Brian Epstein had to beg The Beatles to record one of their biggest songs, according to drummer Ringo Starr. Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Starr were managed by Epstein until his untimely death in 1967 at the age of 32. Epstein’s management had been pivotal in getting the Fab Four in front of George Martin, the band’s longtime producer and frequent McCartney collaborator. Gigs in Hamburg and Liverpool proved extremely popular at the time for The Beatles but it took months of Epstein badgering the band to get them into a recording studio.
Starr would explain the hesitations felt by the group at the time and why it felt like a Herculean task to get to that point. Much of the magic that came from releasing their first record is still not lost on the veteran drummer, who believes that Love Me Do recording is more important than anything they did.
He said in 1977: “Well, it wasn’t suggested. Brian had begged for months. I mean, he begged before I joined. They’d done these demos which he took ’round. And then suddenly he found Dick James who turned ’em onto George Martin, who would give us a chance. You know, he listened to the tapes and he thought they had something.
“The first record, Love Me Do, for me… I don’t know if you’ve asked John and George, they’ll tell me later… that was more important than anything else. That first piece of plastic. You can’t believe how great that was. It was so wonderful. We were on a record! That’s great excitement to me.”
Starr would replace Pete Best in The Beatles shortly before Love Me Do was recorded. The trio had decided to oust Best from the group, with McCartney and Harrison believing he was “too conventional” for the group. Best was stunned by the decision to boot him from The Beatles, and shared as much in his autobiography. He wrote: “Why had it taken two years for John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison to decide that my drumming was not of a high enough standard for them?” Starr came in as replacement, with the veteran drummer recalling the moment he was asked to “sit in” for Best, who he was told was ill.
Starr was originally unconvinced by The Beatles as a musical outfit, saying his time in The Hurricanes saw him play at a far more professional level, much earlier than the Fab Four. He likened the group at the time to modern-day “struggling artists” and said he was relatively unconvinced, but when he got back to Liverpool he met with Brian Epstein, The Beatles’ manager.
Starr recalled: “When I was with Rory (Rory Storm and the Hurricanes) the Beatles were nothing. They weren’t even formed, you know. And later on when we went professional…. I stopped work at twenty and went to Butman’s holiday camp to play in the Rockin’ Calypso. Usually every night they had a steel band.
“Well, we went down this one afternoon and there’s John and Paul, and they were teaching Stuart Sutcliffe how to play bass. That’s how loose it was for them. I mean, we were the professionals and they were just like, the boys, you know– these struggling artists in those days.
“Brian Epstein came over. He says, ‘Will you sit in with the Beatles? Pete (Best) isn’t well.’ So I got up, and he had this big car, and he drove me down there. And I played that afternoon, then the other show at Southport that evening.”
After performing with the group, Starr says he and Epstein discussed him joining the band on a full-time basis. Liverpool-based fans were not keen on the idea, though, and made themselves known by chanting “Pete forever, Ringo never!,” Starr says. He added: “So there was these chants while we were trying to play, all this stuff going on. And George got a black eye – some guy punched him because I joined the band.
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