The last two surviving members of The Beatles put a lot of effort into their beautiful friendship now that they have lost their two closest friends. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr recently opened up about maintaining their lifelong bond in the years following the untimely deaths of John Lennon and George Harrison.
“With John and George not here, I think we realize nothing lasts forever,” McCartney, 83, told The New York Times in a recent interview for a profile on Starr, 84. “So we grasp onto what we have now because we realize that it’s very special. It’s something hardly anyone else has. In fact, in our case, it’s something no one else has. There’s only me and Ringo, and we’re the only people who can share those memories.”
They’re still making new ones too. In December, the pair reunited on stage for the first time in five years to perform the band’s White Album hit “Helter Skelter” during one of McCartney’s shows at London’s legendary O2 Arena. McCartney reminisced about the event in the profile, noting that despite the high intensity of the “out-and-out rocker” track, he was definitely “a little bit emotional” to be sharing the stage with Starr, whose real name is Richard Starkey, once again.
“He was a fantastic drummer,” McCartney gushed in the profile. “We asked him if he would be in our band, and luckily for us he agreed.” Starr joined the band in 1962 after original drummer Pete Best was axed by the group’s beloved manager Brian Epstein so they could try to snag Starr from his successful group Rory Storm and the Hurricanes.
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Aside from his excellent skills on the skins, Starr was known for providing vocals on a handful of fun Beatles tracks — but as far as songwriting goes, he came into the game a little later than his bandmates. “It’s hard to come to the front when you’ve got John and Paul,” he explained to the Times for the profile.
He ended up leaning toward comedy in his tracks, which are some of the most fun of the group’s output. “I’d say, ‘I’ve got this song.’ And halfway through they’d all be laying on the floor laughing,” Starr recalled in the interview. “Because I wasn’t writing new songs. I was writing new words to old songs.” McCartney added, “We’d say, ‘Yeah, that’s a great one. That’s a great Bob Dylan song.’”
The band released two songs written and sung by Starr, “Octopus’ Garden” and “Don’t Pass Me By.” He was credited as a co-writer on two more tracks, “What Goes On” and “Flying,” as well as the songs the full group is credited on like “Maggie May” and “Dig It.”
Lennon was murdered in 1980 at age 40 and Harrison died from cancer in 2001 at age 58. The Beatles kicked off as a band in 1960 and broke up by the end of the decade in 1970.
“It’s the most ludicrous and funny argument that, you know, you had these three talented singer-songwriters up front, and then you had the guy who got lucky,” Weinberg — a member of The E Street Band who was also Conan O’Brien’s bandleader on Late Night — said. “That was so far from the case, if you really go back and talk to people who were in that scene. To get Ringo in what became The Beatles was a coup for the three of them.”
