The Paul McCartney album Ringo Starr refused to play on: “I don’t want to be ashamed of anything I’ve written”
No member of The Beatles was meant to be cordial with each other once they broke things off. This was the first time that a major band was ending on bad terms, and it didn’t take long for the fangs to come out in the press, especially when Paul McCartney started suing his former bandmates. Although those legal problems were water under the bridge by the time John Lennon was assassinated in 1980, that didn’t mean that Ringo Starr had to go along with whatever his old mates were doing.
Granted, Starr had reached the point where he could do whatever he wanted whenever he played. He didn’t have to work another day in his life, and even if he wasn’t at the top in the same way that his former Fabs were, he still had a unique identity that made people love having him around. Sure, Ringo the 4th was a steaming pile, but seemingly nothing could match the cool vibes of Starr.
But throughout every Beatle’s solo career, there was always that one moment where the quality started to wane a little bit. Lennon had already encountered the problem when working on his political screeds on Some Time in New York City, but the era of MTV was not bound to be kind to either McCartney or George Harrison, both of which hit the kind of slump that put them closer to dad rock territory.
And while Macca started off the decade nicely with McCartney II and Tug of War, Gives My Regards to Broad Street is one of the most ill-advised moments of his career. There are a few songs that sound pretty good or hit a decent note with fans, like ‘No More Lonely Nights’, but the thought of McCartney redoing his old Beatles tunes would be the equivalent of someone thinking that Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night needed some touching up.
“We had some songs in the film where we wanted [Ringo] to drum on them, but he didn’t want to attempt a new version.”
Paul Mccartney
That’s not to say that the album doesn’t have some charm to it. McCartney does a fine job reimagining tunes like ‘For No One’ and brings a lot more experience to a song like ‘Eleanor Rigby’, but when asked to contribute the odd part to his old material, Starr said that he wanted no part in rewriting history.
For the drummer, what existed back then was how nature intended him to sound, and he wasn’t about to do the percussion equivalent to karaoke, saying, “Ringo wasn’t happy to get involved with it. We had some songs in the film where we wanted him to drum on them, but he didn’t want to attempt a new version. I can see it from his point of view, actually. [But] from my point of view, I’m looking at a song. I’m looking at one of my songs. I don’t want to be ashamed of anything I’ve written.”
However, a lot of what made Starr the perfect drummer for the band was the way he inhabited his kit. Even if they had to record a track over, a lot of the best drum fills he played came from how he was feeling in the moment rather than writing out parts, so even if he had played the tunes again, a lot of the iconic tracks everyone knows would have been played slightly differently.
Then again, there was probably another reason why Starr wanted to not be associated with a new version of The Beatles’ material. He was already willing to look to the future, and as McCartney would soon find out, living too much in the past would become a double-edged sword when the box office numbers came in.
