very vindicated, because I always felt that Mind Games was one of his best albums and it wasn’t fully appreciated at the time it was released. It got overshadowed by a lot of ’70s pop chart records, and also he didn’t really have time to promote it or to tour or anything. But I think we managed to have people reconsider it — and listen to it for the first time, for a lot of people. And in terms of the Beatles’ “Now and Then,” I honestly, I don’t think I can be fully objective about it, because whenever I hear it, I get super-choked-up. It’s sweet to just hear them on the same piece of music, Paul [McCartney] and Ringo [Starr] and George [Harrison] and my dad together. It’s very touching. I don’t know if they’re going to be able to compete with these younger artists who have the world’s attention right now, but it’s amazing enough that they’ve been nominated.

Well, the other Record of the Year nominees are Beyoncé, Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar, Chappell Roan, and Taylor Swift — all great songs, but all relatively in the same generation and same pop universe. So, you never know. The others could split the vote and make way for a minor upset with a Beatles win.

That would be incredible. Incredible.

Absolutely. So, you used the word “vindicated” just now. Were on a mission to make people rediscover, or reconsider, Mind Games?

I grew up listening to my dad’s records before I was even aware of how people reacted to them. It was just sort of the lore of my family; his music was always playing in the house. So, I love that record and had no idea that it was considered, I guess, underappreciated when it came out. I didn’t know that until I started working on the boxed set. Basically, we were doing interviews with musicians and we were putting a book together of interviews and kind of the background history, and that’s when I started to realize, “Wow, people at the time thought it wasn’t a great record!” That just made me more motivated to do a better job on the mixes. The mixes were for a time when people were mostly listening on little speakers in their car or something; it was a little bit mid-rangey and thin compared to what we can do today. I don’t want to insult the recording, because it was recorded very beautifully. But at that time, the mastering style was different. It wasn’t as a full-spectrum as what you can do today. Giving it a modern retouching really expanded the soundscape and broadened the spectrum of it, in a way that allows you to appreciate how good the recording really was, with some of the best musicians in the world playing some of my favorite songs that my dad ever wrote. The material was all there. It was just a question of kind of dusting it off a little bit.

Mind Games was the first album that your father produced himself.

Exactly. I think he was feeling really excited. You can hear how he really worked on the arrangements, especially compared to the previous record that he did, which was much more almost like a punk record, clearly recorded without a lot of rehearsals and without a lot of meticulous forethought. What happened is people didn’t really understand Some Time in New York City, which was more about activism than about music. My dad decided that he didn’t want to do that anymore, that he wanted to get back to focusing on making music that was more thought-out and polished and spending more time on the actual arrangement and the musicality of it. He worked really hard on Mind Games and was proud of the fact that he had produced his own album and didn’t need Phil Spector. It’s a beautiful piece of music, the whole thing.

Have you ever gotten any insight into how your father reacted to the negative response to the album? I imagine if it was a record he was so invested in, it must have bummed him out.

It’s known among John and Yoko fans that my dad would actually write to critics — open letters to the editorial department of newspapers. I think you can find them online, and they’re really funny. People ask me about how my dad would’ve interacted with social media, and I’m pretty sure he would’ve just been out there tweeting every day, because he was very forthright with his rejection of bad reviews. But he was also very funny about it, so he’d say, like, “You damn pseudointellectuals don’t know anything about art!” or whatever. And then he goes, Peace and love, John.” It was always kind of tongue-in-cheek. But he got really furious about bad reviews, although not sinister sense, and he would write a letter to the reviewer. They’re hilarious letters, just like the letter that he wrote to the queen of England when he returned the MBE, sort of serious and funny at the same time. … He was always very nice at the end, which is very sweet.

You’ve said that Mind Games wasn’t just your favorite album of your dad’s, but one of your favorite albums, period. What is it about this album that you love so much?

