Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond)

"Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond)" is a song by English musician Ringo Starr that appears on his 1973 solo album Ringo. It was written by George Harrison, Starr's former bandmate in the Beatles, and was one of several contributions Harrison made to Ringo. Recording for the song took place in Los Angeles in March 1973, with Richard Perry producing the session. In addition to Starr and Harrison, the musicians on the track include Levon Helm, Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko and Garth Hudson of the Band, and multi-instrumentalist David Bromberg.

"Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond)"
Song by Ringo Starr
from the album Ringo
PublishedMaterial World Charitable Foundation (administered by Harrisongs)
Released2 November 1973
GenreFolk rock, country
Length2:45
LabelApple
Songwriter(s)George Harrison
Producer(s)Richard Perry
Ringo track listing
10 tracks
Side one
  1. "I'm the Greatest"
  2. "Have You Seen My Baby"
  3. "Photograph"
  4. "Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond)"
  5. "You're Sixteen"
Side two
  1. "Oh My My"
  2. "Step Lightly"
  3. "Six O'Clock"
  4. "Devil Woman"
  5. "You and Me (Babe)"

Harrison wrote "Sunshine Life for Me" in Ireland while staying with Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan. In a contrast with the reconciliatory mood among the four ex-Beatles when the song was recorded, the visit occurred shortly after the British High Court's ruling on the dissolution of the band in March 1971. The composition reflects the influence of Irish folk music, as well as aspects of country, hootenanny and the sea shanty tradition. In his lyrics, Harrison espouses an escape from modern life for the tranquility of nature. The "Raymond" named in the song title was a lawyer hired by Allen Klein, the manager of Harrison, Starr and John Lennon, to represent the three former Beatles and Apple Corps in the High Court action initiated by Paul McCartney.

On release, "Sunshine Life for Me" received a varied response from music critics, some of whom dismissed it as an inauspicious track. Among retrospective reviewers, several commentators have admired its lightheartedness and consider the song to be a worthy example of Starr's work in the country genre. Harrison biographer Simon Leng describes it as "musically an homage to the spirit of the Band's 'Rag Mama Rag'".[1]

Background and inspiration
The main house at Castle Martin, in County Kildare, where Harrison stayed with Donovan in 1971

George Harrison wrote "Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond)" while on holiday in Ireland with his wife, Pattie Boyd.[2] The couple stayed with Scottish singer Donovan,[2] a friend of the Beatles since the mid 1960s and a fellow student on the band's 1968 Transcendental Meditation course in India.[3] The visit took place over the Easter holiday weekend in April 1971, when Donovan, having recently become a tax exile in Ireland,[4][5] hosted a party for his musician friends at the Castle Martin estate in Kilcullen, County Kildare.[6] While discussing the song in his autobiography, I, Me, Mine, Harrison recalls composing the melody on an open-tuned guitar, and adds that he wrote it "like an old Irish folk song, a bit like country music".[7][nb 1]

The holiday provided a respite for Harrison in the aftermath of the Beatles' break-up.[6] According to Boyd, despite the freedom he now enjoyed as a solo artist, and the acclaim afforded his 1970 triple album All Things Must Pass,[9] Harrison was distressed at the hostility that prevailed among the four former bandmates.[10] On 12 March 1971, the British High Court had ruled in Paul McCartney's favour against the other three Beatles and their manager, Allen Klein, resulting in the group's company, Apple Corps, being placed into receivership.[11][12] During this time, press reports from the court case had conveyed the full extent of the acrimony that existed between Klein's clients – Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Starr – and McCartney.[13][14] Having expressed his frustration with the legal proceedings in another recent composition, "Sue Me, Sue You Blues",[15][16] Harrison addressed one of the Klein-appointed lawyers, named Raymond, in the parenthetical subtitle of "Sunshine Life for Me".[2][nb 2] In I, Me, Mine, Harrison says that Raymond was "in my mind at the time", hence the instruction for him to "sail away".[7]

Composition

"Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond)" is in 4/4 time and in the musical key of E. Rather than using formal chord changes, the melody is established through a modal riff over a constant E major chord.[20] Harrison biographer Simon Leng considers the song to be "musically an homage to the spirit" of "Rag Mama Rag" by the Band,[1] who epitomised the counterculture's embracing of pastoral values in the late 1960s.[21][22] Having spent time with the group in Woodstock in late 1968,[23] following the completion of the Beatles' White Album,[24] Harrison had drawn inspiration from the Band's focus on traditional song forms during the final year of the Beatles' career.[25] Among other authors commenting on the song's musical style, Starr biographer Alan Clayson deems it "a hootenanny hoe-down",[2] while Beatles scholar Michael Frontani writes of its "authentic country-bluegrass" mood.[26]

In Leng's description, notwithstanding the song's lighthearted qualities, the lyrical theme of "Sunshine Life for Me" is "escape from people, pressure, and society".[1] During the choruses, Harrison states that a "sunshine life" awaits him[27] if he were only able to escape from "this cloud over me".[28] In keeping with the rustic theme,[29] Harrison says that he would prefer to associate with trees than with humans,[30] since "most folks just bore me / Always imposing ..."[27] In the second verse, he dismisses Raymond with the words:[31]

There's a good life had at sea ...
That's the life for you
Sail away Raymond, sail away.

