Ringo Starr says he ‘never really liked’ one classic album from The Beatles

A classic album from legendary rock band The Beatles was far from the favourite of the group’s drummer, Ringo Starr.

Running through his experience with the Fab Four’s biggest hits, Starr pointed out one album which still defines the band today as one he “never really liked”. The drummer followed up his time in The Beatles with a series of solo albums and sessions with his ex-bandmates, though it would be the one album he never cared for which continued to define him and his work. Starr even performs one of the tracks from the album during his ongoing live shows with The All-Starr Band. There are plenty of great albums in The Beatles’ discography, and though Starr is fond of Abbey Road, an album which established the band as one of the best in history is not looked upon as fondly.

In an interview given in 1977, Starr praised the group’s Abbey Road effort as his “favourite”. He also had high praise for the White Album, even though he had left for two weeks during recording. Starr said: “The White Album is important to me for different reasons. One, I had left the band on the White Album. We’re doing this album, and I’m getting weird, saying to myself, ‘I’ve gotta leave this band. It’s not working,’ you know. So I just said, ‘Okay, I’m going on holiday,’ and I went away for two weeks.

“And, uhh, that’s when I left the band. And then I got a telegram from John saying, ‘Great drums’ on the tracks we’d done. And I came back and it was great, ‘cuz George had set up all these flowers all over the studio, saying welcome home. So then we got it together again. I always felt it was better on the White Album one for me. We were more like a band, you know.”

But it was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the album where Starr performs With a Little Help From My Friends, which the drummer does not care for. Starr shared: “See, I never really liked Sgt Pepper.

“I mean, I think it’s a fine album. All the work we do is fine. But I think I felt like a session man on it. We put so much on it, strings and brass, and you’d sit ’round the studio for days, you know, while they’re overdubbing other things.

“It is a fine album, but just for me, emotionally, I prefer Abbey Road and a lot of the White Album. And the early albums for different reasons.” Though Abbey Road would be considered one of the best albums from the band, fellow Beatles member George Harrison had choice words for a handful of Paul McCartney songs featured on the record.

Harrison said: “Oh, Darling! is another of Paul’s songs which is typical 1950-1960 sort of period in its chord structure. It’s a typical 1955 song which thousands of groups used to make – The Moonglows, The Paragons, The Shells and so on. We do a few ooh-oohs in the background, very quietly, but mainly, it’s Paul shouting.”