Song of the Day 3/20: Ringo Starr, “Back Off Boogaloo”
Six feet, people, six feet! If someone is closer than that, tell them to back off. Adding the “boogaloo” is optional.
This was Ringo Starr’s second solo single, after “It Don’t Come Easy,” and like that song was co-written by an uncredited George Harrison. It came out when glam was about to enter its heyday, and critics were quick to note its similarities to Marc Bolan’s sound. Starr acknowledged that he got the idea for the tune from Bolan (Starr directed a concert film about T Rex). When he was at Starr’s home for dinner one night, Bolan said “boogaloo” so often it stuck in Starr’s head. “[Bolan] was an energized guy. He used to speak: ‘Back off, boogaloo … ooh you, boogaloo.’ ‘Do you want some potatoes?’ ‘Ooh you, boogaloo!'”
Despite that genesis, most people read the lyrics as yet another solo Beatle’s swipe at Paul McCartney. The slide guitar on the track and production were by George Harrison, with Gary Wright, of “Dreamweaver” fame, on the piano.
Starr re-recorded the track for his 1981 “Stop and Smell the Roses” LP in a new arrangement by Van Dyke Parks that drags in lyrics and musical bits from various Beatles songs and opens with the guitar riff of Starr’s earlier hit “It Don’t Come Easy.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYOVk3P71yM
Ringo redid the song again in 2017, this time basing it on a demo tape he found when he and wife Barbara Bach were packing for a move. Starr himself is playing electric guitar, with overdubs by Joe Walsh and Jeff Lynne.
