Starkey, son of former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, has pledged to work with Oasis until January 2006 - meaning Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend are unable to perform as The Who.

Starkey - the latest replacement drummer for tragic rock icon Keith Moon has been helping Oasis out since the British stars sacked Alan White last year.

Townshend, 59, says, "Shows we hoped to do in the summer seemed to fizzle and we lost our drummer to Oasis until January 2006.

"All the alternatives proposed, and which I have desperately considered, do not fit in with my current commitments. Sadly this forces a postponement of the planned Who activity for some indeterminate time."

The Who have also issued a second blow for fans - they're delaying the release of their eagerly awaited album, which was to be their first in 20 years.

Townshend says, "I had lots of plans but no hard schedule and unfortunately this is what has created this predicament.

"I work very slowly in the studio and either no one believed I was actually recording, or they got tired of waiting. Roger has done sketch vocals on several tracks and the results are very exciting, but I can't tour any more without a new record. I must hold my breath and live in hope."

February 11, 2005

New Ringo Video Update for February!

In the update Ringo is seen with a Philly basketball jacket cheering for the Philadelphia Eagles football team as he watches the Super Bowl from his house in Los Angeles. No comment on Paul McCartney's half-time show. Ringo mentions that his new album called "Choose Love" will be out in June and that he will tour in 2006! CLICK TO SEE UPDATE

Ringo Starr appeared by telephone Thursday morning on Micky Dolenz's show on WCBS-FM in New York City and said he's just finished mixing his new album with producer Mark Hudson, and the working title is "Choose Love (No Matter What you Choose, Choose Love)" as opposed to the old title of "One Leg at a Time!"

It should be released in June, Ringo said. But since he's busy with his computer artwork (going on sale as a "fine art" special edition later this year) and the Stan Lee superhero project, there won't be an All Starr Band tour this year. Look for him on the road again in 2006, he said.

Look for more details in the next Beatlefan/EXTRA!

(Special thanks to Al Sussman and Kris Tash.)

The majority of people living in the Dingle have voted in favour of plans which would reduce Ringo Starr's childhood home to rubble.

According to the results of a consultation exercise, 72% of residents now approve the Deputy Prime Minister's pathfinder scheme to bulldoze thousands of Victorian terraced houses across Merseyside.

The wide scale demolition, and the 15-year regeneration plan, would destroy buildings in Madryn Street, including the home of The Beatles' drummer.

The fresh findings provide an indication of how the pathfinder Newheartlands scheme is being received in Liverpool, Sefton and Wirral.

Conservationists, including the Merseyside Civic Society, are more in favour of refurbishment where possible, while English Heritage is working with Newheartlands to ensure certain historic buildings remain protected.

Peter Flynn, a spokesman for the Newheartlands pathfinder scheme, said they would refurbish 4,000 houses.

He added: It is a myth that Ringo's house in Admiral Grove will be demolished where his official plaque stands, as it is his house in Madryn Street that will be considered.

"Ringo lived in a number of houses growing up."

We all knew Labour was a government of barbarians. We knew they cared nothing about history. But are they so spiritually impoverished that they are prepared to insult the Beatles?

Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64? sang the twentysomething Beatles; and look what happens when Ringo Starr attains that age. How does the Labour Government propose to show its respect to him and his band, which must surely rank among Britain's greatest cultural contributions to the 20th century?

It is destroying his house. It is a fine terrace house in the city of Liverpool, a city that has no equal as a centre of culture. The birthplace of Ringo - the man whose voice immortally informs the world that he can get by with a little help from his friends - is a place of pilgrimage. It is a lodestar for tourists across the world, and deservedly so.

And how is Ringo's first home treated by his friends in the Labour Party? In an act of urban desecration unseen since the days of the Luftwaffe, it has been designated by John Prescott as one of the 400,000 houses to be destroyed.

And where will this mayhem take place? Across the map? Oh no: that is to miss the stupefying snobbery of this New Labour Government, and the treachery of Prescott to his regional origins. It is only in the North that Prescott has unleashed the wrecker's ball, heedless of the consequences for our Liverpool heritage. Strawberry Fields has already been closed because of vandalism; and now Prescott's bulldozers are coming for Penny Lane.

