Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond)

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.

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.

[3] The visit took place over the Easter holiday weekend in April 1971, when Donovan, a tax exile in Ireland,[4][5] hosted a party for his musician friends at the Castle Martin estate in Kilcullen, County Kildare.

[10] On 12 March 1971, the High Court in London had ruled in Paul McCartney's favour against the other three Beatles and their manager, Allen Klein,[11] resulting in the group's company, Apple Corps, being placed into receivership.

[12][13] 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.

[26] 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.

[36][nb 3] The main sessions for Ringo took place in Los Angeles that same month[39] and coincided with a spirit of reconciliation among all the former Beatles,[40] after Harrison, Starr and Lennon had grown disaffected with Klein as a manager.

[75][76][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[79] from late March to July 1973.

[97][98] While the critical reception to Ringo was generally highly favourable,[99][100] the NME's Charles Shaar Murray derided the album for its "dearth of good material", saying that the record's appeal was confined to the most committed Beatles nostalgics.

[101][nb 8] Writing in Rolling Stone, Ben Gerson called "Sunshine Life for Me" a "modal banjo tune" that "never manages to transcend its idiom, much less to fulfil it",[102] while Alan Betrock of Phonograph Record dismissed the song as "muzak without definition".

[104] 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".

[105] Writing in 1981, NME critic Bob Woffinden admired the track as "a sort of update of 'Mother Nature's Son'" on an album that contained "excellent compositions" from Starr's former bandmates and conveyed "a zestfulness, an unashamed joie de vivre".

[106][nb 9] Among other retrospective assessments, Chip Madinger and Mark Easter, writing in their book on the former Beatles' solo careers, admire the song as "a hoedown stomper which was as country as any of the tracks on Beaucoups of Blues".

[108] 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.