The album has Jim Keltner on drums, and Ken Ascher on piano, who wound up doing music for Jim Henson and becoming one of the most famous kind of songwriters or film score people out there, and Rick Morotta, who later wound up playing with Paul Simon on Graceland and millions of other famous platinum albums. The whole band is just tough. It’s this really all-star band, versus what happened before during Some Time in New York City. … The level of musicianship really increased on Mind Games. It almost feels like my dad was reacting to how misunderstood Some Time in New York City was, and he was just getting back to business. I think he worked very hard to make the songs as beautiful as they can be. “Mind Games” is known for the chord change. It is one of his best compositions. It almost sounds like Bach wrote it. It’s this beautiful descending kind of cyclical, chromatic chord change. It’s a song that I think he started writing maybe during the Let It Be period, and it’s one of his best ideas. He had it kind of kicking around in his head for a long time, and often those are the best songs — the ones that you take a long time to figure out exactly how to execute them. And he had a whole other lyric for it that was “make love not war,” which he does say in the end, but I think that the fact that he changed the lyric shows that he was really thinking … was really developing and refining the songs. Every song on the record is very beautiful.

And also, I think what they represent to me is very personal, very intimate, because my parents were going through a kind of breakup. I mean, it wasn’t a breakup, but I say a separation around that time. You can hear my dad talking about how much he loves my mother. Even on the album cover, you can see that my mother is sort of this towering mountain in the distance that dwarfs him and he’s this little kind of lost figure in this field. You can tell that he’s trying to find her again, or in a way she’s the compass by which he navigates the world. The result of that, obviously, is they get back together — and then I’m born nine months after that! So, I think it has a personal kind of meaning and sentiment for me as well.

Yes, this record was made during what is known as John’s “Lost Weekend,” and there are different recollections of what that time period was like. Obviously, May Pang has done a documentary and book with her own account, and there’s a lot of mythology surrounding that era in general. What insight did you glean about it from working on Mind Games?

That he never really left [Yoko]. If you really look at the Lost Weekend, historically, he was always calling my mom and missing her, and my mom was one saying, “Don’t come back yet, you’re not ready,” because she just felt he had to go through whatever he was going through, which was almost like a return to his adolescence. He was partying too much and acting crazy in a way that my mother didn’t want to deal with. So, he was missing her the whole time and trying to come home, and my mom was like, “No, I can’t deal with you yet.” The reality is, it was a separation, but it’s not like they ever lost each other. They were always in love. May Pang has her perspective, and I have nothing against her personally, but I think everyone has their own subjective interpretation of the way events unfold. And I think the idea that my parents were in danger of ever being really truly separated is kind of an exaggeration. It sounds like my dad never lost focus on my mom. It’s clear that he’s not forgetting about her. The reality is, on a lot of the outtakes of the recordings, you can hear my mom on the tape, talking and helping him finish the song. So, she wasn’t missing from those sessions, either. It reminds me a lot of the way that people had over hyperbolized the breakup of the Beatles during the Let It Be filming, and now, decades later, if you watch Get Back, you realize that they weren’t really fighting, that my mom really didn’t sit on an amp, that it wasn’t as bad as people had made it out to be. I think things get exaggerated with these towering historical figures like the Beatles or whatever. People over-exaggerate the whole kind of drama of the Mind Games period, and I think they did that regarding with Yoko hanging out in the studio with the Beatles as well.

I just to make it abundantly clear: I think the treatment your mother has had to deal over the years is absolute BS. I’m Team Yoko. I’ve always thought it was BS.

Thank you! I appreciate that.

There are always going to be haters, but I am glad that it seems people have chilled out about Yoko over the years.

I feel like she’s living rent-free in a lot of people’s heads no matter what! [laughs] But I do think that the era of Yoko-hating — or generally speaking of woman-bashing — is behind us. And I do think that the world is reinvestigating my mom’s career for what it is, and she’s getting a lot of the appreciation that has been a long time coming and should have happened a long time ago. She had this incredible show at the Tate Modern, and there’s people all over the world have sort of realized what a remarkable artist she is in her own right. I think her time has come, for sure.

What was her response to your work on the Ultimate Edition of Mind Games?

Well, it’s not really the kind of thing that she’s that focused on, but I think that it’s a big deal for her to have allowed me to take over for that kind of work, because she did an amazing job of that kind of thing for so many years. And she’s retired now. So, that in and of itself, the fact that she’s allowed me to start doing that, is sort of its own statement.

How did you approach the main batch of this project’s Ultimate Mixes?

