Daily Mail 6.1.14
John and Paul had their rows that lasted for years, Paul and George certainly had their musical differences, and George was furious with John on more than one occasion. But Ringo? Apart from a famous altercation in 1970 when John and George deputed the drummer to carry some bad news to Paul – namely that the other Beatles wanted him to delay the release of his first solo album – he never fell out with any of them.
So things were probably as they should be when Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, colleagues for eight years and friends for over half a century, were honoured at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles last night with lifetime achievement awards for the Beatles.
Quite why it should have taken so long for the Grammy people to have realised what those four guys contributed to the recording industry, I’ve no idea. But that it should have been rectified just a couple of weeks short of fifty years since the Beatles first arrived in America, was timely- as the US now starts two weeks of Beatles celebrations.
From the moment the band first arrived in New York on February 7, 1964, they were worshipped, with 40 per cent of the entire population watching their live American TV debut on the Ed Sullivan Show two days later. And, a week on Sunday, at exactly the same time, CBS will run a two hour tribute to them to coincide with the re-release of all the Beatles US albums. They may be our band, but no-one loves the Beatles more than Americans.
For Paul McCartney awards are pretty regular baubles. He’s been harvesting them for half a century. But for Ringo, who, like McCartney, still tours the world with his All Starr Band (albeit without anything like the same media attention or sell-out audiences) the honour must be particularly sweet.
Only he and Paul McCartney can ever know what it was like to be at the centre of the Beatle whirlwind that engulfed the world in the mid-Sixties. And, now the two Beatle survivors, they’ll be tied emotionally by that for as long as they live.
It can’t always have been easy being Ringo. While Lennon and McCartney were quickly recognised for their song writing brilliance, and George Harrison, as both a clever writer and ace guitarist, Ringo’s contribution was often overlooked.
Without doubt Ringo was lucky in that he only joined the Beatles a couple of weeks before they began recording, but Lennon and McCartney, urged on by George Harrison, knew what they were doing when they asked him to replace the unfortunate Pete Best. Ringo was earning a good living as a professional musician before they were.
Ringo was the chosen Beatle, and, when necessary, he would be the go-between , pouring balm on the warring egos of the others. Nor did he ever have any delusions about his role in the band. When contemplating the Beatles’ success he once told me: “I didn’t do anything to make it happen apart from saying ‘Yes’”.
The break up of the Beatles hurt all of them, but Ringo was the one who was said to have cried, and Ringo is the only one to have since played professionally with all the other three.
Whatever wounds still festered after the break up, when McCartney in a screaming fury ordered Ringo from his house, time has long since healed. The two may no longer be in the same band, but they still play together at occasional charity concerts.
For over forty years they have pursued separate careers and lives. But it’s been their fate to be forever linked in the public’s affectionate mind with music they helped make a lifetime ago.