It is a policy that defies logic. It is not as though Labour believes we have too many houses in this country. On the contrary, this same Prescott recently announced that, as a nation, we were so short of houses that it would be necessary, over the next 20 years, to construct another 640,000 in the South-East, with 200,000 going on greenfield sites. The policy is philistine, expensive and environmentally disastrous.

On the one hand, semi-sacred northern terraces are to be flattened, when it would be cheaper and more sensible to renovate them in a way that many potential residents might like. And, with the other hand, Prescott waves the green flag to the developers who want to turn the South-East into a great homogeneous mass of roundabouts, multiplexes, out-of-town shopping centres and ribbon development.

But there is one thing worse than the illogicality and the brutality of this policy; and that is its complete refusal to take account of local wishes. In both cases - the harrowing of the North, the concreting of the South - Prescott is using his new anti-democratic regional satrapies to force his will on the local population. The people of Oxfordshire have been told they must accept the plonking of about 2,500 new houses every year, with 40 per cent of them going on greenfield sites. These quotas have been set by the South-Eastern Regional Authority, based in Guildford.

With all respect to Guildford, a fine town, we in South Oxfordshire feel no sense of fiefdom or fealty towards its regional quangocrats. We do not understand how they came to have this authority over our elected politicians; and we do not understand how we may remove them from office, since they seem to have simply appeared, by Prescottian prestidigitation. The fact that they take ever more decisions, of ever greater political importance, is a source of increasing friction and despair.

As for the occupants of the terrace houses of the North, they are not all so lucky as to live in a kind of Hovis advertisement. Some of the terraces are boarded up and infested with drug dealers. But there are a great many happy inhabitants who keenly resent the decision by regional government to go for the £500 million ($935 million) bung that goes with the Prescott demolition plan, and it seems most unfair that their voices are not heard.

So we have a plan that is symmetrically barbaric to the North and South, illogical and anti-democratic. Why is the Government doing it? We are told that it is because of a "market failure". The price of houses in the South is unbearably high, because there are too few of them, and, following the laws of supply and demand, the Government believes it can cause the price to fall by building hundreds of thousands of new houses. Houses in the North are dirt cheap, and it is presumably the intention to push up values by reducing the quantity.

The question is whether it is really the business of government to skew the market on this colossal scale, and whether Prescott is right to encourage this Stalinist resettlement of populations, from north to south.

The Treasury thinks of Britain as a machine for generating taxes, and it has made a utilitarian calculation that it can maximise tax yields if encourages the development of the South-East. With the assistance of Prescott and the House Builders' Federation, the Treasury has decided to assist the process by which the economic map of Britain looks like a swelling tear drop, getting ever fatter at the bottom; and to hell with local democracy or the environment.

This policy ignores the possibility that, if central government stopped interfering, we might see an acceleration of the recent phenomenon, by which high prices in the South have been driving people back up North, and thereby pushing up values there. Look at the East End of London, throbbing with yuppies, fighting over architectural features that they find in skips and restoring the slums with pride and money. Why does Prescott assume that people might not do the same in Liverpool?

Because, deep down, he assumes that people just don't want to live there. That is the only conclusion one can draw from his amazing decision to knock down Ringo's house: that he thinks it is not good enough. Well, that sounds like an insult and, if he takes my advice, John Prescott should go to Liverpool, in person, and apologise.

BRIAN TO RECORD WITH RINGO STARR!

Brian Setzer has agreed to play guitar on the forthcoming Ringo Starr CD. A true Teddy Boy at heart, the ex-Beatle's next release will feature "Rockabilly" tracks.

Setzer is very excited about the project and looking forward to the session which should place next month.

Ringo Video Update

In Ringo's latest video update (January 29, 2005) he mentions that his computer art will be available in June as fine art and briefly mentions the Stan Lee "Reluctant Super Hero" cartoon and that he go his teeth fixed. He's "hanging out" at LA at Mark Hudson's studio. Ringo says no longer uses the two finger peace sign "because of the damn terrorists" and uses three fingers... "peace and love, peace and love, peace and love." Ringo and the studio band sport white plastic bracelets. Ringo says they are the "Peace and Love - band."

