Ringo Starr Said No Band Has Ever Been as Close as The Beatles Were
Ringo Starr joined The Beatles in 1962 and immediately felt he’d gained three brothers. Up until the late 1960s, the band spent virtually all their time together. They took vacations as a group, visited each others’ homes, and spent hours in the studio together. While their messy breakup changed the way people thought about the relationship between The Beatles, Starr said they were still incredibly close. He didn’t think there was another band that had the type of relationship they did.
Ringo Starr shared how The Beatles grew so close
Starr was in The Beatles for eight years, and, in that time, he grew to think of his bandmates as brothers.
“We have all that history and it comes into play when we work together,” he told Club Sandwich in 1997 (via The Paul McCartney Project). “You can’t just dismiss that. You’re never going to lose the closeness of those eight years we spent together. We played some great music and we were brothers; no matter what goes on up and down, we were very close.”
There have been other bands — their main competitors, The Rolling Stones, for example — who have remained a band far longer than The Beatles. Still, Starr doubted that these groups ever grew as close as The Beatles because of the intensity of their fame.
“I don’t know of any other band who got that close,” Starr said. “And we got that close because we loved each other and the pressure that only the Beatles had. No other band has had that much pressure. So all of those factors come into play when we meet each other. We know what went on. Nobody else knows. Everybody thinks they know, and they have ideas, and they write books about it, but actually only the Beatles know how heavy that was.”
The drummer said he is still close with Paul McCartney
Even years after The Beatles broke up, Starr remains close with Paul McCartney. While they can’t see each other nearly as much as they did in the 1960s, they are still in contact. Much to the delight of fans, they also still join one another onstage in performances.
“I love that, getting up with him,” Starr told the Irish News. “We did it at the O2 in England [in 2018]. And then he called me and he said, ‘I’m doing Dodger Stadium, if you want to do a few numbers.’ Sure. So he picked three numbers, and I got up and went down there. And it’s magic for the audience as well as us. I love playing with him. The audience is like, ‘Oh, there’s two of them! Wow.’ It lifts everything, in a joyous way.”
Ringo Starr still gets choked up when talking about his deceased Beatles bandmates
Starr and McCartney are the two surviving members of The Beatles. George Harrison died in 2001, and John Lennon died in 1980. Even decades after their deaths, Starr still gets choked up when thinking of them.
“I’m emotional now thinking of [Lennon] 40 years ago talking about me on his tape and thinking of me,” Starr told Rolling Stone. “The four of us were great friends with a couple of side issues. And it was far out. So anyway, I didn’t know how to act. And then I got back to L.A., and I grieved, and then of course you always go through the grief. And George, the same. [He tears up; his voice starts shaking.] I’m such an old crybaby.”
