John Lennon’s Singing Freaked Out Ringo Starr, and We Get It
Ringo Starr and John Lennon always had a close friendship. They were the two oldest Beatles members, lived as neighbors, and hung out together after the Fab Four fractured. The drummer was the last Beatle to see John before he died, and Ringo was blown away by his mindset at the time. Years earlier, John’s singing freaked out Ringo, and we understand where the drummer is coming from.
Ringo Starr was ‘freaked out’ by John Lennon’s singing while making his first solo album
The Beatles split up in 1970, but that didn’t prevent the former bandmates from working together. Ringo played drums on George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass in 1970. He sat at the kit for John’s John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band solo debut the same year. Though used to recording with the bespectacled Beatle, some of John’s behavior in the studio freaked out Ringo, he writes in Postcards From the Boys:
“I can say this now (if he was here, John could tell you), but suddenly we’d be in the middle of a track, and John would just start crying or screaming — which freaked us out at the beginning. But we were always open to whatever anyone was going through, so we just got on with it.”
Ringo Starr
John’s freaky singing threw Ringo for a loop, and we understand why. The sudden outbursts of emotion came out of nowhere — in more ways than one.
We understand why John’s singing freaked out Ringo — it was new and came out of nowhere
John and Yoko Ono never hesitated to try something new. That included primal scream therapy, which is what it sounds like — screaming as loud as possible to relieve stress, frustration, and trauma.
“During 1970, we did extensive primal scream therapy for six months, which was very beneficial for us, and many of the songs were inspired as a result of those sessions,” Ono wrote in the book included in the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band box set from 2021.
John’s screaming and crying out of the blue freaked out Ringo, and we get it.
The drummer recorded with his former bandmate for years but never experienced anything quite like the impromptu screaming. Take the album’s lead song “Mother.” As the song fades in the waning moments, John taps into the primal scream therapy method as he repeatedly sings, “Mama don’t go / Daddy come home.”
John always had the most emotive voice in The Beatles, but he never sang like that with the Fab Four. Songs such as “Yer Blues” and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” had passages that approximated the singing that made Ringo pause, but the vocals on those songs were nowhere near as raw.
“Twist and Shout” from 1963’s Please Please Me teased John’s screaming, but Ringo expected him to go all out on that song. After all, it had been a staple of their live set before then, and The Isley Brothers’ version The Beatles emulated included the same powerful vocals at its climax.
He had seen his friend go all-out on his vocals before, but John’s behavior — the screaming and crying — freaked out Ringo. Still, the drummer quickly accepted the impromptu primal scream singing as par for the course while recording John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.
The former Beatles teamed up multiple times after the band broke up
John tapped Ringo to drum on his solo debut and freaked out his friend with his screaming and crying. That was only the first of several post-Beatles collaborations.
Ringo welcomed John on several of his solo albums from the 1970s. Ringo kicked off his self-titled 1973 record and 1974’s Goodnight Vienna with John songs (“I’m the Greatest” and “Goodnight Vienna,” respectively) and accepted another of his former bandmate’s songs (“Cookin’ (In the Kitchen of Love)”) for 1976’s Ringo’s Rotogravure.
The drummer lived (and partied) with his longtime friend in Los Angeles in the mid-1970s. They made plans to record together in early 1981 when they hung out in late 1980, but John’s murder changed everything. As a sign of how deep their friendship was, Ringo refused to record a John song that became a posthumous top-10 hit for Lennon.
John Lennon’s singing while making John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band freaked out Ringo Starr, and we get it. The drummer had never seen his friend scream and cry in the studio in that way — violently and out of the blue. Ringo accepted John’s need to behave that way, and the two continued to work together throughout the 1970s.
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