NOTE From Ringo's publicist: The wristbands are not for sale. Ringo had them made up as gifts so he could pass them out and promote Peace & Love.

Ringo Starr to Save the World in Cartoon Series

Faster than a speeding snare roll: It's Ringo Starr, superhero.

The former Beatles drummer has undertaken a joint venture with Stan Lee's POW! Entertainment to develop a multimedia franchise in which Starr will play a superpowered animated version of himself.

The Starr-Lee project initially will be launched as a 60- or 90-minute DVD, but POW! and Starr's entertainment company, Rocca Bella, plan to explore TV, feature film and other avenues.

Starr will voice his own character. Remarkably, this will mark the first significant animated appearance by Starr as Starr. In ABC's 1965-67 cartoon series "The Beatles," he was voiced by Lance Percival; Paul Angelis portrayed Ringo in the animated 1968 feature "Yellow Submarine"; and Starr appeared as himself on a 1991 episode of "The Simpsons." Starr also served as a narrator on the British kids TV series "Thomas the Tank Engine."

The musician also will contribute original songs and incidental music.

"I've been making a CD, so I have lots of ideas," Starr said. Referring to his '90s touring group, he added, "(The action) will be set around a band. They'll be their own characters. It'll be a very strange All-Starr Band."

Starr called Lee "a great creator. (This project) wasn't anything I was looking for. But he had this idea of a musical superhero -- what I like to think of as a reluctant superhero. . . I'll zoom in to save the world, or a damsel in distress, or a small village. Who knows where he'll go?"

Lee -- originator of such comic book icons (and big-screen franchises) as Spider-Man, the Hulk and the Fantastic Four, said of Starr: "He's a great, great guy to work with. He's a real guy, and he's imaginative, and we seem to be on the same wavelength."

The collaboration came together after POW! chief operating officer Gill Champion and Rocca Bella head Marjorie Bach, both equestrians, met during a ride and began discussing the possibility of a collaboration.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Stan Lee's POW! Entertainment has forged a joint venture partnership with Ringo Starr to create and launch an original entertainment franchise. Financed, produced and distributed by IDT Entertainment, the new animation will transform Ringo Starr into an evil-battling, earth-saving (though reluctant) superhero with a great sense of rhythm. IDT Entertainment is a subsidiary of IDT Corporation , an international telecom, entertainment and technology company.

Legendary comic book creator Stan Lee and his new company Stan Lee's POW! Entertainment will develop the superhero project with Ringo and his entertainment company Rocca Bella for television, home entertainment/DVD, publishing and all categories of licensing and merchandising. Production on the animated series will begin in 2005 with a planned DVD roll-out first quarter of 2006. Executive Producers for POW! Entertainment are Stan Lee and COO, Gill Champion. Executive Producer for Rocca Bella is Marjorie Bach. IDT Entertainment CEO, John Hyde will supervise production.

Stan Lee, the creative force responsible for such world-renowned comic book characters as Spiderman, Fantastic Four, the X-Men and The Hulk, will base the superhero on Ringo's famed persona. Ringo will lend his voice to his animated superhero character.

"Ringo is beloved worldwide for his commitment to people and his singular wit. Our Ringo Superhero character will combine these qualities, along with Ringo's secret powers which people generally didn't know about because he has kept them secret, until now," said Stan Lee, who also serves as POW's Chief Creative Officer.

"What a blast this'll be! Ringo Starr is one of the most colorful, creative guys I know. Between the two of us, we've cooked up enough wild ideas for music, humor, action and superhero surprises in our new animated project, featuring the rollicking, ringed and bearded Ringo, to keep the fans happy and excited for years to come," Stan Lee added.

"This is going to be one of the most exciting adventures I've had all day!!!," said Ringo. "What a terrific opportunity to meet and work with the great Stan Lee. I'm so excited to become a 'reluctant superhero'. How great to hang out with Stan and laugh, laugh, laugh, as we're in the first stages of creating this soon to be masterpiece. Adding music to this adventure is something I am also looking forward to. See you in animation land ­ soon!"