For me, it was a forensic, anthropological dig. I just sat alone and I listened to every single track, from beginning to end. I familiarized myself with what’s there. And then it’s just slowly about making decisions in terms of how to improve or maximize the best possible, most flattering textures of each instrument or microphone track. It’s slow and meticulous and caring. I try to go over it with a forensic level of meticulousness, and that also includes taking away things that we don’t need — noise or buzz or whatever that isn’t helping. Sometimes buzz is good, but not always. It’s using whatever technology is available to us, very specific EQs or noise-canceling algorithms or modern reverbs or whatever, just to help clarify everything. It’s like trying to put on a pair of glasses when you’ve been looking at something fuzzy your whole life. That’s all I’m trying to do, is bring out what’s already there.

What were your personal favorite mixes or tracks on this project?

I’ll be selfish and say it’s the songs that I changed the most are the ones I’m most proud of, because I had more involvement personally. For example, there’s a song called “Aisumasen,” which means “I’m sorry” in Japanese. I really think that I made a good choice in mixing it more like a song from the Imagine or Plastic Ono Band records, which means like a drier snare drum and a louder piano, which was not the way it was mixed on the original record. And then there’s another song called “Out the Blue,” which I did the same thing. Those two, to me, sounded more classic, and I think that those songs have never sound better. It’s subjective, obviously, but I feel like if you listen to those two songs and compare them to the originals, I think they’re better than they were before.

There are always going to be cranky Beatles purists who will argue that the original version was better. I’m sure Giles Martin gets flak all the time for every Beatles deluxe album reissue he mixes. What has been the public response to this Mind Games box?

I have to be honest: No one I really respect has been upset about it! The best musicians I know, who’ve listened to the mixes, have said that they think the record sounds better than it ever has. That’s what matters to me. There are some critics in the comments section of YouTube or whatever who think that somehow I’m trying to exploit the record or my dad, or somehow it’s a money-grab or something. There’s always people who say that kind of stuff. And frankly, I don’t think they understand how the economics work, because it’s certainly not a very profitable endeavor! It’s more about the meaning of it for me, personally, of what it means to go through my dad’s music and get to listen to the tracks. And as a musician myself, having spent my whole life learning how to play and mix music, it’s this incredible personal, almost spiritual journey, getting to have that intimate relationship with his recordings and learn about how he did things and try my best to bring my own knowledge and abilities to helping rediscover that music. It doesn’t mean that I’m trying to replace the original versions, and those will always be there forever for people to listen to. The project comes from a place of love and nothing else.

What memories did you unpack, or what takeaways did you get, from diving into this project?

It’s the kind of work that is very good psychologically for me to do. It feels like I’m doing the right thing. I’m trying to do good by my own father. And at the end of the day, that leaves me feeling good and proud. It is very emotional sometimes, but to be honest, I am a professional musician, so once I get into that mind space, I’m really just thinking about it from a work perspective. I’m really just trying to make everything as good as possible, as good as it can be.

I think when any child of a famous musician goes into music, no matter what they do, there will be naysayers.

I think there’s just this culture that’s been around for a long time, but is sort of peaking right now, where people think that children should ignore their parents and change their name and move to another country and become monks or something. It’s just a little too extreme. A lot of people’s last names, when your last name is Smith, it’s because your parents were blacksmiths for hundreds of years and generations, and it was very normal to learn the trade of your parents. That wasn’t considered dishonorable; in fact, it was considered the more honorable thing to help your family with whatever their business is or what their trade is. That was very common for most people until quite recently, actually. It was actually considered dishonorable to not become a blacksmith if your dad and your grandfather were. So, I think the idea of somehow looking down on kids who inherit the vocation of their families means you’re wasting your time, in a way.

Did your mother ever warn you that it might be a tough road if you embarked on a music career?

My mom isn’t the kind of person who has those kinds of conversations, to be honest. That’s not where her head is at. She’s just not like that. She never talked to me about whether I should go to college, or which college I should go to, or whether I should be a musician or not. I never had any conversation regarding any life plan like that with her. She doesn’t think that way. … She never tried to convince me to do anything, and she also never tried to dissuade me from doing anything.

As a musician yourself, what did you learn about your dad’s work ethic that you might take into your own music career?

