Recorded: 2004-2005
Producers: Ringo Starr, Mark Hudson
Released: 7 June 2005 (US), 25 July 2005 (UK)
Personnel
Ringo Starr: vocals, drums, percussion, organ, loops
Mark Hudson: guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, harmonica, percussion, vocals
Gary Burr: guitar, bass guitar, percussion, vocals
Mark Mirando: guitar, vocals
Robert Randolph, Steve Dudas: guitar
Billy Preston: piano, Hammond organ, vocals
Jim Cox: piano
Dan Higgins: horns, saxophone, woodwinds
Gary Grant: horns
John Amato: saxophone
Rose Stone Choir, Chrissie Hynde, Dean Grakal: vocals
Barbara Bach: devil voice
Tracklisting
‘Fading In Fading Out’
‘Give Me Back The Beat’
‘Oh My Lord’
‘Hard To Be True’
‘Some People’
‘Wrong All The Time’
‘Don’t Hang Up’
‘Choose Love’
‘Me And You’
‘Satisfied’
‘The Turnaround’
‘Free Drinks’
Choose Love is Ringo Starr’s fourteenth solo studio album. It was co-produced by Starr and his long-term collaborator Mark Hudson.
The album was recorded at Starr’s RoccaBella Studio in England, Hudson’s Whatinthewhatthe? Studio in Los Angeles, and LA’s Village Recorder. Its guest musicians include Billy Preston and Chrissie Hynde.
The title track features a guitar riff similar to The Beatles’ ‘Day Tripper’, and mentions the songs ‘What Goes On’, ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, and ‘The Long And Winding Road’.
The booklet contained a quotation by Smohalla, a Wanapum dreamer-prophet from the Wanapum tribe of Native Americans:
The drum is life. It is the sound of life within you.
When the world ends, the drumbeat will sound just once for you like it sounded for me.
It will sound bad or good.
It will ask you if you have been bad or good; And you can answer only one way.
The release
Choose Love was released by the Koch label in the USA on 7 June 2005, and by CNR in the UK on 25 July.
Despite positive reviews, the album failed to chart in both countries.
A dual disc set contained CD audio on one side and a DVD on the other. The DVD included features on the making of the album.
A two-disc special edition contained a bonus DVD including the album in enhanced stereo, a ‘making of’ documentary, the album lyrics, song-by-song commentary by Starr and Hudson, and a biography by David Wild.
