Ringo Starr Reinvents Wings as Reggae

0:00If you want the latest technology in your laundry room, you gotta visit the Bray and Scarf Upgrade and Save laundry event right now with our best price guarantee, helpful experts, and extra bonus savings plus next day delivery on our top selling GE and GE profile washers and dryers. It's the best time to upgrade and save. See for yourself why Bray beats big. Visit any of Bray and Scarf's convenient locations or shop online at Bray and Scarf.com. Where does it cost more to get more? Imagine finding a diary entry you wrote years ago. Right, like back when you were a teenager or something. Exactly, written in like blue ink on crinkled paper. And it's just full of this heavy dramatic top of your lungs angst. We all have those. Yeah, we really do. But now imagine taking that exact same memory, those exact same words, and deciding to rewrite it today. Wow. But rewriting it as this laid back, reflective digital blog post

1:00while a reggae band plays softly in the background. That is quite the visual. Right. It's the exact same core memory, but it's being translated through decades of lived experience. And that bizarre, fascinating translation is exactly what we are going to explore today. Welcome to the deep dive, by the way. Glad to be here. And it really challenges this assumption we all have about permanence. What do you mean by that? Well, usually when we talk about building something a house, for instance, we expect it to stay put. Right, sure. You pour the concrete, you put up the drywall, you paint it, and the project is just finished. We like to believe that once a creative project is out in the world, its identity is locked in. Locked in stone. But then you look at the world of music, and specifically the way some artists relate to their own past work. And suddenly that concrete foundation looks a lot more like wet clay. Definitely. Today's deep dive is based on a really fascinating single source. We're looking at a Wikipedia article detailing the history of the song Wings by Ringo Star. A great topic.

2:00It is. Our mission today is to explore the anatomy of this one specific track, because it essentially lived two completely different lives, released 35 years apart. 35 years is a long time to sit with a song. Yeah, it really is. We are going to unpack how an artist revisits, reinvents, and reinterprets their own past. And what the drastically different critical receptions tell us about art, time, and how our environment shapes what we create. It is the perfect case study for this, honestly. Looking at the song's evolution from its original release in 1977 to its total reinvention in 2012, it offers a truly unique lens. It really strips away the illusion that a piece of recorded music is just some fixed artifact in a museum. Exactly, it's a living thing. So whether you're a music history buff or someone catching up on pop culture, you're just insanely curious about the creative process. This story perfectly captures that eternal tension between an artist's internal vision

3:01and the public's perception. So what does this all mean? To understand why a song needs a massive reinvention in the first place, we have to go back to its birth. Which takes us to the absolute peak of the analog studio era, August 26, 1977. When an album meant vinyl. Precisely. This is when the original version of Wings was released in the US. It was a single via Atlantic records featured on the album Ringo the Fourth. And it was backed with a non-album track called Just a Dream on the B-Side. The classic B-Side. Right. And the production details of this original 1977 release are incredibly telling. OK, let's unpack this. Because you can't just talk about a late 70s track without talking about the sheer scale of how they made music back then. Absolutely. The 1977 version was produced by Arif Martin, who was, I mean, he was an absolute titan in the recording industry. The legend. Martin was known for putting together these lush, highly orchestrated, densely populated arrangements. And the personnel he assembled for this track reflects that philosophy completely.

4:01It was an army of talk to your talent. It really reads like a fantasy draft of 1970s studio musicians. It does. You have Ringo's star on lead vocals and drums, naturally. Naturally. But then you also have David Spinoza on lead guitar, Tony Levin on bass, Don Grohlnick on keyboards, and either Jeff Merinov or John Tropicia playing additional guitars. That's already a massive lineup. Oh, but wait, on top of all of that, you have the legendary Steve Gad also playing drums. Wait, I need to stop right there. Two drummers on one track. Two drummers. Ringo's star and Steve Gad playing simultaneously. I have to ask physically, what does that actually do to the sound of a record? It's massive. Right, because having that kind of lineup feels like you are building this heavy rock foundation. Yeah. How did that match up with how this song was actually received? Well, it matched up perfectly with the expectations of the era, really. It created a very specific sonic weight. When you have two drummers playing in an analog setup, you are moving a massive amount of literal air