What I learned is how similar I am to him in terms of the work process. It was very relatable for me in that sense, the familiarity of the workflow, which I think most songwriters would recognize. I compare it to the Get Back documentary that Peter Jackson did. Every musician I know has commented on how it’s so amazing just seeing that the Beatles do things the way we do; it was nice to see them in their work process … [to] listen to the rehearsals of my dad in the studio with the musicians working out the slide-guitar parts. It humanizes it and demystifies it in a really beautiful way. It makes you realize that they were just people who just happened to be really good at what they did, but that it wasn’t some kind of Mount Olympus where they were throwing lightning bolts around at each other. They were just human beings, and they were musicians in ways that are very familiar to me.

Tell me about the separate Mind Games Meditation Mixes you released last year for John’s 84th birthday. That was a really unique thing to take on.

And my dad did TM, and I grew up meditating. My mother did TM as well. I was just very inspired during the lockdown to try new things with the Mind Games project, because I feel with an album that has been released several times in several different forms and different mastering techniques over the years, why are we putting it out if we don’t try something interesting? I actually thought just the idea of a mind game is sort of like a game of the mind, so then I thought about meditation. I thought about puzzles, tricks or illusions, hallucinations. So, I put all of those things into the box. There’s visual illusions and there’s a link to a meditation site, and there’s also a link to an app that I’ve worked on with my friends called Lumenate, which basically is a music and strobe light meditation device on your phone. I did these Meditation Mixes of Mind Games for the Lumenate app just as a little tiny side-project just to see if people would be interested, and the mixes turned out very nice, I think, so Universal actually told me they wanted to do a vinyl of it. That’s the other funny thing: Some people were like, “Why is he doing a vinyl of these Meditation Mixes? God, he’s just trying to milk this!” And I actually didn’t even want to do that — I was asked to put them out. I think it’s kind of cool if Universal says, “We think these are nice, you should put them on vinyl. “And am I supposed to say no? I don’t even understand that. … So, it turned out to be a nice thing, and I think it’ll be a collectible down the line, such a kind of weird quirky project.

But yeah, that was all part of Mind Games. We did actually a video game, which was a word puzzle game, Escape to Nutopia, and then we also have the Citizen of Nutopia site where you can meditate with people all over the world in real time. It was all just to see how much we could expand on this idea of a game of your mind. And I know that meditation was really something my dad cared about. And the other thing that’s interesting is the strobe technology that we use on the Lumenate app is exactly like this goggle device that my dad and mom used to have in their bedroom when I was a kid. That’s why I thought it was perfect to do, because I grew up with this weird strobe-like goggles that my dad would wear, and you just crank this knob and it would go from delta waves to beta waves or something. It was supposed to put you into a stroboscopic-induced state of meditation. So, that’s kind of why I wound up doing the Meditation Mixes and the app because it actually connected directly to a childhood memory I had.

Are you planning Ultimate Editions for some of your father’s other albums?

Of course! Some people say, “Why did you make such a big deal out of Mind Games? It wasn’t even his best record!” Look, he only made six records. I think my dad is one of the most important composers of the century that he lived in, so I’m going to treat every single solo record as if it’s the most important record in the world. And you can get mad at me for that, but I don’t know what you’d expect. If you look at Mozart on Spotify, there’s entire boxed sets of the lesser-known sonatas because he’s an important composer. So, I’m not going to ignore any John Lennon record. I’ll say that every single one is incredibly important to me and to the history of music and culture, as far as I’m concerned. I’m going to work on each one with as much love and thought as possible.

Who are all these people you keep talking about getting mad at you? And why? You think they’d be more mad if you were doing absolutely nothing to uphold and celebrate your dad’s legacy.

Well, that’s the thing. I think those kind of people probably would be mad no matter what.

So, if you win the Grammy Award, what you will say in your acceptance speech?

I haven’t thought about it, to be honest! I didn’t even realize that I’d be allowed to make a speech! I tend to be just off-the-cuff, generally, I’m not really a speechwriter. When we got the Oscar [in 2024, for Best Animated Short for “War Is Over!”], I just made it up. I just improvised. I didn’t write anything. It happened to be Mother’s Day [in the U.K] that day, and my mom wrote that song “War Is Over” with my dad, so I was thinking, “Wow, this is so amazing that I can give this present to my mom.” I feel thankful to her for so many things, so all I said was, “Can you guys wish my mom a happy Mother’s Day for me?” And that was it.

You have won an Oscar, and you may be winning a Grammy soon. What’s next?