While recognising "cheerfulness" as the song's prevailing emotion, Beatles biographer Ian Inglis writes that Harrison's instruction to Raymond is "perfectly apt, given the song's likeness to a traditional sea shanty".[28] The composition ends with multiple vocal parts, staggering the chorus lines.[20]

Leng compares "Sunshine Life for Me" with "The Pirate Song", a sea shanty written by Harrison and comedian Eric Idle in 1975, in which Harrison sings of wanting to be a pirate rather than a celebrity.[32] Theologian Dale Allison views the track as an example of how its composer's work "often revels in the natural world".[30] According to Allison, the same "easy romanticism about nature" returns in "Blow Away" and songs from Gone Troppo (1982), while also contrasting with the "ecological anxiety" Harrison expresses in tracks such as "Tears of the World", "Cockamamie Business" and the Monty Python-influenced "Save the World".[33]

Recording

In March 1973, following the completion of his album Living in the Material World,[34] Harrison offered "Sunshine Life for Me" to Starr for inclusion on the latter's first rock solo album, Ringo.[35][nb 3] The main sessions for Ringo took place in Los Angeles that same month[38] and coincided with a spirit of reconciliation among all the former Beatles,[39] after Harrison, Starr and Lennon had grown disaffected with Klein as a manager.[40][41] In addition to "Sunshine Life for Me" and individual contributions from Lennon and McCartney,[42] Starr received co-writing assistance from Harrison on "Photograph",[43] which became Starr's first number 1 hit on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart when released as the album's advance single.[44][nb 4]

Garth Hudson of the Band played accordion on the song.

With Richard Perry as his producer,[35] Starr recorded the basic track for "Sunshine Life for Me" at Sunset Sound Recorders in early March.[51][52] He later referred to Ringo as his "accidental album",[51] since the project was planned at the last minute, and many of his collaborators were in Los Angeles for other reasons.[53] In the case of the musicians on "Sunshine Life for Me", Harrison was there primarily to join Starr and Lennon for business meetings at Capitol Records[54][55] before producing Ravi Shankar's Shankar Family & Friends album,[56] while the Band were in Los Angeles to record Moondog Matinee.[57] The line-up on the track included four members of the Band – Levon Helm (on mandolin), Robbie Robertson (guitar), Rick Danko (fiddle) and Garth Hudson (accordion)[29] – and multi-instrumentalist David Bromberg (on banjo and fiddle).[58][59][nb 5] A friend of the Beatles since their years in Hamburg,[63] Klaus Voormann played upright bass.[59]

The Band's Rick Danko, Levon Helm and Richard Manuel performing in 1971

Pop culture author Robert Rodriguez describes "Sunshine Life for Me" as a song "custom-crafted" for Starr,[64] who had previously demonstrated an affiliation for country music in his White Album composition "Don't Pass Me By"[65] and in his 1970 country album Beaucoups of Blues,[66] which he recorded in Nashville with producer Pete Drake.[67][68][nb 6] Harrison recalls in I, Me, Mine that it was "a fun session and a good track".[7] Both avowed fans of the group since the late 1960s,[70] Starr and Harrison recorded with the Band for the first time on "Sunshine Life for Me".[29] In Starr's case, the association continued with his appearance at the Last Waltz in November 1976 and subsequent live performances with Helm and Danko in 1989.[71][72][nb 7]

Overdubbing on the songs recorded for Ringo, including Starr's lead vocals, took place at Sunset Sound and other studios in Los Angeles[75] from late March to July 1973.[76] The other vocal parts on "Sunshine Life for Me" were sung by Harrison and Vini Poncia,[59] Starr's regular songwriting partner during much of the 1970s.[77][78] Leng highlights these multiple harmonies as both a "shared inheritance" of the Beatles and the Band, and a precursor to Harrison's later work with the Traveling Wilburys.[1]

