My Soundtrack

It seems that while negotiating different things during the breaking up, John worried most about George. He figured Ringo could always make a living being Ringo, but he wasn’t sure about George. So he suggested to Paul that they each give him a percentage of the Lennon/McCartney songs. George and Ringo were already receiving an equal share but this would be a little extra just for George.

Paul refused, and was totally adamant about it. They argued about it for days. So finally John threw his hands up in defeat and made arrangements for George to receive a percentage directly out of John’s pocket, leaving Paul out of it.

The reason John was so angry at George at the end of his life had nothing to do with not being mentioned in George’s autobiography but because George had never thanked him. John had given him the money, there had almost been a huge row with Paul over it, and he had never been thanked.

INT: I love the Tom Snyder interview from 1975 where John talks about how proud he was of Ringo's success.

MARK HUDSON: Yeah! Well, you know what's interesting? Ringo gave me a great compliment one time. I'm very energetic, multi-colored beard, which you can't see out there in radioland, it's pretty frightening, and when Ringo sings, I really get him energized because he's always insecure about his voice, and Ringo always says, "I wanna be James Brown. I walk up to the microphone, l'm Bing Crosby." So that Ringo thing that we love so much, he would rather be Little Richard or Stevie Wonder or James Brown. And I always sort of like make him feel like he can hit notes that he never could. And one time in the studio he said, "You know, you remind me of John," because whenever Ringo had to sing a song, he'd get insecure, and evidently, from what Ringo said, that John would come out and say, "Alright Ring! Here we go man!" and he would start this thing like a football player. "You can do it! Here we go! Hit that note! With a little help from my friends!" and he would hit the note and he says "John had this thing that made me feel so confident," and a huge compliment to me, saying that made him feel the same way. And it's only because I quote Lennon, "Nothing you can do that can't be done." And I think that was a way of life, and I think that was the way John felt that way about Ringo. And that's when we look at John's first solo album, its three guys playing on it: Klaus Voorman, John Lennon and Ringo Starr, and that goes to show you the faith that obviously John had in him, was you know, three guys is pretty naked, and this day and age usually we do things to cover up.

While we're taking a break from the UK Rock Superstars Tournament here's a fun side poll. Based on their solo careers, who is the best of The Beatles.

John visiting Paul at Cavendish in 1967..

“Paul was John's sounding-board, of course, and George had a huge amount of input, which, to my eternal regret, I didn’t sufficiently recognise at the time, but Ringo’s opinion was always important to John, just because he knew that with him there’d never be any bullshit. He’d often turn to Ringo and ask what he thought and if Ringo said, ‘That’s crap, John,’ he’d do something else.”