‘Don’t Pass Me By’: the first song Ringo Starr wrote for The Beatles
When discussing The Beatles as songwriters, proceedings typically centre on John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison. This is a natural state of play. Lennon and McCartney wrote most of the band’s songs, good and bad, with Harrison coming into his own in the second half of the Liverpool group’s career, delivering classics such as ‘Taxman’ and ‘Here Comes the Sun’. Whilst all of the plaudits that go to these three are all well and good, they often forget one thing. The band’s drummer, Ringo Starr, also has a knack for songwriting.
Whilst Ringo has a handful of joint songwriting credits with The Beatles, the first one he wrote and recorded for the group as a solo author is ‘Don’t Pass Me By’, from 1968’s White Album. Interestingly, it was written long before it was released. Notably, the band mentioned it on July 14th, 1964, during an introduction to ‘And I Love Her’ for the first instalment of the BBC radio series – Top Gear.
Here, Starr was asked if he had any plans to pen songs, to which he shocked fans by revealing that he had already written one. Paul McCartney then chimed in, singing: “Don’t pass me by, don’t make me cry, don’t make me blue”. Prior to this, during a June 1964 radio interview in New Zealand, Starr comically urged the rest of the band to “sing the song I’ve written, just for a plug”. Elsewhere, other press reports from 1963 mention it, indicating how old it was when it was finally released in 1968.
Starr recalled in Anthology: “I wrote ‘Don’t Pass Me By’ when I was sitting round at home. I only play three chords on the guitar and three on the piano. I was fiddling with the piano – I just bang away – and then if a melody comes and some words, I just have to keep going. That’s how it happened: I was just sitting at home alone and ‘Don’t Pass Me By’ arrived. We played it with a country attitude. It was great to get my first song down, one that I had written. It was a very exciting time for me, and everyone was really helpful, and recording that crazy violinist was a thrilling moment.”
‘Don’t Pass Me By’ was recorded under the working titles of ‘Ringo’s Tune (Untitled)’ and ‘This Is Some Friendly’. At one point, it even featured an orchestral introduction written by producer George Martin and recorded in July 1968 during the session for ‘Good Night’. Martin recalled: “It was for John that I did an off-the-wall introduction because we hadn’t a clue what to do with Ringo’s song. In the event, the intro was too bizarre for us to use, and the score was scrapped.”
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