The Paul McCartney album that Ringo Starr hated with a passion: “I just feel he’s wasted his time”
Naturally, when The Beatles broke up, every member went in their own separate artistic direction. After being in each other’s bubble for nearly a decade, the ‘Fab Four’ had started to see what else was out there besides themselves and explored new sonic territory. While John Lennon may have cleansed his demons on Plastic Ono Band and George Harrison came into his own as a songwriter on All Things Must Pass, Paul McCartney made a name for himself with the sounds of rootsy rock album Ram.
Although McCartney’s experimental joint album with his wife, Linda, has had a unique shelf life in the world of indie music, fans weren’t nearly as receptive back in the day. It might have been hurtful for Macca to hear those words from critics, but one of the most savage critics at the time came from one of his fellow Beatles.
When asked about the album back in the day, Ringo Starr expressed being concerned about McCartney’s career, saying to Melody Maker (via Inside Hook), “I feel sad about Paul’s albums. I don’t think there’s one tune on the last one, Ram. I just feel he’s wasted his time. He seems to be going strange”.
It should be noted that Ringo Starr rarely said a word i anger during The Beatles’ break-up. Almost every other member of the band found themselves at odds with another at some point during the fallout. Publicly, they would take shots at each other; in the studio, they would double up and aim squarely at their former bandmates. But, for the most part, Ringo kept himself to himself. And, on reflection, he should have done the same here.
After years in the rearview, Ram has aged superbly among the McCartney fanbase and influenced an array of artists. It was released years before Wings became an idea and represented McCartney’s first stab at making music that was authentically him, all while Linda chipped in on backing vocals and the occasional lead vocal break. Across the record, McCartney talks about the joys of being free to write on his own, like the homespun delight of ‘Heart of the Country’ and slamming his old writing partner John Lennon on the song ‘Too Many People’.
Lennon was waiting to snap back at McCartney and conjured up ‘How Do You Sleep’ as one long diss track to his writing partner, with salt in the wound coming from George Harrison playing the guitar solo on Lennon’s track. McCartney never meant to hurt Lennon with any of these lyrics, though, rather looking to find his own voice in a posh studio while still retaining that homespun side of himself that he was getting into at the time.
While critics tore the album to pieces, McCartney needed a change of scenery afterwards, bringing together a new band with the help of Denny Laine and creating Wings with a back-to-basics feel. Although McCartney may have wanted to escape the sounds of Ram, the handful of first Wings songs ended up feeling half-finished, and McCartney shot himself in the foot by moving away from anything that sounded like his old band.
The critics may not have understood what McCartney was going for at the time on Ram, but it wouldn’t take long for the ‘Cute Beatle’ to get back on positive terms with critics with the blockbuster album Band on the Run. McCartney might not have had the best track record with the rock and roll media, but Ram was too ahead of its time for people to see what he was trying to do at the moment.
It is easy to write off a band in the moment. A change of winds is never really appreciated by the flock. But for McCartney, with time passing and attitudes to his and the band’s break-up now a distant memory, Ram has been given the space it needed to properly achieve its goal musically. It is, without doubt, one of the best records McCartney ever made. The Beatles’ discography included.