5:03in the recording room. Wow, yeah, just the physics of it. Right. In 1977, musicians played together in the same physical space. So the sound of Steve Gad's snare drum is bleeding into the microphones that are picking up David Spinoza's guitar. Oh, so you can't just isolate them. You can't separate them at all. It forces everyone to lock in and feed off each other's physical energy in the room. So it's less like assembling a puzzle and more like, I don't know, watching a live Broadway ensemble. That's a great way to put it. Everyone has to hit their mark at the exact same time and that shared adrenaline basically becomes part of the recording. Exactly. And the critics recognize that. Energy at the time. If we look at a review from Cashbox Magazine, this is dated September 3, 1977, they praise the track specifically for that dense, collaborative sound. What do they say? They wrote that the haunting melody is carried by a closely knit ensemble of vocalists. And they specifically highlighted that the track was supported by a richly textured horn section and stabbing guitars. Stabbing guitars?

6:04That is such a visceral phrase. It implies like urgency, aggression, something very forward leaning. It really does. And it perfectly contextualizes where this song sat in Ringo's career at the time. Chronologically, the single was sandwiched right between his releases of Les Bresses and drowning in the sea of love. This was an era of big, dramatic statements. The wall of sound was the goal. I have to admit, looking at the success of that 77 track, revisiting it 35 years later feels incredibly risky. It is risky. Usually when legacy artists decide to go back and touch their classic, richly textured hits, it ends up feeling like a cash grab or just a desperate attempt to stay relevant. Yeah, fans can be very protective. Exactly. If the original had these stabbing guitars and this haunting melody that critics loved, why not just let it live in the pantheon of 1970s rock? Was Ringo just bored? That's the natural assumption, right? But the reality is much more about the unavoidable shifting of an artist's internal landscape.

7:0635 years is a long time to live with a piece of your own art. It is a lifetime. So we jump forward to January 10th, 2012. Ringo Star releases the album Ringo 2012 via HIPPO Records. And right there on the crack list is Wings. But something is completely different. The genre has shifted entirely. We have gone from a heavily layered, urgent 1970s rock epic to Reggae Rock. Which feels less like a simple remix and more like a complete tear down of the house. Rock to Reggae is a massive pivot. What's fascinating here is how Ringo explained the shift. He was very open about his motivations. He said, this is a song I first recorded on Ringo the 4th back when an album meant vinyl. These are different days. And it's one of those songs I always wanted to revisit. I love that phrase when an album meant vinyl. It's so evocative. It really acknowledges that the medium itself dictated the art. Right. And he has a really charming detail about his co-writer on the track, Vinnie Poncia. Ringo said, I wrote Wings with Vinnie Poncia in New York. And he doesn't know I've done this yet.

8:06I'm gonna surprise Vinnie and send it to him. The idea of surprising your co-writer with a fundamentally different version of your shared work decades later is just wild to me. A fun little surprise in the mail. It takes a lot of confidence. But the justification he gives for the genre shift is what really caught my eye. He says, for the last two years, I've been listening to a lot of Reggae. So this album has a reggae feel to it. What can I tell you? I'm a product of my environment. I always love the sentiment of this song. And I'm glad we finally got it right. Finally got it right. That is a loaded statement from the original creator. It really is. And I want to challenge that premise a bit. Go for it. Ringo says he always loved the sentiment of the song. But this changing the genre completely from a rock track driven by two drummers and stabbing guitars to a laid back reggae groove does that fundamentally alter the original sentiment? It's their question. It just seems impossible to change the musical skillet in that drastically, without changing the emotional meaning of a lyrics.

