IT MAY SOUND AS IF HE’S GIVING A SPEECH AT AN AWARDS ceremony, but Edgar Winter is just feeling particularly grateful right now. “I’d like to thank all my fans for their continued support,” he says. “It means the world to me to do what I most love and see everybody out there rockin’. I love you all and couldn’t do it without you.”

Winter has every reason to be thankful. He’s calling from backstage in Keltering, Ohio, just minutes before he will perform another gig as a member of Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band. The 31-date tour, Winter’s second run with the group, ended in August, but was in full swing on this day in early July, which also happened to mark the release date of Winter’s latest album, Rebel Road (Airline Records). Winter is justifiably excited.

Playing with Ringo is, for him, “the most fantastic experience. I’m in total awe of The Beatles. What they did transcended music. It was bigger than life. They caused a paradigm shift that changed the minds of an entire generation. They brought about a revolution without firing a shot because it was a revolution in freedom of thought and a spiritual renaissance. They certainly changed my life, and being an old hippie and growing up in that era, it feels like coming full circle, because I really feel like Ringo is carrying on that spirit that The Beatles came to represent.”

With the All-Starrs, Winter gets to live out a dream by playing keyboards and saxophone with one of his heroes, but he also gets another opportunity to slay audiences with his own colossal ‘70s hits, “Frankenstein,” a number-one instrumental in 1973, and “Free Ride,” a Top 20 later that year. Playing those tunes has never lost its luster for the 61-year-old Beaumont, Texas native. Nor does he ever tire of talking about those early days of his career.

 The younger brother of guitar slinger Johnny Winter, Edgar never had ambitions to be a rock star. Although he and Johnny made music together from the time they were kids, playing the usual high school dances and grungy clubs, it was Johnny who aspired to fame. “He was Johnny Cool with the guitar and the shades, and he watched American Bandstand and read all the magazines,” says Edgar. “I just loved music. It was my private escape world. I was the weird kid that played all the instruments.”

But then, in 1969, came Woodstock. Johnny was a rising star when he played the festival; Edgar was an unknown in his band. “My whole perception of music changed,” he says. “When I looked out over those hundreds of thousands of people, it was a moving experience. Music really stood for something. Since then, music has always been a spiritual thing that has illumined the path for me.”

Those hit-making days are long behind him now, but Edgar is no less pumped about creating music. Rebel Road is some of his strongest work in years, a set of 11 self-penned tracks (several with collaborators Curt Cuomo and James Zota Baker) that survey all of Winter’s influences, from The Beatles to gutbucket blues to the hardest hard rock. And—a first—country music: the album’s guests include not only Slash, who contributes guitar to the title track, but country star Clint Black, who provides harmonica and vocals. And then there’s Johnny, adding his distinctive licks to “Rockin’ the Blues.” No sibling rivalry here: “Johnny’s my ultimate, all-time musical hero,” says Edgar. “Had it not been for Johnny, I’m sure everything would have happened differently.”

But among the highlights of Rebel Road is a song that requires no guest players. Edgar, Cuomo and Baker put it together to honor that drummer guy. It’s called “Peace and Love.”

Says Winter, “We were sitting around the studio one night and Curt and James said, ‘Let’s write one for Ringo.’ They said, ‘You know him, what should it be about?’ There was no hesitation on my part: If it’s a Ringo song, it’s got to be about peace and love. There isn’t anything that expresses more of what Ringo is about than peace and love. Besides, playing with him will be a memory I’ll treasure for the rest of my life.”

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