A Tony! Ha, no, I’m kidding. I’m very fortunate that I get to do so many things. I have my own music, my own solo record that I’m going to work on this year. I also have my dad’s next project I’m going to work on. There’s also films that are made about my parents that I get to be peripherally involved in, as a sort of producer. I also have a record label; I get to produce bands and record music for other people. I’m also actually finishing up a documentary right now that I directed about threeASFOUR, some artist friends in New York. So, I’ve got a lot on my plate. My ambition is just to finish everything, and not to say yes to so many things that I can’t finish them.

This interview, which has has been edited for brevity and clarity, originally ran on Gold Derby.

Ringo Starr held his first annual Peace & Love Birthday Celebration back in 2008, but as he celebrated his 84th birthday Sunday, during possibly one of the most chaotic and fraught years of his long lifetime, he was asked if his benevolent birthday message of “peace and love” was needed now more than ever.

“I don’t think it’s more needed than ever; it’s been needed for a long time,” the Beatles drummer clarified, speaking with me July 7 at his birthday bash in Beverly Hills. “As you know, it started in the ‘60s — in my eyes, in San Francisco. The hippies came to power and then they realized, ‘Peace and love.’ And we’re just following on. It just something I do now to try… 35 countries had things like this today. And so, what else can you do? I can’t demand peace and love. I can only say it: ‘Peace and love.’ And it’s being said more and more. And what is great is on TV, you see now guests on talk shows [saying it]. So, it looks like it’s moving on. So, life is good.”

Ringo Starr greeting me and other journalists and fans at his 2024 Peace & Love Birthday Celebration in Los Angeles. (photo: Steve Rood)

Thirty-five global Peace and Love Celebrations (and one out-of-this-world celebration, as NASA literally beamed Starr’s message up to the actual stars) took place July 7 — with the legend not exactly demanding, but encouraging fans to fulfill his birthday wish by thinking, saying, or posting #peaceandlove at noon their local time. Starr’s in-person L.A. celebration included an outdoor concert with Ben Dickey performing Ringo’s “Weight of the World,” Ben Harper doing “Walk With You,” and Willie Watson, Greg Leisz, Don Was, Gregg Bissonnette, Steve Dudas. and other all-stars covering the Americana classics “Act Naturally” and “Beaucoups of Blues.”

Starr’s best buddy Joe Walsh then led the L.A. attendees, which included recent Ringo Starr collaborators Linda Perry and Diane Warren and superstar drummer Matt Sorum, in the Pacific-time countdown to noon. Walsh recalled that he first met Ringo in 1973 at the nearby Record Plant West studio during a “good old-fashioned late-night jam session. At least that’s how the legend goes, because neither Ringo nor I remember much about that night! But people that were there said we were instantly best friends. And it must be true, because more than 50 years later, here I stand in the blistering California sun besides a statue of his fingers.

“The world loves Ringo Starr, because how could they not? He is the Beatle you wanted to hang out with, the beating heart of the most beloved musical act in history, the drummer by which all drummers will be measured for all time, and the man with a very simple message for the world: peace and love,” Walsh continued. “Think of the power we can harness when so many of us from so many corners of this great big world can all come together at the same time and say, think, post online, or turn to their neighbor and straight-up declare ‘peace and love.’ Demand it! Peace and love. That’s what we’re here for. That’s who we are. That’s why we do what we do. That’s the only thing that makes it all of this worthwhile. It’s my great honor and pleasure to carry this message on behalf of my brother, my friend, and my favorite drummer. … Grab hold of someone you love, or someone you don’t know, if you’re able, and declare to the world what we’re all about. Peace and love.”

In 1968, the Beach Boys’ Mike Love accepted a personal invitation from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Indian guru known for developing the Transcendental Meditation technique, to take part in an advanced TM training course at the maharishi’s ashram in Rishikesh, India. Much to Love’s surprise, upon his arrival the first Westerners he encountered were his longtime pop-music rivals: Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr.

“I had traveled to the other side of the world with the expectations of total seclusion, but here I was, impossibly, in the media spotlight, as reporters from all over were trying to cover the Beatles in Rishikesh. It was hard to fathom,” Love recalled in his 2016 memoir, Good Vibrations. “The Beach Boys and the Beatles had been circling each other for the last five years on three different continents — a battle of screaming headlines and devoted groupies and demanding egos — and now I ended up with them in a remote compound with scorpions crawling around at night and monkeys sauntering right up to your dining table in search of scraps.”