9:08It absolutely alters the delivery of the sentiment. And we can see exactly how by looking at the mechanics of reggae versus rock. Break that down for me. Well, in rock music, especially the 1977 style we discussed, the rhythm section is driving forward, heavily accenting the downbeats. It creates that urgent stabbing feeling. Reggae does the exact opposite. Reggae is built on the offbeat, the syncopation. The emphasis is on the spaces between the beat. Oh, I see. So it physically forces the singer to lay back. You can't shout a rock lyric over a reggae offbeat. You have to stretch the words out. You have to let them breathe. Precisely. The words take on a more reflective, perhaps more mature way, rather than an urgent, angsty one. And this shift in genre is mirrored perfectly by the shift in how the 2012 version was actually produced. Because he didn't bring Eric Martin's army back into the studio. Oh, no, he definitely didn't. The 2012 version represents a completely different philosophy of creation. It was produced by Ringo himself,

10:09along with Bruce Sugar. So much smaller team. It is a much more intimate enclosed process. In 2012, Ringo is doing the heavy lifting across the board. The credits list him on drums, percussion, vocals, keyboards, and backing vocals. Wow, that is the complete opposite of the Broadway ensemble. Completely. The 1977 version is a bunch of people bleeding into each other's microphones in a massive room. This 2012 version sounds like a stop-motion film. That's a really good comparison. Yeah, like Ringo was in a digital studio laying down the drums alone. Then he goes back and meticulously layers the keyboards over it. He is in total control of every micro movement. That is a perfect analogy. The digital audio workstation replaced the massive analog studio. The massive 77 guitar army is completely gone. Right. In its place, you have a much smaller, trusted circle. You've got Joe Walsh on guitar, Ben Monttenschen on organ, and Bruce Sugar handling the piano and horn arrangements. You also have Amy Keys and Kelly Moneymaker

11:09providing the backing vocals. It's an isolated, controlled environment. So when Ringo says, I'm a product of my environment, he means it both musically and technologically. Absolutely. In 1977, his environment was a massive room with a dozen musicians trying to create a vinyl hit. In 2012, his environment was a digital studio, having the tools to layer most of the track himself, asynchronously, while being heavily influenced by two years of just listening to reggae. And that shifted environment stripped away the externalized rock performance and replaced it with a very personalized, grew-driven digital project. Ringo felt this new environment allowed him to finally get the core sentiment of the song correct. Which is a beautiful realization for an artist to have. But here's where it gets really interesting. Because while Ringo's star, the creator of the intellectual property, felt he had finally achieved his true vision, the audience reaction was an entirely different story. The critical reception was undeniably fractured. That is putting it mildly. Let's look at the review from Billy Dukes.

12:11He was writing for Ultimate Classic Rock in January 2012. Oh, this one is tough. Dukes absolutely slammed the reggae remake. He compared it directly to the 1977 original and called the new version, a less passionate borderline lifeless vocal performance. Lifeless is a very strong critique for an artist who felt he had just breathed new life into an old idea. It's brutal. But it makes me wonder if Dukes is simply misunderstanding the mechanics of the genre shift we just talked about. How so? I mean, if you were sitting there with headphones on, specifically waiting for the urgency of stabbing guitars and the dramatic haunting ensemble vocals of a 1977 rock epic, then of course, it digitally produced laid back reggae track is going to sound lifeless in comparison. It's a totally different frequency. Exactly. It's operating on a completely different emotional frequency. You're expecting a sprint and the artist is inviting you for a slow walk. This raises an important question about the role of nostalgia and how art is consumed and evaluated. Oh, totally. The critic, Billy Dukes, is reviewing the 2012 track,

13:13but he isn't really listening to it in a vacuum. He is listening to it through the heavy ghost of the 1977 track. Right, he can't unhear the original. Exactly. Ringo's identity as a musician has evolved over 35 years, but the critic's baseline is anchored firmly in the past. So Ringo is essentially saying, this is who I am today. This is how I feel the song today and the critic is saying, but I like to you were yesterday better. Pretty much. Who gets to decide when a song is actually right? Is it the artist who wrote it and feels it finally matches their internal rhythm or is it the critic who is comparing it to a 35 year old memory? It's the eternal struggle of the legacy artist. But what is truly brilliant about this story is how Ringo's star seemed entirely unfazed by that critical friction. He just kept going. He really did, because the 2012 version of Wings didn't just stop it being a debated studio recording. It continued to evolve and it found these totally unexpected afterlives that distanced it even further from the 1977 original.