Steve Brown, Chairman of IDT Entertainment added, "We all feel that Ringo is one of the great personalities of our time. This is a wonderful opportunity and we truly look forward to working with him on this exciting project."

Said Gill Champion, COO POW! Entertainment: "The combination of these two global icons to create a new form of animation utilizing the folklore of Ringo coupled with the Superhero know-how of Stan Lee is a natural. We see this as building a global business that combines great animation, clever story telling, an original musical score, licensing and merchandising, as well as the other ancillary opportunities to support the venture."

Marjorie Bach, executive producer for Rocca Bella, said: "I am excited and honored to work with such extraordinary talent. Ringo is not just a legendary drummer and musician but also an extremely talented artist and storyteller. Stan Lee invented the modern superhero, revived a dying industry and created a mythology. What a team! This animated project will allow us the freedom to create fantasy worlds based on Ringos' superhero character that will delight and inspire everyone, from the children of the 60's to the kids of today."

ABOUT STAN LEE'S POW! ENTERTAINMENT:

Founded by world famous comic book icon Stan Lee together with recognized entertainment and licensing industry veterans Gill Champion and Arthur Lieberman, Stand Lee's POW! (Purveyors of Wonder) Entertainment, Inc. specialize in the development and production of original franchises for animation and live-action feature films, television, DVDs, video games, merchandising and ancillary markets. Stan Lee, the Chief Creative Officer of POW!, is the creator and inventor of the modern superhero. A prolific author, Lee revolutionized the comic book industry by creating compelling characters who, despite extraordinary powers and talents, are nonetheless plagued by the same doubts and difficulties experienced by ordinary people. Some of his most enduring characters, like Spider-Man®(a), The Hulk®(a), and X-Men®(a), have been spun off into television programs and feature films that have grossed hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office.

ABOUT IDT ENTERTAINMENT:

IDT Entertainment is the IDT subsidiary focused on developing, acquiring, producing and distributing computer-generated and traditionally animated productions and other productions for the film, broadcast and direct-to-consumer markets.

Ringo Starr Loves America

Beatles legend Ringo Starr has reportedly revealed that he loves staying in America as he gets a lot of adulation by fans in the country while he is not treated similarly in his native Britain.

"Los Angeles is my favourite place. It's where my heart feels settled. Plus the audience love me over there and I love them, and they know that. They're really supportive. America's like my town. I love Americans," he said.

"You know I have this thing about England. They don't really love me enough. That's just how I feel. It's not a fact,it's just a feeling," he added.

Former Beatle Ringo Starr has admitted he feels unloved by the British public.

"You know I have this thing about England, they don't really love me enough," he told the Sunday Express S:2 magazine.

"That's just how I feel. It's not a fact ­ it's just a feeling."

But he added he was "moved and thrilled" by the reception he got at the Concert for George on 29th November 2002, the first anniversary of George Harrison's death.

Ringo divides his time between homes in Monaco, Los Angeles and Britain but his favorite place is Los Angeles.

He said he enjoys the casualness of LA and the way the audiences love him.

As the oldest Beatle who has outlived all but one of his younger bandmates Ringo has no plans to retire.

A tour with his All Starr Band is possibly in the offing and he is planning to record an album with his other band The Roundheads.

Ringo said, "As long as I can hold the sticks, there is no reason to retire. That's the joy of being a musician."

By Matt Hurwitz

Former Beatle Ringo Starr calls it, simply, The Cupboard. It's a shrine to The Beatles in more ways than one: a tiny wooden office over a Thai restaurant in West Los Angeles, up whose rickety wooden back stairs have climbed some of the biggest names in modern music to drop in, laugh and make dynamite records. The room is former Hudson Brothers Mark Hudson's Whatinthewhathe? Studio. The walls are covered with pictures of the Fabs themselves (and others), some autographed, some posed with the proprietor. "When Ringo first came here, I actually had to take some of them down," Hudson confesses. "I was afraid he'd think I was a stalker!"

