“I was going insane”: The song Ringo Starr said George Harrison could never sing
All of The Beatles were usually more than happy to give some of their songs to Ringo Starr.
The drummer wasn’t known to be the most ambitious songwriter that the world had ever seen, and since he only managed to crank out two and a half songs when he was with the group, it was up to the rest of his mates to help him make a solo career out of some of the tunes that they had lying around. But even though John Lennon and Paul McCartney could give Starr any of their throwaway tunes, there was always a certain synergy to the way that Starr worked off of George Harrison whenever they played together.
Both of them were already known as the more reserved members of the group when they were still in the band, but that grew into one of the most underrated songwriting partnerships of the band. Harrison was the one who helped Starr flesh out a song like ‘Octopus’s Garden’, and when working on some of Starr’s later solo hits, there are more than a few that had Harrison’s signature touch to them that he didn’t actually take credit for, like ‘It Don’t Come Easy’.
But after a while, Starr needed to start finding his identity away from the Fab Four. It was still great to have all of them playing together again on one of his records, but there’s a fine line between the charm of his famous friends playing with him and him living out his days as a nostalgia act to the band he was already in. Once he was left to his own devices, though, it wasn’t always the best idea to give him total control over records like Ringo the 4th.
Starr clearly wasn’t equipped for that kind of responsibility, but he also had a keen ear for when the rest of his mates had a song that he could sing better. John Lennon had even begun working on songs specifically for Starr when he was woodshedding tunes like ‘Grow Old With Me’, but when Starr was putting together Stop and Smell the Roses, getting Harrison back in the fold for the song ‘Wrack My Brain’ was the perfect song for him.
And while Starr was more than happy to take one of his friend’s tunes, he said that there was no way that Harrison could have been able to sing the tune as he could, saying, “George wrote that one. I was watching a lot of TV back then, as he writes in one of the lyrics in the song. Also I was probably going insane too. George thought this song would be good for me. It’s a song I knew he’d never do. So it gave George more freedom and it was a bit looser than something that he would do for himself.”
Then again, it’s not like Harrison was working with his best material around this time, either. Somewhere in England had already been through the post-production process more than a few times, and since Harrison was already being a bit of a curmudgeon about having to write more songs that were more pop-friendly, ‘Wrack My Brain’ might have been a bit more confessional than he probably intended.
If you look at the lyrics, a lot of it reads like Harrison having to scrounge together any kind of words that he could think of for the song by the time he hands it to Starr. He wasn’t even the only Beatle thinking this way, either, especially since Macca’s donated song ‘Attention’ was all about someone who kept pestering him for attention, which very well could have been Starr asking if he had any leftover songs.
So while Harrison might not have sung ‘Wrack My Brain’ on his own, the fact that he was including more cynical tunes on his record like ‘Blood From a Clone’ really said a lot about his state of mind at the time. He could always have a laugh when working with his old friend, but this was the first time in any Beatle’s life when working on tunes felt like an outright chore for them to do.
