The Beatles’ Ringo Starr received praise for his songwriting from bandmate George Harrison, who suggested the drummer “doesn’t even know” the deep meaning of his work.
Praise for Starr appeared in the lead-up to the release of Abbey Road, the crowning achievement of The Beatles‘ work together. Harrison broke down the now-legendary album, with Starr in the room with him as he spoke to Rolling Stone Magazine back in 1969. His comments on Starr’s contributions to the album were praised by fans of the band, who say they highlight an underrated aspect of Starr’s writing style. Speaking highly of Octopus’s Garden, Harrison suggested Starr did not know there was a “deep meaning” to the song about being under the sea.
The Something songwriter said: “Octopus’s Garden is Ringo’s song, the second he’s written. It’s lovely. Ringo gets very bored playing the drums, so at home he plays the piano. But he only knows about three chords. And he knows about the same on guitar. He mainly likes country music, so this has a country and western feel.
“It’s really a great song. On the surface, it’s a daft kids’ song, but I find the lyrics very meaningful. I find very deep meaning in the lyrics, which Ringo probably doesn’t even know about. Lines like ‘rest our head on the seabed’ and ‘we’ll be warm beneath the storm’. From across the room Ringo grinned again).”
Praise for Starr’s songwriting credit from Harrison comes as the so-called “quiet one” of The Beatles dismissed Paul McCartney’s contributions to the band. He sounded particularly critical of Maxwell’s Silver Hammer and Oh! Darling.
Fans have, however, called the interactions between Harrison and Starr during the interview “adorable”. A post to the r/Beatles subreddit saw fans praise the pair for their open assessment of Abbey Road in the weeks leading up to its release.
An audio version of the full interview can be found below. A fan pointed out some of the quotes in the audio version had been cut from print. They wrote: “Interesting too to hear what got cut from the print version.
“George says, ‘It’s a bit like it’s somebody else, y’know. It doesn’t feel as though it’s us. Even though we, you know, we spent hours doing it, I still don’t see it like us. It’s more like somebody else’.”
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Abbey Road just might be the greatest album of music ever pieced together in my lifetime (mid-20th century ‘til now).
I know it’s the greatest by The Beatles.
That’s not an easy thing to quantify, given the phenomenal output of that singular set of musicians/songwriters who were productive as “The Beatles”for less than a single decade of our lives. I consider myself to be a lucky man for many reasons… and one that I embrace very often is that I was alive and a young man during the very same years that those marvelously gifted young lads from Liverpool were active and globally loved as “The Beatles.”
The Esher recordings of George’s All Things must Pass Anniversary Uber Box are singularity ,to me,the greatest that he ever did,.We don’t call him Guitar George for nothing.Even Wah Wah gets into my soul,all be it a bit to long.Mother Devine is particularly captivating ..Rest in Peace George.You belong to us all.