Hudson has been Starr's producer (as well as, occasionally, for Aerosmith, Hanson and others) since the recording of the 1998 Vertical Man. He's done four albums, including the recent, very well-received Koch release, Ringo Rama. They've been friends even longer, dating back to the early '70s, when fellow Beatle John Lennon was in L.A. for his "Lost Weekend" period. Pals with both Starr and legendary songsmith/singer Harry Nilsson, Hudson was even in attendance that fateful night at The Troubador when Lennon heckled the Smothers Brothers and was asked to leave after donning a sanitary napkin on his head and annoying a waitress. "It was a pretty raucous time," he recalls.

It all started after Mark Salerno and his brothers, Bill and Brett, saw The Beatles play in concert in 1965 in their hometown of Portland, Ore. "It was probably my first and only homosexual experience," jokes Hudson. "It was my lust for loving what they were doing and wanting to be a part of that. I just saw them having so much fun." Mark soon joined brother Bill's garage band, The MySirs ("I don't even know what that meant."), playing drums.

Not long after changing their names to Hudson ("Salerno sounded like we should be shot out of a cannon."), the three boys got a manager, a "Mr. Bailey," who produced their first record in 1966. "It was in the days when the engineers wore white smocks, and 'recording on multitrack' meant 3-track," says Hudson. The following year, at age 16, Mark and his brothers landed a deal with Scepter Records, changed their name to the New Yorkers and moved, suitably, to New York City. The group got on one of those amazing '60s package tours with their regional Scepter hit, "Mr. Kirby," playing on an impressive roster that included The Who, Deep Purple and Spencer Davis, all behind headliner Herman's Hermits.

Eventually, the group moved to L.A., making records with producer Dick Monda and singing backup for other artists, such as Kenny Rogers, who paid them each $8 for their services. "There was a camaraderie back then in recording," recalls Hudson. "You'd be walking down the halls of A&M and you'd see Joni Mitchell flirting with Graham Nash, and then suddenly someone would say, 'Hey, we're doing handclaps in here,' and everyone would get up and just walk in and handclap on your record. Now, you gotta go through their lawyer to make sure they can get a release and someone has to rub their neck."

In 1972, Elton John took notice and signed the newly renamed Hudson Brothers to his Rocket Records, assigning Bernie Taupin to produce. Two years later, the Hudsons had a Top 20 hit with Mark's Lennon-esque "So You Are a Star" on Casablanca Records. It was around this time when the trio met Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour producer Chris Bearde at a party. He was looking for a replacement for his stars. "He said, 'You guys are brothers, you're funny, you're cute, you're zany, come on down,'" recalls Hudson. "It was really the beginning and the ending of the Hudson Brothers. The TV guys didn't take us as serious comedians, because they thought we were a rock band. And the rock people didn't take us as serious rockers because we were on TV."

The group continued recording for a few more years before disbanding in 1982. Meanwhile, Mark picked up a few minor acting roles and eventually landed a brief spot in 1986 as the musical director for Fox's The Late Show With Joan Rivers.

But it was his relationship with producing legend Phil Ramone that led Hudson to return his focus to the recording booth. Acquaintances since the late '70s, Hudson decided to pursue "The Pope of Pop," as he (and quite a few others) refers to Ramone, "to learn more about this great lust that I had for sound. When the Hudson Brothers broke up, I sort of pursued bothering him, until he said to me, 'Okay, hang out.'"

"We just hit it off, and we started doing musical things together," Ramone remembers. Hudson began attending sessions - Billy Joel, Barbara Streisand, the soundtrack to Flashdance among them - and "I did everything from shutting up to assisting with vocal arrangements," Hudson says.

At that point, Hudson admits, he knew very little about the recording craft itself. "But I started to learn," he says. "I just would watch an engineer to see what he was doing, never really understanding it. In fact, I still don't really know. But I know, 'When he does that, this happens,' and 'When he doesn't do that, that doesn't happen.'" Little things like compression began to make some sense: "It's like a musical version of Prozac: no real lows, no real highs, just right in the middle. It kind of squashes everything and makes it pump."

