{"id":171963,"date":"2025-12-07T11:46:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T11:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/171963\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T11:46:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T11:46:10","slug":"why-ringo-starr-refused-to-sing-this-beatles-lyric-on-sgt-peppers-lonely-hearts-club-band-heres-what-he-sang-instead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/171963\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Ringo Starr Refused to Sing This Beatles Lyric on \u2018Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band\u2019 (Here\u2019s What He Sang Instead)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the experimental, psychedelic operetta that was The Beatles\u2019 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band, drummer Ringo Starr got to don the role of Billy Shears, singer of the affable, tongue-in-cheek second track, \u201cWith a Little Help from My Friends\u201d. (Shears was a subtle reference to the man who allegedly replaced Paul McCartney in the infamous \u201cPaul is dead\u201d conspiracy<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

McCartney, along with John Lennon, wrote the song specifically for Starr. The track was a little dopey, which was both a friendly tease of their bandmate and, from a performance standpoint, a character that Starr could portray well. \u201cWe always liked to [write a song] for him. It had to be not too much like our style,\u201d McCartney explained to Barry Miles in Many Years From Now<\/a>. \u201cI think that was probably the best of the songs we wrote for Ringo, actually.\u201d<\/p>\n

Starr had no qualms taking up the mantle for novelty songs like \u201cWith a Little Help from My Friends\u201d, \u201cYellow Submarine\u201d the previous year, or \u201cOctopus\u2019s Garden\u201d two years later. But there was one lyric from the Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band track that he refused to sing.<\/p>\n

Ringo Starr Refused to Sing One Lyric From This Line From \u201cWith a Little Help from My Friends\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul McCartney and John Lennon wrote \u201cWith a Little Help from My Friends\u201d<\/a> specifically with Ringo Starr in mind. But they clearly didn\u2019t take his traumatic stage experiences into account when writing some of the lines.<\/p>\n

Starr explained in Anthology<\/a> that he refused to sing the line, \u201cWhat would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and throw tomatoes at me?\u201d \u201cI said, \u2018There\u2019s not a chance in hell am I going to sing this line.\u2019 We still had lots of really deep memories of the kids throwing jelly beans and toys on stage. I thought that if we ever did get out there again, I was not going to be bombarded with tomatoes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lennon and McCartney changed the song\u2019s opening lines to, \u201cWhat would you think if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me?\u201d And indeed, watching audience members get up and leave mid-performance isn\u2019t exactly ideal for a musician. But it certainly beats getting pelted with projectile tomatoes.<\/p>\n

As for the \u201csinging out of tune\u201d bit, Lennon and McCartney accounted for that. \u201cJohn and I wrote this song within a vocal range that would cause no problems for Ringo,\u201d McCartney later said<\/a>. \u201cWe tailored it especially for him. And I think that\u2019s one reason why it was such a great success for him on Sgt. Pepper.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photo by David Redfern\/Redferns<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the experimental, psychedelic operetta that was The Beatles\u2019 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band, drummer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69,43482,9382,469],"class_list":{"0":"post-171963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-ringo-starr","14":"tag-rock-music","15":"tag-the-beatles"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}