George Harrison, Mike Love, and John Lennon in India in 1968. (Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images)

Speaking to Yahoo Entertainment a half-century later, Love now recalls his seven weeks in India with the Beatles (and other celebrity participants, including Mia Farrow and Donovan) fondly, saying, “There are so many beautiful, spiritual things that came out of that whole get-together.” And one of those beautiful things was “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” a track from The Beatles — aka The White Album, which is being reissued as a seven-disc, 50th-anniversary boxed set this week and was greatly influenced by the Beatles’ stay in Rishikesh. And the bridge for “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” which McCartney once described in a 1984 Playboy interview “as a kind of Beach Boys parody,” actually originated from a McCartney/Love collaboration during that retreat.

“It was fascinating when Paul McCartney came down with the Blickman steel [guitar]. It was just he and I one morning, and monkeys and crows trying to get your food,” Love remembers with a chuckle. “So, he played this rough song, but he didn’t have the bridge. So I said, ‘You gotta talk about the girls in Russia!’ Because, I was thinking about [the Beach Boys’] ‘California Girls,’ the way we sang, ‘East Coast girls, West Coast girls, Southern girls’ and all that. Well, he did, and I told him ‘Georgia, Moscow,’ and all this other stuff. Turns out he’s quite capable of fashioning a tune! And he did, and he took that concept and wrote that bridge, and he played every instrument on that recording.”

The resulting famous bridge — “Well, the Ukraine girls really knock me out/They leave the West behind/And Moscow girls make me sing and shout/That Georgia’s always on my my my my my my my my my mind” — sounded unmistakably Beach Boys-esque, and Love theorizes, “I think because I was there, [McCartney] started thinking in that kind of vernacular.”

Love, who is still a devout Transcendental Meditation practitioner, also recalls how the India visit inspired another one of The White Album’s most famous tracks. “Prudence [Farrow] was there, Mia’s sister. And John Lennon was taught the guitar fingering technique [“clawhammer”] by Donovan and used it in the song, ‘Dear Prudence,’” he says.

During her stay, a depressed Prudence Farrow reportedly became so serious about her meditation that she holed herself up in her Rishikesh chalet in an attempt to expedite the enlightenment process — so a concerned Lennon wrote “Dear Prudence” to try to coax her out of seclusion. Towards the end of the “Esher demo” version of the song, Lennon can be heard saying of Prudence: “No one was to know that sooner or later, she was to go completely berserk under the care of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. All the people around were very worried about the girl, because she was going insane. So we sang to her.”

“I know Prudence very well, and she’s a wonderful woman. She’s a TM teacher, like I am as well,” Love, who became a TM teacher in 1971, tells Yahoo Entertainment. “She’s taught thousands of people to meditate. She has a degree in Sanskrit from the University of California at Berkeley, OK? She’s a smart, smart lady. But very devoted too.”

In the glossy, coffee table-worthy book that accompanies the new White Album box, Beatles authority Kevin Howlett stresses, “In the 50 years since the time in India, very flippant remarks, rumors, and journalistic skepticism have tended to undermine the reality of how seriously the Beatles approached their studies there. They were very impressed by the maharishi in his teachings.” However, Love’s fondest memories of his time in India with the Beatles seem to center on Harrison, with whom he connected over an especially deep love for Eastern spirituality.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Mike Love, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr at a party to celebrate Harrison’s 25th birthday at Rishikesh, India, Feb. 25, 1968. (Photo: Cummings Archives/Redferns)

“We both loved Indian food. He loved Indian music; he studied sitar [with Ravi Shankar]. We loved Maharishi. He was a devotee of the Hare Krishna movement. I think we had a lot in common in that way,” says Love of his bond with Harrison. The two rock legends even celebrated their close-together birthdays in India. “What was really fascinating, on my birthday, March 15, 1968, the Beatles — I mean, Ringo had gone back to England, but John, Paul, and George, and Donovan — all played a song called ‘Spiritual Regeneration Movement Foundation.’ At the end of it, he goes, “Happy Birthday, Michael Love,’” Love remembers with a smile. After Harrison passed away, Love wrote a “very sentimental song” for him, “Pisces Brothers,” which appears on Love’s 2017 solo album, the Unleash the Love.

