Ringo Starr Helped Name 2 Beatles Songs With His Confusing Way of Speaking

Of all The Beatles, Ringo Starr wrote the fewest songs for the band. He was more interested in supporting his bandmates’ writing with his drumming. Still, Starr played an important role in the inception of a couple of classic Beatles songs. His “Ringoisms” inspired the titles of two songs.

Ringo Starr accidentally named 2 Beatles songs

Practically as soon as Starr joined The Beatles, his bandmates grew accustomed to his unique way of speaking. He often coined phrases that they’d never heard before.

“Ringo would always say grammatically incorrect phrases and we’d all laugh,” George Harrison said in The Beatles Anthology. “I remember when we were driving back to Liverpool from Luton up the M1 motorway in Ringo’s Zephyr, and the car’s bonnet hadn’t been latched properly. The wind got under it and blew it up in front of the windscreen. We were all shouting, ‘Aaaargh!’ and Ringo calmly said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll soon have you back in your safely-beds.’”

John Lennon said that Starr inadvertently inspired the title of the film A Hard Day’s Night and its titular song.

“I was going home in the car and Dick Lester suggested the title from something Ringo had said. I had used it in In His Own Write, but it was an off-the-cuff remark by Ringo, one of those malapropisms — a Ringoism — said not to be funny, just said,” Lennon said. “So Dick Lester said, ‘We are going to use that title,’ and the next morning I brought in the song.”

Starr said he also inspired the title of another song.

“I seem to be better now. I used to, while I was saying one thing, have another thing come into my brain and move down fast,” Starr said. “Once when we were working all day and then into the night, I came out thinking it was still day and said, ‘It’s been a hard day,’ and looked round and noticing it was dark, ’…’s night!’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was something I said, God knows where it came from.”

Ringo Starr wrote very few Beatles songs

Though Starr inspired the titles of two classic songs, he wrote very few songs himself. While he sang a handful of songs, these were typically ones Lennon or Paul McCartney wrote for him. He received a co-writing credit on “What Goes On,” “Flying,” “Dig It,” and “Free as a Bird.”

He received solo writing credits on “Octopus’s Garden” and “Don’t Pass Me By.”

He was happy when he finally got a solo writing credit 

Though Starr never had grand ambitions to be a songwriter, he was glad when he received his first solo writing on the White Album. He wrote the song “Don’t Pass Me By.”

“I wrote ‘Don’t Pass Me By’ when I was sitting round at home,” Starr said. “I only play three chords on the guitar and three on the piano. I was fiddling with the piano — I just bang away — and then if a melody comes and some words, I just have to keep going. That’s how it happened: I was just sitting at home alone and ‘Don’t Pass Me By’ arrived. We played it with a country attitude.”

He admitted that it was thrilling to record something he’d written.

“It was great to get my first song down, one that I had written,” he said. “It was a very exciting time for me and everyone was really helpful and recording that crazy violinist was a thrilling moment.”