Ringo Starr’s favourite John Lennon song: “He gave you everything”
The brotherly bond between the Fab Four is what made The Beatles so special. While there might have been spats, jealousy, and a few scrapes shared, no link typifies the empathy among the distinct parties quite like the love between Ringo Starr and John Lennon—the group’s daftest jokers.
As it happens, one of the last songs that Lennon ever wrote had Ringo in mind. In his final songwriting stint before his passing, Lennon quips at the start of the demo of ‘Grow Old With Me’, “this is for Ringo”. That was a haunting detail that meant the drummer could barely face the tape in the years that followed. But years down the line, with Lennon’s legacy still growing, he was happy to look at the demos in a different light.
As the drummer continued in his press release: “The idea that John was talking about me in that time before he died, well, I’m an emotional person. And I just loved this song. I sang it the best that I could. I do well up when I think of John this deeply. And I’ve done my best. We’ve done our best. The other good thing is that I really wanted Paul to play on it, and he said yes.“
In truth, Ringo Starr’s music had been on Lennon’s mind since the split. “I’m pleased that everyone is doing well, I’m more pleased that Ringo is doing well and that he’s got himself a good niche because I knew Paul would be alright,” he reflected.
He had confidence that George Harrison’s songwriting chops had flourished to a sustainable level, too, but he feared the Ringo might flounder. Thankfully, he needn’t have worried. As it happens, his old pal behind the kit even beat him to a solo number one.
So, it is unsurprising that Starr gets a little sentimental when he looks at his late buddy’s back catalogue. When selecting his favourite songs of all time for iTunes, he got a little choked up as he explained, “John was just great. I was listening to this the other day, it came up on the radio, and I thought I’m going to put that down because people should hear him like this. He gave you everything he had that day, and this track does that for me.” The song in question is ‘Scared’.
Taken from the bespectacled Beatle’s 1974 solo album Walls and Bridges, this haunting anthem saw him reflect on his separation from Yoko Ono. “I was scared when I wrote it, if you can’t tell. It was the whole separation from Ono, thinking I lost the one thing I knew I needed,“ he later told Rolling Stone. In the track, he also calls back to his heroes with a lyrical nod to Bob Dylan’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, and Jim Keltner offers a very Ringo-like drum fill.
It’s a song that shows Lennon wandering and frightened, in some ways, pining for Yoko Ono but also for the protection of his old Fab Four gang. In fact, you could argue it is the inverse of Starr’s finest moment in The Beatles, ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’.