At the same time, Hudson learned some even more important concepts from his mentor. "Phil would talk to me about the importance of making the artist feel comfortable. He said, 'If you make the band feel great or the singer trust you, that's when you're a great producer. Half of your great production will not be what you know musically; it's what you know emotionally.'"

"Mark puts the fun back in recording," pal Ringo enthuses. "We always have such a great time. We sing through toys! He had found a toy in a store called a Megamouth and we used it on the record. He lets the musician know that anything is possible.

"One of the problems with recording today," Starr continues, "is a lot of the younger guys not only don't know about the fun part, but probably couldn't mike a drum kit. It's almost like they have to relearn what they tried to forget."

Another element, often forgotten, that Hudson learned from Ramone was the importance of a good song: "A lot of engineers who have become producers really don't know about the song part. Great at sound, great at whatever, but the song has to come first."

"I found him very helpful to people, especially in the song department," notes Ramone. And, Aerosmith buddy Steven Tyler tells Mix, "Mark has an uncanny ability to write songs that would appear to be missing outtakes from Sgt. Pepper."

"Once you've got a great song, it's tough to screw it up," notes Hudson. "After that, you've got to see how much fun you can have recording it. And when your act is having fun and enjoying themselves, they trust you completely. So when you say to them, 'You're out of tune,' or, 'We're gonna look at re-doing the bridge again,' they believe you. That's what I learned from Phil. As opposed to these guys that say, 'Shut up and do as I say.'"

Hudson first worked with Ringo in 1991 during the recording of the ex-Beatle's Time Takes Time, which featured several tracks produced by Ramone. "To this day, Ringo brings up that his voice has never sounded better than with Phil Ramone," Hudson says. "He's the only one who took the care of finding the proper mic, which, I believe, was a U47."

Not long after, Hudson was "pushed out of the nest," as he puts it, and sent off on his own. "I was so comfortable in 'Phil Ramone Land' that I was afraid to go away," he admits. "To me, he was like a dad." By 1993, Hudson had settled into a new home, a large office across the hall from the present Whatinthewhathe?, where he not only worked but also lived for a time. Hudson began writing and producing demos, both his own music and for others. "I called myself the 'George Martin of demos,'" he says with a laugh, "because I knew about bouncing, which is another lost art. You don't have to do that anymore, but I had to [then]."

Working with a Tascam PortaStudio 488 8-track cassette machine, he began working with such acts as Aerosmith, Celine Dion and Ozzy Osbourne. In 1993, Hudson co-wrote Aerosmith's hit, "Livin' on the Edge," which garnered the group a Grammy™. "Once that happened, people wanted me to write songs with them," he recalls.

Hudson says his first true production gig was for an album by Chastity Bono. "John Kolodner, the A&R guy at Geffen, knew that I had known her since she was a child and asked if I'd produce her group's record. I was scared, but I knew I could, so I said, 'Yeah.'" Unfortunately, the record went unreleased, as did another project important to Hudson: "I did an entire Ozzy Osbourne album on that 488. And it's great!" he says proudly. "It's called Ozzyland. Ozzy tells me he plays it over the loudspeakers for the audience before he goes onstage."

By 1996, Hudson had moved across the hall to his present digs, where he had the opportunity to work with three young hit-makers, Hanson, directing vocals for their chart-topping Middle of Nowhere album ("MMMBop," et al). "They wanted me to work with Hanson because they were three brothers and I came from a three-brother act, someplace I really didn't want to go back to," Hudson says. "But then all of a sudden, these three guys walked in, like a little German version of the Hudson Brothers, with blond hair in bowl haircuts, and I saw the dynamic, the competition and the camaraderie." Hudson would work again with the group a year later to produce their Christmas album, Snowed In.

Hudson's next big break came when Ringo selected him to produce the 1998 release, Vertical Man. "Ringo was the first guy who took a chance [on me]. He told the record company, 'This is my guy, and if you don't like it, you're not getting me.' Any young producer out there, I hope you find a Ringo."

Starr assembled at Whatinthewhathe? with Hudson and his small group of conspirators, which Ringo dubbed The Roundheads. These included longtime Hudson guitarist Steve Dudas, lyricist Dean Grakal and keyboardist Jim Cox. At the Printemps de Troubadour, an annual songwriting retreat in France, Hudson met Scott Gordon, the house engineer. Gordon soon became the Whatinthewhathe? house engineer when things got to the point where Hudson could no longer engineer and perform at the same time.

