Connecticut songwriter pens Beatles book
Gary Burr has worked with Ringo Starr, Carole King
When Meriden native Gary Burr met Ringo Starr, he says learned an important lesson about Liverpool residents: The more people like you, the more sarcastic and harsh they tend to be.
The 20-year friendship between the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Famer and the former Beatles member began when record producer Mark Hudson introduced the pair in the late 1990s. Hudson was producing for Starr and invited Burr to work with them, Burr said.
In their first rehearsal, Burr referred to Starr as “Ring.”
Starr sarcastically responded, “I’ve known him for five minutes, and I’m Ring,” Burr recounts.
“I was like, ‘Oh my god, I am a dead man. He hates me,’ ” Burr told Hearst Connecticut Media.
He remembers Hudson consoling him. “No, he only gives you [expletive] because he likes you.’ ”
Burr still writes and records songs with Starr to this day.
The songwriter aimed to depict this Liverpudlian humor in his first book, “Reunion: A Rock and Roll Fairy Tale.” The novel, released in July, is a fictional tale about the Beatles reuniting for a benefit concert organized by Sir Paul McCartney in 1998. The idea for the book came to him during the COVID-19 pandemic. Burr, looking for a creative project, imagined a world where John Lennon was still alive, that by some twist of fate Lennon had not come across nor was killed by Mark Chapman.
Burr is a self-described “Beatle nut” and played guitar in Starr’s band, the Roundheads, starting in 1998. They’ve recorded 10 albums together. Through their friendship, he has heard a multitude of stories from Starr about his days with Lennon, McCartney and George Harrison.
“One of the things I’m proud of in this book is that I kind of captured their personalities and
the way they talk. That was all just from hearing Ringo talk about the adventures they all had together,” he said.
In addition to his work with Starr, Burr has written songs for Reba McEntire (“Till You Love”), Kelly Clarkson ( “Before Your Love”), Christina Aguilera and Ricky Martin (“Nobody Wants to Be Lonely”), according to Backstage Nashville. He’s played in multiple bands, including Pure Prairie League, and founded the music trio Blue Sky Riders with his wife Georgia Middleman and Kenny Loggins. He also traveled around the world with Carole King, who wrote a glowing review about Burr’s book, for her 2005 Living Room Tour.
And according to Burr, the only professional music training he’s received is learning how to play the trumpet at Platt High School in Meriden. He considered becoming an electrician like his father.
That is, until he attended the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival at age 17.
“I was watching the people play at Woodstock, and I realized that those guys down there on the stage were getting a lot more girls than electricians were,” he said. “So, I came back and decided I wanted to be them, and not me. I didn’t care if I was a bass player, a guitar player, a roadie or a sound guy. I didn’t care. I just wanted to be part of that.”
He started a band called Martin Beck and taught himself how to play guitar and write songs.
“I was the guitar player, so all the guys in my band looked at me and said, ‘You’re supposed to write our songs.’ So, I started writing songs, and they were awful,” he said. “It was just total rip offs of Neil Young and The Beatles, just horrible. But little by little, over the years, I kind of figured it out.”
In 1972, he moved from Connecticut
to California to pursue a recording contract and issued his debut LP on Lifesong Records in 1978. After Lifesong went out of business, he returned to Connecticut and took a job installing fire and burglar alarms. His career breakthrough occurred at age 30, when he wrote the 1982 pop hit, “Love’s Been a Little Bit Hard on Me” for Juice Newton, and his songwriting career has continued since, according to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
To improve his writing, he’s relied on advice from role models like Carole King and Sir Paul McCartney, whom he’s met a few times, Burr said. Their first encounter occurred at the Novello Awards in London, around the time Burr was still touring with Starr and the Roundheads, he said.
“I saw (McCartney) sitting there at a table, and I went over to say hello. And right before, just when I was sticking my hand out, somebody ran in front of me and jumped in his lap. I looked back, and the guy that jumped in his lap was Elton John,” he said.
For “Reunion,” Burr drew from his 40 years of experience in the music business to depict the band’s studio sessions.
“The parts that I like the best are the parts where I actually have (the Beatles) sitting with instruments going, ‘OK, how does this song go? How long are we going to play? My fingers hurt,’ ” he said. “From years of being with bands and recording, you know what it feels like to hear the count off right before you start playing a song, and what it feels like to go out on stage and look out over the biggest crowd you’ve ever played and hoping that your lunch stays down. That’s my favorite stuff of the book.”
Burr made sure to get Starr’s approval to write “Reunion” before pursuing the project, he said. He’s not sure whether Starr has read it, but he plays the drums in the song Burr wrote for the book.
Burr aimed to capture the craze of Beatlemania in the book. He doesn’t believe Starr misses those times.
“I think in a lot of ways the toughest part of it stayed with them,” he said.
“When you walk down the street with Ringo, or you’re in a store shopping with him, people look at him like they’re seeing a real live smurf. Like, ‘Oh my God, I heard they existed, but there he is for real.’ And that’s got to be tough. That has never gone away,” he said.
Burr is working on a second book that’s a fictional story based on his own life. His role as a professional songwriter is constantly evolving, he said, but he’s grateful to have survived it for this long, and he has no plans of stopping.
“Every day that I wake up, when I want to wake up, and think, ‘What can I do today to scratch that creative itch that I always seem to have?’ is a great day,” he said.
He still has yet to return Starr’s sarcasm.