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Tue 14 April 2026 16:00, UK
Ringo Starr didn’t really have the same aspirations during his solo career as the rest of the former Beatles.
He was still one of the finest drummers that rock and roll had ever produced, but when you look at the kind of records that he was making, he was more than happy to have fun playing drums with his friends than worrying about getting that massive hit single. But even when the Fab Four were together. Starr admitted that there were far better musicians who were helping them along half the time.
Then again, there were more than a few people who could have earned the title of ‘Fifth Beatle’ over time. As much as their professional help, like Brian Epstein and Derek Taylor, turned them into a massive phenomenon, it was the musicians who worked with them that helped them become monsters. And it’s not like there weren’t people bending over backwards for a chance to work with the four cheeky lads from Liverpool.
Not everyone was a fan, like the session musician who walked out on the ‘Hey Jude’ sessions after getting too frustrated, but it’s not like Eric Clapton didn’t know what he was doing when he started playing. In fact, during the years when they were all fighting one another over creative direction, ‘Slowhand’ and especially Billy Preston could really be considered the glue that helped them stay together to make some of those final masterpieces.
But if you tell The Beatles’ story without George Martin, you’re missing a vital part of what makes every one of their songs great. He could be a stickler for what he wanted to hear on the early records, but as John Lennon and Paul McCartney started to become seasoned pros, it wasn’t all that unusual for Martin to bring a lot of their songs to life, like creating the textures of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’.
That doesn’t mean that it was always easy for Starr behind the scenes, though. He held a tiny bit of a grudge against Martin for not letting him play on their first single, ‘Love Me Do’, but even after the rest of the band started to grow up, even Martin had to admit that Starr had grown into the same kind of complex musician that the rest of the band did whenever he got behind the kit to play songs like ‘Rain’.
And compared to the rest of the band, Starr admitted that Martin was a far better musician than every member of the group when he passed away, saying, “He was great, and kind, and loving. And understanding of four punks from Liverpool. At the beginning he was the boss. It was so crazy, he was the only man who could press record. I think he was always at a higher level. It’s all to do with the record. It could have been the song; it could have been what we play; it could have been lots of things. But we were a great match. We were lucky to get him.”
Even Lennon had to admit that Martin was doing a lot more of the heavy lifting than most people realised, saying, “He had a very great musical knowledge and background so he could translate for us and suggest a lot of things and he’d come up with amazing technical things and things like that. Like on the mix of ‘Walrus’. So we grew together. He taught us a lot and I’m sure we taught him a lot by our primitive musical ability.
But the real magic was how the band fed off of their producer every single time they played. Compared to Lennon’s very primitive knowledge of music theory, Martin was always the one who was helping him realise his strange visions, like making ‘I Am the Walrus’ sound like some of the coolest controlled chaos that anyone had ever done when they first laid it down at Abbey Road.
So while many people have earned the title of being an honorary member of the Fab Four, the fact that Martin was on hand for every single one of their albums makes him more than just a ‘Fifth Beatle’. He was a core member of the band throughout their career, and it’s not a shock that a lot of their solo years didn’t have nearly the same kind of magic since their musical older brother wasn’t behind the board anymore.
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