Release and reception

Apple Records issued Ringo on 2 November 1973.[79][80] The release coincided with Lennon, Harrison and Starr suing Klein in the High Court in London for payment of funds owed to the Beatles and for misrepresenting their interests.[81][82] "Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond)" was sequenced as the fourth track on the album,[83] between "Photograph" and "You're Sixteen".[84] In his book The Beatles Solo on Apple Records, Bruce Spizer describes the first five tracks on Ringo as "one of the strongest album sides produced by any ex-Beatle".[58] The album cover consisted of a painting by Tim Bruckner in which Harrison, the four members of the Band and all the other musicians on the recording appear, alongside Starr.[85] The song was published by the Material World Charitable Foundation,[86] which Harrison had set up in April 1973.[76]

Comparing "Sunshine Life for Me" with the devout lyrical content of Living in the Material World, Beatles biographer Nicholas Schaffner opined that with this song Harrison had "managed to be amusing for the first time in years".[87] NME critic Bob Woffinden admired the track as "a sort of update of 'Mother Nature's Son'" on an album that conveyed "a zestfulness, an unashamed joie de vivre".[88] Less impressed, Michael Benton of Disc found that the song represented "a somewhat subdued patch" between the obvious hit singles, "Photograph" and "You're Sixteen",[89][90] while Alan Betrock of Phonograph Record dismissed it as "muzak without definition".[91] Writing in Rolling Stone, Ben Gerson identified "Sunshine Life for Me" as a "modal banjo tune" that "never manages to transcend its idiom, much less to fulfil it".[92]

Among retrospective assessments of the song, Chip Madinger and Mark Easter, writing in their book on the former Beatles' solo careers, admire it as "a hoedown stomper which was as country as any of the tracks on Beaucoups of Blues".[93] Ian Inglis writes of "Sunshine Life for Me": "The result is a convincing piece of good-time folk-rock that would have been at home on Fairport Convention's groundbreaking album Liege & Lief, which was itself hugely influenced by the spirit of the Band's Music from Big Pink ... [T]he impression lingers that the track was as much fun to make as it is to hear."[94]

In the 2005 publication NME Originals: Beatles – The Solo Years 1970–1980, Paul Moody included "Sunshine Life for Me" among Starr's "ten solo gems", describing it as a "joyful hillbilly romp".[95] Former Mojo editor Mat Snow cites it as an example of how Harrison and Lennon served their former bandmate well with their respective contributions to Ringo – in the case of "Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond)", by "amusingly hark[ing] back to Ringo's songs of life beneath the waves while extolling his yachting lifestyle on the surface".[96] Writing in The Cambridge Companion to the Beatles, Michael Frontani describes it as "perhaps the most lively track" on a "remarkable" album.[26]

Personnel

According to Bruce Spizer:[58]

Notes
  1. In Donovan's autobiography, he includes a picture of Harrison "play[ing] me his new song on my twelve-string" at Castle Martin in 1971.[8]
  2. Aside from ABKCO lawyer Peter Howard, the legal team assembled by Klein included Raymond Skilling,[17] a partner with the London law firm Clifford Turner.[18][19]
  3. Starr's only previous forays into rock or pop as a solo artist had been two Harrison-produced singles over 1971–72, "It Don't Come Easy" and "Back Off Boogaloo".[36][37]
  4. As had been the case since the group's break-up,[45] Harrison was the most active of Starr's former bandmates in supporting him on Ringo.[46] He also contributed the album's closing song, "You and Me (Babe)", a collaboration with Mal Evans, and played on Lennon's composition "I'm the Greatest".[47] This last session, featuring Starr, Lennon and Harrison,[48] instantly led to speculation in the press that the Beatles were about to re-form.[49][50]
  5. The fifth member of the Band, singer and pianist Richard Manuel, was incapacitated for much of this period due to his problems with alcoholism and drug addiction.[60][61] In the group's usual set-up when Levon Helm switched from drums to mandolin or guitar, as on "Rag Mama Rag", Manuel played drums.[62]
  6. According to Harrison's report to Starr and McCartney after his return from Woodstock in December 1968, "Don't Pass Me By" was the Band's favourite track on the White Album.[21][69]
  7. In addition, Robertson contributed the lead guitar part to "Snookeroo",[59] a song written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin that appears on Starr's 1974 album Goodnight Vienna.[73][74]

