(Credits: Far Out / Alamy / George Harrison / Yoko Ono)
Fri 24 October 2025 15:30, UK
Was there any major Beatles fanatic who was coming to every one of their records to hear Ringo Starr?
Sure, the drummer had his fair share of fans, but compared to everyone else in the group, he seemed to be the least ambitious when it came to his own songs, his flashiness, or his restricted vocal range. Starr was far from the most celebrated member of the Fab Four (the competition was obviously goddamn difficult), but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t still find the time to show his magic when the opportunity arose.
Because as much as people like to clown on Starr for being the worst of the best in many respects, he’s as essential as any other member of the group. He was more than happy to throw any fill he thought would work best for the song, and there’s hardly any other drummer who could manage to get the right sound for a tune within a few seconds as well as Starr could when working on anything from ‘Rain’ to ‘Come Together’.
But when he ventured into his solo career, it’s not like he was the most candid member of the group by any means. It’s not like everyone was asking him to peel back the layers of his personal life by any means, but given how much has been said about John Lennon’s life and how open and honest Paul McCartney and George Harrison were during their prime, it was easy to see Starr as the lovable cool uncle happy to be playing the drums with all of his mates.
That didn’t mean that he wasn’t capable of being introspective; he just wasn’t prepared for it at the time. Nothing could have cushioned the blow of finding out that Lennon had been gunned down in New York City, and even if Starr was a bit more open about the pain that he went through the last time he saw Harrison alive, he could still be the one to crack a joke after tearing up. Once the dust had settled around everything, though, Starr felt compelled to make tunes celebrating his life.
Anyone else in his position would have never dreamed of reaching the level of fame that he did, and if he had that platform, he may as well say something that has value. Sure, the never-ending mantra of peace and love that’s become his catchphrase is never a bad thing, but Starr finally found a way to pay tribute to his fallen bandmates as he got further into his solo career.
When talking about mentioning Lennon in the song ‘Peace Stream’, Starr said that the tune and the deep cut ‘Never Without You’ were subtle nods to his old friends, saying, “For me to write [about John] was a normal thing to do. I knew the man. And I really believe that if you, or anyone else, had written it, it would’ve been weird. I was around when he did all that [Lennon’s anti-Vietnam bed-ins in 1969]. Everybody thinks that the big thing was in Canada, but actually, the first one was in Amsterdam. I also wrote a song for George ‘Never Without You’. So it’s just part of it for me, they’ve been my friends for so long.”
Any other artist would have seen those kinds of tunes as cheap gimmicks, but Starr always approached his songs with an open heart. Sure, some of them aren’t the most thoughtful tunes in the world, but whether he’s talking about his time in The Beatles, the wonders of growing up in Liverpool, or even paying tribute to his first band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, he was always proud of the journey that he took that got him to where he is today.
None of them are exactly going to give McCartney’s ‘Here Today’ a run for its money or anything, but all of Starr’s music is usually graded on a specific curve. He’s not supposed to be judged next to his fellow Beatles, and for a man who has lived the kind of lifestyle that few people are going to be able to match in their lifetimes, he’s earned the right to have fun and sing about his friends if he wants to.
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