![]() ![]() It’s a breakup song, a tale of a guy mooning about a lost love and staring at the pictures that are all he has left. The two of them were staying on a yacht that Ringo had rented for the Cannes Film Festival. Ringo co-wrote “Photograph” with George Harrison. And so when Starr blew up with “Photograph,” it must’ve been a pleasant surprise for everyone, not least Ringo himself. He made an album of jazz standards and a country album, both of which predictably flopped. He directed Born To Boogie, a documentary about T. He acted in a few movies, mostly comedies: Candy, The Magic Christian, a 1971 spaghetti Western called Blindman. ![]() He played on records from his ex-bandmates Lennon and George Harrison. And for a while after the Beatles, Ringo seemed to be languishing. Ringo Starr’s solo stardom was never assured, if only because he didn’t have the attention-demanding personality type that seems like a prerequisite for stardom. He got to sing one song per album, and he was happy with that. It was like if your goofiest friend had somehow stumbled into joining the most important band in the world. He was the only Beatle who seemed even vaguely normal, which made him more beloved. Ringo was essentially the hero of A Hard Day’s Night, and he was funny in ways that didn’t always seem intentional. Instead, he was the permanently bemused Beatle, the one who’d constantly make smart-dumb Yogi Berra aphorisms and keep the rest of the band entertained. ![]() But “great drummer” wasn’t really Starr’s public persona. He was great in ways that weren’t always easy to perceive his subtle little in-the-pocket adjustments really drove some of those songs. Starr, the last Beatle to join the band, was a great drummer, of course. It’s hard to overstate the level of goodwill Ringo Starr generated during his years in the Beatles. And there was a bit of a worry that, although he can make movies, how was his recording career going to be? And in general, it’s probably better than mine!” In that interview, Lennon admits that he and the other Beatles were a bit worried about Ringo when the band broke up: “ didn’t have that much of a writing ability, and he wasn’t known for writing his own material. He was happy.Īs Fred Bronson points out in his extremely valuable and well-researched Billboard Book Of Number 1 Hits, Lennon addressed the Ringo question in a 1975 interview on Tom Snyder’s late-night talk show Tomorrow. As it turns out, we actually know the answer: Lennon was proud. ![]() How do you think John Lennon felt about the fact that Ringo Starr had a #1 single before he did? Before sitting down to do the research on Ringo’s “Photograph,” I’d been wondering about that. The remaining outtakes and early versions will no doubt fascinate aficionados (as in the case of the elaborate recent re-releases of Lennon’s Imagine and Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, both stupendous albums, although inevitably overpriced in their “deluxe” incarnations.In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. The acoustic demos from Harrison’s home studio are among the highlights of the 50th-anniversary edition released earlier this month, but the clarity of the re-mastered original album, handled by the late George Martin’s son Giles, is also a revelation. They ended up with too many songs for a single LP. Most of the other songs on the White Album were composed at Rishikesh, several of them deploying the folk finger-picking style the three guitar-playing Beatles had picked up from fellow pilgrim Donovan Leitch. On the taxi back to New Delhi he composed an acerbic ode to the Maharishi. When the Maharishi wanted to know why the latter two were leaving, Lennon - disillusioned by then, not least by rumours that the holy man was getting sleazy with a female Western acolyte - quipped that if the guru was as “cosmic” as he claimed to be, he shouldn’t have to ask. ![]()
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