References
  1. Leng, p. 139.
  2. Clayson, p. 242.
  3. Mark Paytress, "A Passage to India", Mojo Special Limited Edition: 1000 Days of Revolution (The Beatles' Final Years – Jan 1, 1968 to Sept 27, 1970), Emap (London, 2003), p. 12.
  4. Jason Ankeny, "Donovan", AllMusic (retrieved 1 September 2016).
  5. Romanowski & George-Warren, p. 280.
  6. Damian Smyth, "George Harrison's Irish Easter Egg Hunt!", i96 Radio, 19 March 2016 (retrieved 2 September 2016).
  7. Harrison, p. 232.
  8. Leitch, p. 144 (picture insert).
  9. Rodriguez, p. 43.
  10. David Cavanagh, "George Harrison: The Dark Horse", Uncut, August 2008, p. 41.
  11. Doggett, pp. 162–63.
  12. Badman, p. 32.
  13. Doggett, pp. 158–60.
  14. Rodriguez, pp. 6, 41–42.
  15. Leng, pp. 126–27.
  16. Inglis, p. 39.
  17. Doggett, p. 162.
  18. Slinn, p. 184.
  19. "Deaths" > "1960s", The University of Chicago Magazine, January–February 2013, p. 94.
  20. "'Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond)' (by George Harrison)", in Ringo Starr Ringo: Sheet Music for Piano, Vocal & Guitar, Charles Hansen (New York, NY, 1973).
  21. John Harris, "Into the Woods", Mojo, December 2003, p. 92.
  22. Romanowski & George-Warren, p. 50.
  23. Helm, p. 178.
  24. Doggett, pp. 56–57.
  25. Leng, pp. 51–53, 318.
  26. Frontani, p. 156.
  27. Harrison, p. 231.
  28. Inglis, p. 55.
  29. Rodriguez, p. 35.
  30. Allison, p. 71.
  31. Harrison, pp. 231, 232.
  32. Leng, p. 189.
  33. Allison, pp. 70–71, 153–54.
  34. Madinger & Easter, p. 440.
  35. Spizer, p. 306.
  36. Rodriguez, pp. 42, 93.
  37. Madinger & Easter, pp. 498, 500.
  38. Badman, pp. 91–92.
  39. Schaffner, p. 160.
  40. Woffinden, p. 75.
  41. Doggett, pp. 192–93.
  42. Snow, p. 44.
  43. Rodriguez, pp. 157–58.
  44. Spizer, p. 303.
  45. Rodriguez, pp. 28, 260–61.
  46. Woffinden, pp. 45, 77.
  47. Clayson, pp. 242–43.
  48. Nick DeRiso, "40 Years Ago: Ringo Starr's 'Ringo' Features (Sort-Of) Beatles Reunion", Ultimate Classic Rock, 23 November 2013 (retrieved 8 September 2016).
  49. Badman, pp. 92, 94.
  50. Rodriguez, pp. 140, 438.
  51. Madinger & Easter, p. 501.
  52. Rodriguez, p. 437.
  53. Du Noyer, p. 50.
  54. Rodriguez, pp. 139–40.
  55. Badman, pp. 90–91.
  56. Leng, p. 138.
  57. Rob Bowman, liner-note essay, Moondog Matinee CD booklet (Capitol Records, 2001; produced by Cheryl Pawelski & Andrew Sandoval), p. 3.
  58. Spizer, p. 307.
  59. Castleman & Podrazik, p. 212.
  60. Helm, pp. 232–33.
  61. Nick Hasted, "To Kingdom Come", Uncut, April 2005, pp. 50, 66.
  62. Helm, pp. 155, 188.
  63. Rodriguez, p. 83.
  64. Rodriguez, pp. 34, 158.
  65. Schaffner, p. 115.
  66. Du Noyer, pp. 50–51.
  67. Woffinden, pp. 36–37.
  68. Doggett, p. 140.
  69. Sulpy & Schweighardt, p. 29.
  70. Leng, pp. 52, 69.
  71. Clayson, pp. 345, 349.
  72. Badman, pp. 198, 426.
  73. Harry, p. 182.
  74. Clayson, p. 252.
  75. Madinger & Easter, pp. 500, 501.
  76. Badman, p. 98.
  77. Harry, p. 269.
  78. Clayson, pp. 244–45.
  79. Madinger & Easter, p. 645.
  80. Harry, pp. 184–85.
  81. Badman, p. 111.
  82. Doggett, p. 212.
  83. Castleman & Podrazik, p. 128.
  84. Spizer, pp. 307, 313.
  85. Spizer, p. 308.
  86. Harrison, p. 386.
  87. Schaffner, p. 161.
  88. Woffinden, pp. 75, 77.
  89. Michael Benton, "Ringo Starr Ringo (Apple)", Disc, 24 November 1973, p. 25.
  90. Hunt, p. 75.
  91. Alan Betrock, "Ringo Starr: Ringo", Phonograph Record, December 1973; available at Rock's Backpages (subscription required).
  92. Ben Gerson, "Ringo Starr Ringo", Rolling Stone, 20 December 1973, p. 73.
  93. Madinger & Easter, p. 503.
  94. Inglis, pp. 55–56.
  95. Hunt, p. 25.
  96. Snow, pp. 44, 47.

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