14:14Which brings us to the music video. Which is such a fascinating pivot and how artist interacted with the internet around that time. It really was. Rather than going the traditional industry route of hiring a big budget director to shoot a glossy, tightly controlled, promotional video, Ringo fully embraced the collaborative potential of the digital era. He decided to crowdsource the official music video for the 2012 version. Crowdsourcing a music video in 2012 is such a specific cultural moment. You are basically handing over the visual identity of your song to the internet. Exactly. He used a platform called Genero.TV, which allowed independent filmmakers from all over the world to pitch their own visual interpretations of the track. That's so cool. Ultimately, a Vancouver-based filmmaker won the contest. Ringo personally reviewed the submissions, chose the winning entry, and publicly praised it, calling it a great little video. Just think about the trajectory of that. It's a journey. A song that started in a sweaty analog studio in 1977

15:15with an army of musicians has now morphed into a digital reggae track that gets its visual identity from a fan-sourced filmmaker on the other side of the globe. It really is wild. It's like the song is just collecting different environments as it travels through time. And its journey still isn't over, because the ultimate test of any song's durability, regardless of its genre or the era it was recorded in, is how it lives outside the studio in front of a live audience. Right, the live test. Ringo took this new reggae arrangement on the road. A live version was recorded in Atlanta by Ringo's star and his all-star band. So he brings it back into a live ensemble setting, but with the new DNA of the 2012 reggae version. Precisely. And that specific live recording in Atlanta ended up serving a purpose far beyond just entertaining a crowd. Oh, really? Yeah, if we connect this to the bigger picture, that live recording was utilized for a much greater cause. It was officially released on a charity compilation album, titled Songs After Sandy, Friends Red Hook for Sandy Relief.

16:16Wow. Which was put together specifically to help the victims of Hurricane Sandy. That completely re-contextualizes the song again. It does. It shows the profound, unpredictable journey of a single piece of intellectual property. It begins as an urgent vinyl rock track in the 1970s. It transforms into a reflective digital reggae experiment in the 2010s. It becomes a crowdsource canvas for an independent filmmaker in Canada. And finally, it serves as a live communal vehicle to raise money for Hurricane Relief on the East Coast. It proves that a song or really any piece of art isn't just a fixed artifact. It's a living, breathing entity that constantly adapts to the era, the technology, and the specific needs of the moment. Which brings us right back to you listening to this deep dive right now. The application of this goes far beyond music history. Exactly. Because what is the major takeaway from this incredibly weird winding journey of a single Ringo Star song? I think it is the realization that nothing you create

17:16is ever truly locked in stone. The concrete is actually wet clay. The concrete is wet clay. Just like Ringo Star looking back at a 1977 track and deciding to inject it with the reggae he'd been listening to for two years, you too are a product of your environment. Definitely. The tools you have today, the media you are consuming right now, the life experiences you've gathered, they fundamentally change how you see your own past work. And they should. Growth requires revision. So don't be afraid to revisit an old project, a dusty notebook, a discarded idea, or an old presentation with fresh eyes. Don't be afraid to rewrite it to entirely change its genre, so to speak. Yeah, take a risk. Take your own stabbing guitars and turn them into a reggae groove. That's what makes sense to you today. Even if the critics are worth your own harsh inner critic, try to compare it to the original until you as better the first time around. Ignore them. Sometimes you just have to tear down the walls and let your new environment shape the output so you can finally get it right. And that leaves us with one last philosophical puzzle

18:18to mull over. We've seen an artist fundamentally alter the genre, the instrumentation, and the entire emotional delivery of his own creation 35 years later. Yeah. If that is possible, at what point is a piece of art ever truly finished? Are the things we create today just living drafts, waiting for a new environment decades from now to rewrite them? Are they just foundations waiting for a new house to be built on top of them? Yeah. I love that. That is definitely something that you want. Thank you so much for joining us on this deep dive today. We love exploring these weird, wonderful corners of history with you and celebrating that curiosity. We'll be back with more fascinating explorations next time. Until then, keep looking at your old drafts with new eyes. You're listening to a podcast right now, driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're in a podcast, chances are you have something to say too. With rss.com, starting your own podcast is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and more.

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