Unlike most musicians, Ringo Starr looks forward to that feeling he sometimes gets of being on a treadmill. In fact, that's where he often feels most creative.

"My studio in England is next to the gym," Starr said from the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, where his latest tour just got under way. "When it's time to record, I find that getting on the treadmill brings on the endorphins, and the songs just start coming. I wrote a lot of songs on the treadmill."

Such treadmill tunes populate his latest solo album, "Liverpool 8," which has generated some of the strongest reviews of his studio work since the early '70s. The new album's title song is a sweetly melancholy reflection on his early life in Liverpool, alluding to his pre-Fab Four role as drummer for Rory Storm & the Hurricanes and the years that followed in the musical cyclone that was the Beatles.

It's the only song from the new album he's doing on his 30-city summer tour, with the group of musician friends he dubs the All-Starr Band.

Although as a group the Beatles were renowned for their firsts, Starr hasn't always received his due as a trailblazer. But he was the first Beatle to announce his intention to quit the band (his decision was kept quiet for PR reasons), and the first rock star to pay serious attention to music that predated rock, with his 1970 solo album of pop standards, "Sentimental Journey."

Along with John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, Starr — who turned 68 on Monday — took part in the first worldwide satellite television broadcast in 1967, playing "All You Need Is Love," a message that still resonates with him.

One of the most moving songs on "Liverpool 8" is the ballad "Love Is," which he wrote, like most of the album's material, with collaborators Mark Hudson, Gary Burr and Steve Dudas.

It's deeply personal, decidedly spiritual and unapologetically political without being strident — in stark contrast to his long-standing public persona as the Beatles' comic relief:

Time will always heal

What the broken-hearted feel

The poets say it's so

But I'm not sure it's real

I only know the answer is inside me

And everyone. ... Love is here.

"The inspiration is love," he says. "If you look at the titles of my songs, 80 percent have 'love' in them. ... It's where I'm at, promoting peace and love. ... I always say it feels like my shows are a peace-and-love fest."