How one of Ringo Starr’s favourite Beatles songs caused an argument between the band
While The Beatles created a canon of timeless songs which are capable of soundtracking the most emotional events that life could throw up, they also had a knack for silliness.
Not everything they recorded was intended to be taken seriously, and their penchant for having their tongue firmly placed in their mouth was second to none. On one day, Paul McCartney was capable of producing a heartfelt ballad about his late mother, ‘Let It Be’, and on the next, he was happy to write a song inspired by seeing monkeys having sex in the street, ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road’.
The latter was playful, and very few would have it among their favourite creations. However, Ringo Starr, who has always had an affinity for songs that have a hint of novelty to them, considers it one of his finest moments with The Beatles.
During a conversation with Dave Stewart from Eurythmics in 2008, Starr was probed about his favourite songs by the band. After giving his standard answer of ‘Rain’, the drummer unexpectedly listed the track from The White Album.
He revealed: “I mean there’s several reasons for liking each one, really. I’ve always said ‘Rain’ because then it just got out of the way. It is one of my favourites, and the drumming is one of my favourites. What I did on that record I always felt different to what I have played before. But you know, I love ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?’ That was just Paul and I on the original track. We were waiting for John to do something. We just went next door and did it.”
Not everyone in the Fab Four felt so fondly about ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road’. The creative process behind The White Album track also epitomised the fractured place where The Beatles were at that stage in their career. They no longer worked as a collective unit, with McCartney and John Lennon reading from different pages of the hymn sheet. Their albums had stopped being a process between all four members, and as a result, ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road’ only featured Starr and McCartney.
According to McCartney, Ringo was the only member asked to participate in the formation purely due to logistical reasons. He didn’t intend to cause any pain to his bandmates by excluding them from the recording process. Despite that, Lennon, who was at one stage an inseparable songwriting partner to McCartney, reacted angrily after not being consulted on the track.
During an interview in 1980 with Playboy’s David Sheff, Lennon explained how he liked the song and admitted it “hurt him”. He said, “That’s Paul. He even recorded it by himself in another room. That’s how it was getting in those days. We came in and he’d made the whole record. Him drumming. Him playing the piano. Him singing. But he couldn’t – he couldn’t – maybe he couldn’t make the break from The Beatles”.
Lennon added: “I don’t know what it was, you know. I enjoyed the track. Still, I can’t speak for George, but I was always hurt when Paul would knock something off without involving us. But that’s just the way it was then.”
Years later, McCartney reacted to the comments and claimed Lennon’s previous remarks had created a vicious myth that he was the “bastard” of the band. Defending himself, the former Beatle said: “It wasn’t a deliberate thing. John and George were tied up finishing something, and me and Ringo were free, just hanging around, so I said to Ringo, ‘Let’s go and do this’.”
He also suggested Lennon was guilty of the same, adding: “Anyway, he did the same with ‘Revolution 9’. He went off and made that without me. No one ever says that. John is the nice guy, and I’m the bastard. It gets repeated all the time.”
Despite the disagreements that ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road’ caused between Lennon and McCartney, Ringo continues to adore the material on a musical level. Additionally, the drummer claimed Lennon was left out of the recording process because he was occupied elsewhere and implied they didn’t set out to hurt their bandmate.
Ultimately, the fallout surrounding ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road’ was an unnecessary situation that could have been avoided. After all, it was about two monkeys having sex in the road, and McCartney fostered no dreams of it becoming anything more than an amusing album track.
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