It's In His Blood

By RICHARD CORLISS

PERFORMER: RINGO STARR

ALBUM: TIME TAKES TIME

LABEL: PRIVATE MUSIC

THE BOTTOM LINE: The ex-Beatle is reborn in an album with the verve and sound of the Fab Four's early hits.

If anybody paid tribute to Ringo Starr when he turned 50, we missed it. Makes sense. Ringo was the Least Beatle, the onstage mascot, the one who didn't write songs or sing well. He was along for the amazing ride three pop geniuses took through the '60s. Early on, his goofy smile and steady beat kept the group grounded. Sometimes the other lads would throw him a tune (With a Little Help from My Friends, Yellow Submarine) that tapped the great good will he shared with his audience. But when John, Paul and George swerved off into drugs, mysticism and more complex music, the drummer lost the rhythm. Hitting the skins wasn't so much fun when the Beatles were hitting the emotional skids.

Ringo will be 52 next month, and now there's reason to celebrate. After a fitful movie career and some of the marital and chemical troubles mandatory for all aging rock stars, Ringo is back -- clean, keen and on tour with an All-Starr band that includes Todd Rundgren, Joe Walsh and Nils Lofgren. And as his first album in nine years proves, he is back in the 1960s. The songs for Time Takes Time, all new, sound beamed from some long-ago Top 40 station that plays only early, previously unheard Beatles songs.

Back Then is a nice place to visit; its anachronisms beguile you. Ten cuts, 10 hit singles on the Bandstand chart. Ten studiously simple tunes with instantly memorable hooks. Brevity used to be the soul of rock; one of these songs runs just 2 min. 45 sec., and most of the others are longer only because they repeat their choruses exactly as many times as you want to hear them. Best of all, no drum solos; the world's most famous percussionist was always a modest gent. Here he jollies things along with his tentative voice and 4/4 pummeling.

Time Takes Time occupied a notable team of four top producers (Don Was, Jeff Lynne, Peter Asher and Phil Ramone), 14 songwriters (including Ringo) and such graybeard kibitzers as Brian Wilson (who provides a Morse-code background % vocal of dit dit dit-dits on the Diane Warren tune In a Heart Beat). Somehow it all coheres, perhaps because this musical militia wanted to honor the group that shaped their pop tastes, and to do it with the one Beatle who could take direction from them as he did from Lennon and McCartney.

All the musicians here took these cues. Each song has melodies, lyrics and guitar riffs inspired by early Beatle hits, from the jaunty taunting of Golden Blunders ("You're gonna suffer the guilts forever . . . You're gonna mess up things you thought you would never") to the alley-caterwauling harmonies on I Don't Believe You and Don't Know a Thing About Love. The final song, What Goes Around, features Harrison-like guitars gently weeping in harmony, an extended coda a la Hey Jude, and at the end a cryptic spoken message. The phrase is either "All the same" or "I buried Paul."

All the same will do just fine. Maybe the tunes are less ersatz Beatles than upscale Archies: gourmet bubble gum. Maybe some of the lyrics took less time to write than they do to sing. Maybe the entire album marks Ringo's retreat to the simple life. But to this battered ear, the stuff sounds like music. The highlight is the mesmeric thumper After All These Years, Ringo's anthem to "traveling the world in a rock 'n' roll band. It's in my blood! It's in my blood!" Ours too. This is retro-rock to stir any '60s survivor. Rise from your wheelchairs, Beatlemaniacs, and shout, "Yeah, yeah, yeah!"