(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Sun 8 June 2025 18:45, UK
There comes a point in every rock and roll fan’s life where The Beatles cease to feel like people. As much as they have presented themselves as the lovable lads from Liverpool, there was always some magic behind the way that they communicated in the studio that can’t be trained by human hands. It only comes from great chemistry together, and Ringo Starr never took a second of that for granted whenever he got behind the drum kit.
Then again, people often like to chide Starr for being the “least of the best” in some respects, and it’s not hard to see why. He didn’t write nearly as many songs as the rest of the group and never had the kind of ambitions of Paul McCartney or the literary wisdom of John Lennon, and yet if you remove him from the equation, the band would have ceased to exist before they got off the ground.
It only takes one listen to the version of the band with Pete Best to know that they weren’t gelling properly. They were still a great bar band, but Starr always had a sixth sense to see where the song was going before the rest of the group, whether that was doing covers of old Ray Charles tunes or getting a feel for what the drums should be on a song before Lennon or McCartney were even finished.
That didn’t mean that some songs came without a fight. He had to work tooth and nail to get the rhythmic accents right for ‘Here Comes the Sun’, and there was the occasional song that defeated him, like ‘Back in the USSR’, but as soon as everyone locked in on a groove when the count-in came in, everything felt right with the world again.
Granted, you wouldn’t have said that towards the end of the band’s run in the late 1960s. They were falling apart at the seams when putting the Get Back project together, and by the time they had officially drifted apart in the early 1970s, the last thing any of them wanted to do was go on another press tour with each other or, worse yet, a courtroom where they would hash out their business bullshit. If they were going to go out, they would do it right, and Starr couldn’t have been happier working on tunes like ‘Come Together’.
There might not have been as much camaraderie as there had been back in 1964, but as far as Starr was concerned, he could jam on the riff of ‘Come Together’ until the end of time, saying, “There’s lot of others that are my favourites, but ‘Come Together’ can’t be bad. It worked perfectly with the band, and John being John. I love that moment.” And when looking at everyone in the group, ‘Come Together’ is the best showcase for what everyone can do.
Outside of Lennon’s trippy lyrics and guitar riff, this tune also proves why Starr and McCartney were a perfect rhythm section when they hit on something. Macca’s bassline has gone down in rock history as one of the best runs ever, but listening to Starr’s drumming, that kind of falling-down-the-stairs drum fill that leads into the verses could have easily been too busy, but always finds that comfortable sweet spot before Lennon comes screaming back in.
And with Harrison putting the icing on the cake at the end by having a solo, everything great about The Beatles’ later years can be found somewhere in here. It was clear that they weren’t going to work well anymore, but if they were going to go their separate ways, they were making sure they did it in style.
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