By this time, Hudson had graduated from the 488 to more professional studio equipment, at least as complicated as he could deal with. "I don't really know what I'm doing. I suffer from, 'I keep turning the knob till it sounds good,'" he says, half-kidding. "I always wished I could find a prince somewhere; somebody who could just say, 'Marky, here's what you need.'"

In stepped David Frangioni and North Miami Beach-based Audio One. "Mark's approach to equipment, like his approach to anything involving music, is very unique," Frangioni says. "I told David I had a Mackie board coming and that I just want it to work," says Hudson. "So he set it up for me like a caveman. Track 1 was my bass; 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 were drums, etc. So track 8's always the keyboards, no matter what I do."

To accompany Hudson's Mackie 24Å~8 desk, Frangioni initially set him up with Alesis ADATs and, later, Tascam DA-88s. Hudson also has an impressive collection of vintage microphones, including an original Edison Voicemaster, an RCA 44 and a 1953 SM57, though the workhorse of the lot is an AKG C12VR, a gift from pal Timothy B. Schmit of The Eagles. The studio also boasts a fine guitar and amp collection: It's not surprising to learn that Hudson regularly plays a 1965 Hofner Beatle bass through a vintage Vox Super Beatle amp on Ringo recordings.

So, The Roundheads began meeting regularly at the studio, writing and recording together in what has now become a routine arrangement for the group. "Ringo often will sit there with us playing a TrapKat, an electronic drum kit, which is run through the board so we can adjust the level and hear each other talk," explains Hudson. "We all write together, sometimes three of us, sometimes five of us. And we usually get it till it's done completely."

Once recording began for real, Scott Gordon was asked to join the festivities. "I loved how Scotty worked," says Hudson. "He could put up with my multiple personalities. I need someone who, when I go, 'I want all high end, like a "cocaine mix": no bottom, I want it to straighten people's hair,' Scotty Gordon was there, going, 'All right, you mean like this, Marky?' And he just turned the knob, and I'd go, 'Yes!' It was great.

"An engineer really needs to be like a gunslinger," he continues. "There were so many times when I said, 'You've got to do this in a minute-and-a-half,' and he would just scramble and plug, and the next thing, Ringo's playing the drums. I wrote the song when I was hearing those drums. If we hadn't had that drum track, we would have had nothing." Hudson says he also prefers engineers who are, themselves, musicians and preferably drummers, as Gordon was: "I like their sense of rhythm. I think if more engineers were drummers, they would know how to punch in and out earlier."

Hudson also credits Gordon with capturing the unique, rich drum sound heard on Starr's Hudson-produced albums. "Scott Gordon was responsible for making Ringo love this room and the drum sound," he says. "Ringo always complained that during the first five years of The Beatles, you never heard the kick drum. Ringo said, 'I want a kick drum of death [on my album],' and Scotty nailed it, using a [AKG] D-30."

Starr enjoys the down-to-earth atmosphere of Hudson's studio, which is 180® from the traditional recording environment. "He likes that there's no glass window here," Hudson says. "There's no click-track. He always used to complain, 'Why can't I just count it off and start playing?' Here, he does."

Soundproofing was inititially not a concern in the 1920s-era structure, which still features the original wood floors and doors. During a track on Vertical Man, the neighbors came a-knocking. "At the very end of the song 'Mindfield,' Joe Walsh and I were playing our guitars, holding the last note of the song, waiting for the sustain to die out," Hudson recalls. "Suddenly, we hear these angry-sounding high heels marching down the hallway. It was the lady from the Thai restaurant downstairs coming to complain! She pounded on the door to tell us to turn it down. But when she saw Ringo sitting there at his kit - ''Ello!' - she got all friendly and offered to bring us Thai food. I wish I were a Beatle!" During the mix, Ringo decided to keep the high heels at the end of the track. "He said, 'Then at the end, we'll blow her up!'" an effect achieved by dropping a Fender Reverb amp on the floor and recording the "explosion."