The Beatles’ stay at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram — a place where, notably, they had no electric instruments — turned out to be the group’s most creative songwriting period. Lennon returned from the trip with 15 tunes, McCartney with seven, and Harrison with five; Starr also finished his first solo composition, “Don’t Pass Me By,” during his stay. (Some reports say the Beatles returned from Rishikesh with 30 to 48 songs, but regardless, 18 of those songs eventually ended up on the original White Album release.) It soon became apparent that there were enough songs for a double album. According to Howlett’s White Album box liner notes, while still in India, Lennon sent a postcard to Starr (who’d only lasted 10 days at the ashram before flying home), saying, “We’ve got about two LPs worth of songs now, so get your drums out.”

In May 1968, the Beatles convened at Kinfauns, Harrison’s English countryside bungalow in Esher, Surrey, where they recorded 27 rough tracks on Harrison’s reel-to-reel tape deck — capturing the acoustic feel of their Rishikesh writing sessions. During a White Album press listening event at Hollywood’s Capitol Studios in September, the late Beatles producer Sir George Martin’s son, Giles Martin (who oversaw the 50th anniversary White Album box) marveled at the relaxed, joyful vibe of these home recordings — long known as the much-bootlegged, above-mentioned “Esher demos,” which now comprise the third disc of the new boxed set.

“It was like Champagne popping out of a Champagne bottle — they had so much material. And they wanted to record everything,” said the younger Martin. “None of the band members knew the songs that well. It was almost as if they were passing a guitar around a campfire, saying, ‘Paul, what do you got?’ ‘John, what do you got?’ ‘George, what do you got?’ And you can hear Ringo or someone banging a tambourine or tables in the background. … So, we had this extraordinary situation where the Beatles went from almost around the campfire, playing their demos for each other, to going into the studio.”

Added Martin: “The perception is The White Album is fragmented; it’s the sound of the Beatles breaking up. And going through all of these tapes and everything, it really isn’t.”

On the subject of friendship, Love describes the Beach Boys’ relationship with the Beatles in the 1960s as more of a “mutual admiration” than a rivalry, but says they always spurred each other on creatively, in India and elsewhere. (He proudly recalls a time when the Beach Boys’ Bruce Johnston flew to England to play the acetate of the Beach Boys’ landmark 1966 album, Pet Sounds, for McCartney and Lennon, after which the Beatles “got busy doing whatever they did” with The White Album’s equally adventurous 1967 predecessor, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.)

“How could you not like [the Beatles’] songs? And they loved the Beach Boys stuff, too. … We were friends,” Love gushes. “That was a very special time [in India]. Very sweet.”

This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.

Giles and George Martin in 2006. (Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

When Giles Martin, head of sound experience at Sonos Inc. and son of late legendary Beatles producer Sir George Martin, first expressed interest in a music career, his father tried to dissuade him, worried about the comparisons that would inevitably ensue. “My dad talked to me about it when I was 14, so I had already made the decision to defy him quite early on,” Giles tells Yahoo Entertainment. “He did discourage me!” But when the elder Martin, a man who’d based his entire career on his “golden ears,” started going deaf after years of long recording sessions, he turned to his teenage son for help in the studio.

“And so,” Giles recalls, “I became ‘his ears’ when I was quite young.”

Says Giles, “He needed to hide it from people, because he realized people wouldn’t want to work with him if he was deaf.” Giles remembers a moment when his father was producing British new wave band Ultravox’s landmark 1982 album Quartet, back when George’s hearing loss was still largely an industry secret. “He came out of his studio, and I asked him, ‘How is it going in there?’ He held up a plate and answered, ‘Two boiled eggs.’ He thought I’d said, ‘What did you have for lunch?’ If you lose your hearing, it is very tough.”

Once the two Martins began recording together, they formed a symbiotic studio relationship that Giles, who’d grown up mostly unaware of the Beatles’ legacy, describes as “hard to know where it begins and where it ends. He would say, ‘Are the violins in tune? Are those cymbals too loud?’ High-end stuff. Gradually, I learned you really have to focus on what the other person is trying to hear. … That’s probably why I can hear in frequencies now, why I can tell what 10 kilohertz is or 400 hertz is, because I was very aware of that. We would sit at the piano, and he would tell me what he couldn’t hear. I had to listen to what he couldn’t hear. That’s how I got into it.

