Ringo Starr Didn’t Think He Could Count on Paul McCartney to Help Him With Music After The Beatles’ Split

When The Beatles broke up, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, and John Lennon were on one side of the divide, while Paul McCartney was on the other. McCartney sued the band in order to wrest control from manager Allen Klein. The split and legal battle meant the dynamic between the former bandmates was a stormy one. Starr wanted to maintain a friendly working relationship with his former bandmates, though. While he trusted that Lennon and Harrison would continue collaborating with him, he didn’t know if McCartney would. 

Ringo Starr worried his working relationship with Paul McCartney was over 

After the death of longtime Beatles manager Brian Epstein, the band hired Klein. McCartney wasn’t happy with this decision, though. He wanted to hire Lee Eastman, his father-in-law, something the rest of the band stood firmly against. These business dealings muddied their musical relationship, and by 1970, they had announced their breakup. 

Afterward, McCartney sued the band to take control of their catalog from Klein. This did further damage to the relationship between the former bandmates. Despite all this, Starr wanted to maintain a musical relationship with each of the ex-Beatles. In the song “Early 1970,” he expressed this, as well as his worry that McCartney would want nothing to do with him.

“One of them wasn’t gonna play [nervous chuckle]. At that point, I felt that when John comes to town, I know he’s gonna play with me, and if George comes to town, I know he’ll play with me, and if Paul comes to town, I ‘wonder’ if he’s gonna play,” Starr told Billboard in 2001. “We were going through that Apple nonsense, where Paul was suing the three of us. And he was angry, and we were angry, and I was wondering when that would stop.”

Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney collaborated again on the album ‘Ringo’

While Starr was rightfully concerned, he worked with McCartney again on his 1973 album Ringo. While speaking with Billboard, he fondly recalled the song “Six O’Clock,” which McCartney wrote.

“‘Six o’clock in the morning/You’ve just gone to sleep.’ Paul wrote that,” he explained. “See, they knew me so well, they would write songs that they felt I could get away with. A lot of the songs they wrote for me, they would not have thought of doing themselves.”

The two former Beatles are still friends

Years after they worked together on Ringo, the former bandmates are still friends. While they can’t see each other all that often, they remain in contact and still think of each other as family.

“Paul called me the other day … We’re close, close friends,” Starr told CNN in 2023. “We’re brothers and you know, for me it was great because I’m an only child and suddenly I had three brothers that I could love, I could rely on, I could help out. You know, it was a great moment for me.”