Why George Harrison always turned down Ringo Starr’s attempts to reunite The Beatles: “You’d have to give me all the money”
The Beatles breaking up was perhaps not what many, or indeed any of their fans wanted, but with the insight we have now, it was clear that it happened for many good reasons.
The relationships between the four different parties were all experiencing varying degrees of tension by the end of the 1960s, and with everything publicly coming to a head in 1970 after the release of Let It Be, it became apparent to the public why the band could no longer feasibly continue. While there was a short period where none of them were on particularly strong speaking terms, people were still hopeful that soured relationships would sweeten again and that there was some hope of a reunion in the future.
Like any breakup, you need space before you can speak civilly with one another, if that day even arises, and because there are multiple parties involved, it takes considerably longer for this to materialise than it would in a conventional relationship between two individuals.
In the Fab Four’s case, the amount of time it took for each of them to return to a position where they were all happily communicating with one another varied dramatically, with John Lennon and Paul McCartney seemingly at each other’s throats for a long time and making public jabs at one another, whether in interviews or in barely-concealed diss tracks.
However, while Ringo Starr seemed to be the most amiable of the four, rebuilding bridges shortly after their demise as a group and working with both Lennon and George Harrison on their respective solo records, even he seemed to struggle to be able to get the other members on board to work with him for an extended period of time.
When Starr appeared on The Conan O’Brien Show in 2012, he was quizzed on whether he’d ever considered bringing back any of his former bandmates to perform with him in a live capacity, and while he personally seemed to have always been keen for some form of live reunion, the responses he claimed to have got back from McCartney and Harrison were a lot more muted.
“Paul’s always busy, I don’t know,” Starr shrugged, perhaps not quite recognising that this could be construed as a deliberate rejection, but then stated that Harrison’s answer was a lot more blunt in its nature.
“I used to invite George every time, and he’d say, ‘You’d have to give me all the money.’”
Ringo Starr
Harrison, of course, famously hated performing live and was reluctant to even do his own shows, let alone assist with Ringo’s live pursuits, and so even prior to his death in 2001, you can understand why he may have been standoffish about making such a commitment.
However, a large amount of these rejections was probably down to the fact that none of the band members had ever chosen to work together in a live capacity for an extended period since 1966, and both McCartney and Harrison both evidently recognised that there was no good reason for them to return to it unless the circumstances were desperate.
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