Ringo Starr Taps Into Childhood Rock & Roll Memories in ‘Rock Around the Clock’ Video
Ringo Starr channels some of his earliest rock & roll memories for a lively performance of “Rock Around the Clock” in a new music video for his recent cover of Bill Haley and His Comets’ classic.
The clip captures Starr laying down vocals and drums for the track in his Roccabella West studio, while it also includes additional behind-the-scenes footage from the making of the cover. There’s footage of Starr marveling at the bass playing of Nathan East, while elsewhere engineer Bruce Sugar captures the always slick guitar work of Joe Walsh in his home studio.
Starr’s rendition of “Rock Around the Clock” appears on his new EP, Change the World. In a statement, Starr remembered hearing the song for the first time: He was about to turn 15 and after spending both his seventh and 14th birthdays in the hospital for tuberculosis, he was eager to not waste another birthday there. Starr was doing well enough that the doctors allowed him to leave, and as a present, his grandparents took him to see the film, Blackboard Jungle, which prominently featured “Rock Around the Clock.”
“I’m sitting there, I’d been in the hospital, don’t know much about what’s going on lately, and they ripped up the cinema!” Starr said of the scene featuring the tune. “They just threw the chairs and went crazy. I thought, ‘WOW this is great!!!!’ I remember that moment like it was yesterday, it was incredible. And the song just rocks. So when it came to choosing tracks for this EP I thought of doing ‘Rock Around the Clock’ for all these good reasons.”
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Starr released Change the World back in September, and it marks his second EP of 2021, following Zoom In, which arrived in March. The new project features guest appearances from Walsh, Linda Perry, Trombone Shorty, Toto’s Joseph Williams, and Steve Lukather.