In between recording Vertical Man and Ringo Rama, Hudson was introduced to Pro Tools while working on Aerosmith's Just Press Play, and the producer incorporated the technology into his studio for the new Ringo disc: "It became very, very effective from an editing point of view," he notes. Once again, Frangioni and Audio One were called on to create not one, but two nearly identical studios: one at Hudson's and one at Starr's new home studio in Sussex, England, known as Rocca Bella. The album was recorded at both locations. "We needed to have a robust, high-quality, scalable solution in place for both studios," explains Frangioni. "The studios had to be completely compatible and had to be compatible with other studios outside of their own." Frangioni suggested the Pro Tools HD|3 system, running Pro Tools 5.3 on Apple G4 computers, operated with Digidesign Focusrite Control 24 control surfaces. The systems each utilize a single Digidesign 192 interface (16Å~8 I/O). For recording, a half-dozen Rorke Data Cheetah removable drives are used, backed up by 50GB Sony AIT-2 tape utilizing Rorke drives.

For effects, Rocca Bella got a TC Electronic System 6000 effects processor, while Hudson's studio features a Lexicon 960L. Hudson supplements this with his trusty Alesis MidiVerb 3, the source of a favorite slap echo: number 51 on the dial. "It's a simple, cheap digital echo," he says. "You just turn it to '51' and you become Elvis and John Lennon; we use it all of the time." (Fans of Starr's 1999 release, Ringo StarrI Wanna Be Santa Claus," produced by Hudson, will remember the beginning of the disc's first track by Hudson calling out to engineer Gordon: "A bit more 51, a bit more 51, a bit more 51 - thank you!")

Along with Pro Tools came new engineers: Steven Tyler sideman Paul Santo, who did basic tracking at both studios, and Bruce Sugar, who handled the majority of later overdubs at Whatinthewhathe?

Ringo Rama, like all great Ringo records, features the usual lot of big-name guests, this time including Willie Nelson, Van Dyke Parks, Shawn Colvin, David Gilmour, Charlie Haden and Eric Clapton. Hudson had met Clapton during a brief stroll to the little village near Starr's home, and Starr promptly invited him to play on the George Harrison tribute, "Never Without You." "He just showed up with his guitar and his amp and said, 'Where do you want me to set up?'" Hudson remembers. "Our jaws just dropped. No lawyer, no masseuse; he just came and set up himself." Evidently, Hudson and The Roundheads (now including Nashville singer/songwriter Gary Burr) are not immune to being star-struck: "As soon as Ringo called Clapton out to show him something in the house, we each grabbed his guitar and posed for pictures of ourselves with it!"

Directing such luminaries in recording is not without its challenges, especially for such a fan as Hudson. "It's easy working with a baby band, because they want to be bitch-slapped. But when you're working with icon-proportion guys, you get kind of intimidated about asking them to do anything, because half of the licks that you've learned and used in your own songs you stole from them anyway! And you gotta be cool. He can't see you openly weep or blow an air biscuit [i.e., offer a flatulent response] or anything." Let's hope not.

Air biscuits and Hofner bass aside, Hudson continues to bring an incredible appreciation of a '60s Fab sound into the 21st century, with remarkably entertaining results. "If music is the brandy of the damned, then it's no wonder that Mark Hudson gets drunk on his passions," comments Steven Tyler. And, as Ringo says of him, "Besides being a terribly handsome man and rather tall for his age, he's a great musician, has lots of energy and he's a lot of fun to work with."

Former Beatles star Ringo Starr is destined for a return to the big screen - 40 years after making his movie debut.

The veteran drummer - regarded by many as the best actor in The Beatles - first showed off his talents in 1964 film "A Hard Day's Night," and subsequently in Fab Four movies "Help!," "Magical Mystery Tour "and "Yellow Submarine."

Starr, who also became a hit with children as the voice of characters in TV animated series "Thomas the Tank Engine" is now actively seeking film work once again, and is inviting studio bosses to send him scripts.

A pal says, "Ringo's just looking for the right project. He'd be great in a meaty character part and has a gift for comedy."

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