Ringo Starr Once Said The Beatles’ Farting Caused ‘Terrible Trouble’
Ringo Starr spent nearly all of the 1960s working closely with his bandmates in The Beatles. Ringo, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison were practically inseparable. They gigged locally and then toured Europe before becoming international stars. The band still shared hotel rooms even after they made it big, but at least they had solved one intra-band issue by then. Ringo said the Beatles‘ farting habits caused terrible trouble in the band until they developed their own etiquette when someone let one slip.
Ringo Starr was never far from his fellow Beatles
The Beatles entered the music business before streaming was anything but water, which means they did things the old-fashioned way — they built their audience by playing live as much as they could.
They honed their chops with a residency in Hamburg, Germany, in the early 1960s. When they weren’t entertaining the Germans, they played shows across the U.K. Soon, they started playing across Europe, and the rest of the world became their stage before too long.
The Fab Four were never far apart from each other. They shared hotel rooms — two Beatles to a room — while on tour. The quartet even vacationed together, though manager Brian Epstein split up the band to avoid clashes during the downtime (of which there was very little).
Ringo once said the Beatles’ farting caused terrible trouble in the early days, but the band quickly learned how to deal with members playing the butt trumpet.
Ringo said the Beatles’ farting caused “terrible trouble” in the early days before they learned how to handle it
The Beatles spent the better part of three years, from 1961 through 1963, constantly playing live. If they weren’t playing Hamburg, they were criss-crossing the U.K. for concerts. The group honed its live act while also learning how to handle things when someone had a bottom burp.
While promoting his book Lifted on Jimmy Kimmel Live (via YouTube), Ringo said the band would often drive through the night to make it home after U.K. shows. That meant a lot of time cooped up in a van going to and from live performances. The Beatles’ farting habits caused terrible trouble until they learned how to handle things, per Ringo:
“We learned when we were in a van when we started out that if anybody let a silent one go, they would try and get away with it, and it caused terrible trouble. ‘It wasn’t me! It was you!’ So anyway, we realized, OK, it was me, or it was him. It didn’t matter. You just said it, and everything calmed down.”
Ringo Starr describes the Beatles’ farting etiquette
When the “whoever denied it supplied it” routine didn’t work for the Beatles, Ringo said they’d just admit to their musical toots and move on. The Beatles traded vans for jets when the band started traveling the world, but their touring days didn’t last long.
Why did the Beatles stop touring?
Aside from their famous rooftop concert in 1969, the Beatles stopped playing live in 1966.
The group played massive stadiums when it hit North America in August 1966. The shows were immense and impersonal. They struggled to hear each other playing, despite having custom-made 100-watt amplifiers. The group traveled to show in armored cars to ensure their safety.
The hassle of a live show was only part of why the Beatles stopped touring years ahead of their split. Their intricate studio compositions became too difficult to replicate on tour. The strings driving Revolver’s “Eleanor Rigby” or the sonic swirls of “Tomorrow Never Knows” would be completely lost at a stadium show, to say nothing of all of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
If the tours had continued, at least passing gas wouldn’t have been such an issue for Ringo Starr and the Beatles.
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