Ringo Starr Said He Copied a Beatles Song to Create a Solo Hit
In 1969, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr recorded The Beatles song “Get Back.” In 1972, Ringo Starr released a solo song that had some strikingly similar elements to The Beatles’ hit. He admitted he copied part of the song.
Ringo Starr took inspiration from a Beatles song in his career as a solo artist
Much of The Beatles’ experience recording Let It Be was agonizing. Beatles producer George Martin said the album was such an “unhappy” one that he was surprised the band reunited to record Abbey Road (per The Beatles Anthology). Still, there were some bright spots in the recording process. Starr said they enjoyed working together when they felt they were recording a good track.
“‘Get Back’ was a good track. I felt, ‘This is a kick-a** track.’ ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ also,” Starr said. “They were two fine tracks. Quite simple and raw — back to basics.”
He liked “Get Back” so much that he borrowed part of it for his own 1972 song, “Back Off Boogaloo.”
“I’d done a hook to the track in ‘Get Back’ which sounded good and it’s been copied since — by myself, in fact, in ‘Back Off Boogaloo,’” Starr said. “That’s perfectly allowed by me!”
Ringo Starr once accidentally copied another artist while working on a Beatles song
Starr once accidentally lifted elements of another song, and it wasn’t one of his own. McCartney fondly recalled a time when Starr spent hours working on a song, and the result was a Bob Dylan hit.
“I was always pretty keen not to repeat other people’s tunes, because it’s very easy to do when you write,” he said, per the book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles. “Ringo’s got a funny story of the most brilliant song he ever wrote. He spent three hours writing a very famous Bob Dylan song.”
McCartney said the rest of The Beatles did not have much sympathy for Starr’s efforts.
“We all fell about and laughed,” he said. “That can happen. You say, ‘This is so great,’ and someone says, ‘Yeah, it’s number one at the moment.’ ‘Ah, that’s where I heard it.’”
‘Back Off Boogaloo’ had another connection to The Beatles
The hook from “Get Back” is not the only Beatles element in “Back Off Boogaloo.” Harrison helped his former bandmate write the song.
“I didn’t have the talent to end a song,” Starr said, per The Daily Mail. “With ‘Back Off Boogaloo,’ I went to George and he helped me finish it.”
Some believe the connection goes further than that. Many have speculated that Starr wrote the song about McCartney’s solo music.
“Get yourself together now/ And give me something tasty/ Everything you try to do/ You know it sure sounds wasted,” he sings.
While this sounds a bit harsh coming from Starr, he openly admitted that he didn’t like McCartney’s album Ram.
“I feel sad with Paul’s albums because I believe he’s a great artist, incredibly creative, incredibly clever but he disappoints me on his albums,” Starr said, per The Beatles Diary Vol. 2, adding, “I don’t think there’s one tune on the last one Ram … I just feel he’s wasted his time, it’s just the way I feel … he seems to be going strange.”