“He was an amazing person to learn off. It was basically through his loss that I gained, in a terrible way, but he gained as well — because it meant he could carry on working.”

George, who passed away in 2016 at age 90, first noticed his inability to hear certain high-frequency sounds in the mid-’70s, and he was almost entirely deaf by the time he retired in 1998. But his son says that George never lost his sense of humor. “One time, I went to pick him up in his apartment. He used to have breakfast in bed. We were recording an orchestra. I said, ‘Dad, we are recording in 45 minutes.’ He was lying in bed, and he went, ‘You know, sometimes, Giles, you get to my age, and you say to yourself, f*** ’em!’” Giles laughs. “So I went on my way to the studio to set up the line, and I went to the studios and I recorded them. The trust grew [between us], if that makes sense.”

Giles went on to keep his father and the Fab Four’s legacy going strong, working on Cirque du Soleil’s Beatles-themed Las Vegas show Love, Martin Scorsese’s George Harrison documentary Living in the Material World, Ron Howard’s Beatles documentary Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years, the Beatles’ Rock Band video game, Paul McCartney’s New album, and last year’s 50th anniversary reissue of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

“That was quite emotional,” Giles says of that latter epic project, “because I started doing that and I remember [my father] died. I went back into the studio, started looking at Sgt. Pepper [archives], and his was the first voice I heard. That was kind of strange.” (Regarding plans for similar deluxe reissues of two other Beatles LPs about to celebrate 50th birthdays, The White Album and Abbey Road, Giles says, “I can’t really comment on any of those two things. But I’m certainly keeping me in work.”)

Giles has also recently worked with George Ezra, with James Bay, and on the British action franchise Kingsman and the upcoming Elton John biopic Rocketman. But his job at the speaker company Sonos, which went public this week, recently offered him a most unusual opportunity: creating an official new opening and closing bell for the Nasdaq stock exchange, a first in the bell’s 18-year history.

Teaming with Oscar-winning film sound engineer Chris Jenkins (who recently joined Sonos’s industry panel and worked on Eight Days a Week), Giles says he “thought it would be fun to make a bell sound by not using any bells. … It’s quite a good laugh, doing it.” Inspired partly by his father’s studio creativity (“My dad used to tell me that he’d worked on making a sort of a gong sound just by using a grand piano”), Giles says they “used about a hundred developments in the recording,” experimenting with Tibetan bowls and mallets, screwdrivers, coins, “glass sounds,” and even banging Giles’s house keys against a metal angle-posed lamp. “We wandered around our homes looking at things that we could hit that would make the sound of a bell,” Giles says, chuckling. “You go mad, looking at objects you can hit.”

But in the end, he and his Sonos team came up with “a Nasdaq bell sound that wasn’t going to be a gimmick, that they would use and like. … I never thought Nasdaq would be open to new ideas, but they went for it.”

Despite all this, and his background of being the surrogate ears of one of the greatest producers of all time, Giles remains humble, shrugging, “I just feel lucky to get the work, really quite honestly. I never take it for granted.” He confesses that he’s not very proud of some his earlier production work (“I wrote with a fantastic band when I was about 23 called Monorail, who you would never have heard of, and I think I did a really bad job on that record; I was too inexperienced and weak with them, and they deserved better, in all honesty”) and that he’s been “really privileged.”

“I’ve never felt, and I still don’t feel, that I can justify my position,” Giles says. “Whatever the cynicism that one may have about being the son of someone famous — if you have drive, that’s what keeps you going — my own criticism of myself would be stronger than that.”

But Giles, who says, “My dad’s always with me,” recalls that George was never cynical about his son’s career path, once they finally started working together. And George was apparently just as humble as his son. Giles remembers one special conversation they had toward the end of his father’s life. “He was very sick. I said to him, ‘Dad, do you ever think, God, I can’t do this?’ He goes, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Well, some of the artists around think I’m not good enough.’ He goes, ‘That’s ridiculous. I think you’re better than I was. I didn’t even know I was brilliant!’ And I said, ‘God, you are so lucky to think that.’”

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.