Credit: Alamy
Sat 3 October 2026 19:30, UK
For all the hits that John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote for The Beatles, they never claimed to be better or greater than any of their bandmates.
Even when GeorgeHarrison got pissed beyond belief and walked out in the middle of the Get Back sessions, a lot of that came from him getting overshadowed by the ‘Nerk Twins’ having a laugh together rather than anything overly malicious from either of them. But even though each of the Fab Four had their own set of strengths, Ringo Starr was always understood to be the worst of the best more than a few times in the band’s tenure.
He didn’t necessarily have the greatest voice or have the most ambitious career goals as a songwriter, but it’s not like he should be ignored for what he did for the band. It’s true that he was the best drummer that the band could have asked for, and even in the early days of his career, he was always trying to switch things up and show the band what they could do when they changed the groove up every so often.
Starr could even poke fun at the fact that he wasn’t as big as the guys out front. Even in the days when he had his solo vocal spot whenever they played live, he was always the one being a touch self-depricating about his skills, usually saying that he was going to be all out of key whenever he took the microphone. Then again, the idea of someone singing and holding down the rhythm for ‘Act Naturally’ is still one of the more difficult things any drummer would have had to do.
When the band started to move away from being a touring band, though, Lennon and McCartney didn’t want to leave Starr hanging. He was still as important as any other member of the group, and while every one of their albums would at least have one token Ringo song on them, they were going to need to have the right tune to work with if they were going to shoehorn him into their most ambitious album yet.
Sgt Pepper was the kind of record that demanded the band to step up more than a little bit, and when you look at every song, their sonic adventures needed to set everything up with the right theme. And while Lennon and Harrison weren’t as enthusiastic about the conceptual part of the album, Starr did the best job anyone could to introduce everyone to Billy Shears on ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’.
And given the raw emotion that Starr put into the track, Macca thought that it was one of the greatest vocal takes that the band could have asked for from their drummer, saying, “This was written out at John’s house in Weybridge for Ringo… I think that was probably the best of our songs that we wrote for Ringo actually.” But the song has taken on a different meaning ever since the band broke up as well.
Further reading: From The Vault
Starr wasn’t afraid to say that he was the last one who wanted to break up the band, and while there were a lot of issues that he had in the aftermath of their demise, he was willing to use his signature tune as his mantra. Because if you think about it, every single one of the albums that he made after 1970 practically had a smorgasbord of Starr’s best musical buddies coming together and writing a song for him or playing a little bit of guitar or piano behind him now and again.
So while ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ suited the story of a hapless Billy Shears trying his best not to sing out of key, Starr practically turned the whole song into his damn theme song after a while. His singing may not have been on the same level as something like Lennon’s screams or McCartney’s balladeer voice, but every band needs an everyman like him in between the other legends.
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