Paul McCartney Kicked Ringo Starr Out of His House Even Though He Didn’t Want to Fall Out With Him
Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr had worked closely together for years by the time The Beatles broke up. Even when tempers flared as the band was breaking up, McCartney didn’t necessarily want to have a falling out with Starr. The Beatles’ drummer came by McCartney’s house to deliver a message from the rest of the band. Though McCartney wanted to keep things friendly, he kicked his former bandmate out of his house for the first time ever.
Ringo Starr said Paul McCartney could act like a child
In 1970, McCartney sued The Beatles to dissolve their contractual relationship. He didn’t trust the band’s manager, Allen Klein, and wanted to make sure the band members had control over their own work. The lawsuit made the band’s inner turmoil public, and the other three members complained about McCartney in interviews and their songs.
George Harrison and John Lennon were harshest on McCartney, but Starr wasn’t exactly complimentary to his former bandmate.
“He acted like a spoiled child,” Starr said, per the book Paul McCartney: A Life by Peter Ames Carlin. “He goes on and on to see if he can get his way.”
Still, Starr said McCartney was “the greatest bass player in the world” to lessen the blow.
Ringo Starr dropped by to give Paul McCartney a letter
Perhaps because Starr was the most diplomatic when talking about McCartney, the band sent him to deliver a letter to the bassist. McCartney was planning to release his debut solo album ahead of The Beatles’ final album, Let It Be. They wanted him to push back his release date.
“They eventually sent Ringo round my house at Cavendish with a message: We want you to put your release date back, it’s for the good of the group’ and all this sort of s***, and he was giving me the party line, they just made him come round, so I did something I’d never done before, or since: I told him to get out,” McCartney said, per the book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles. “I had to do something like that in order to assert myself because I was just sinking.”
He said he hadn’t wanted to have a falling out with Starr, but he felt it was necessary to kick him out.
“I don’t want to fall out with Ringo,” McCartney said, adding, “I like Ringo. I think he’s great. We’re all talking about peace and love but really we’re not feeling peaceful at all. There’s no one who’s to blame. We were fools to get ourselves in this situation in the first place. But it’s not a comfortable situation for me to work in as an artist.”
The former bandmates consider each other as family
As the 1970s wore on, The Beatles’ anger toward one another softened. Starr and McCartney, as the only two living members of the band, think of each other as family.
“It’s family,” McCartney told Rolling Stone. “Sometimes we get pissed off at each other. I’ll want something from him and he won’t give it to me, and I’ll get pissed off. But then it passes. Brothers fight sometimes. There’s this revisionist history that it was all John and Paul. But it was four corners of a square; it wouldn’t have worked without one of the sides. Ringo was the right angle.”
