Ringo Starr Was Grateful Whenever George Harrison Put Away His Ukulele
George Harrison and Ringo Starr knew each other for the entirety of their adult lives. The two men were friends and collaborators for years, but they had their fair share of rough patches. Relations between the former members of The Beatles were thorny after they broke up and, in the 1970s, Harrison had an affair with Starr’s wife. They overcame even this, but some things about Harrison still frustrated Starr. One of these was his incessant playing of the ukulele.
The Beatles guitarist loved the ukulele
Harrison learned about the ukulele through British musician George Formby. After seeing Formby play, Harrison vowed to learn to play the instrument himself. Harrison played the ukulele throughout the 1960s but became more fixated on it in the 1980s. He invited musician Joe Brown to come to his home to play it with him.
“We got on great, and I learned that George had quite recently developed a strong interest in the ukulele,” Brown told Ukulele Magazine. “He said, ‘You play the ukulele, don’t you, Joe?’ When I first went ’round I knew he played the uke a bit, but he wasn’t particularly proficient. But like me, he was a big fan of George Formby’s, so I taught him to play this Formby scissor-rhythm movement a guy had taught me back in 1964. The scissor is a bit tricky. You have to practice it for hours, but once you’ve got it, it’s pretty cool.”
He began to collect the instrument and soon invited his musician friends, like Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty, over to play with him.
Ringo Starr said he was glad George Harrison wasn’t playing the ukulele
Petty recognized that the ukulele was an obsession for Harrison, as he could play the instrument for hours on end.
“He really got into the ukulele,” Petty told Rolling Stone in 2002. “It sounds kind of corny, but it gave him so much joy, you know. I was there when he first discovered it. The rest of his life was ukulele. He played the hell out of the thing. When my kids were little, we could clear rooms with those things, because they knew George was going to carry on till daylight with the ukulele.”
Petty and Starr were discussing Harrison in an interview when the Heartbreakers guitarist mentioned that Harrison had been playing the blues the night before. Starr was relieved to hear this, as it meant that his former bandmate had put away the ukulele for once.
“Thank god he’s playing the blues and not that bloody ukulele that he loves so much,” Starr told Petty for Interview Magazine.
Petty joked that he had four emergency ukuleles at his house in case Harrison ever came over, and Starr immediately understood why.
“In case George gets withdrawal,” Starr said.
Ringo Starr recalled his final moments with George Harrison
Though some of his friend’s traits annoyed Starr, he felt a familial connection with his former bandmate. He recalled the last time they saw each other, toward the end of Harrison’s life.
“The last weeks of George’s life he was in Switzerland, and I went to see him,” Starr said in the documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World. “He was very ill, and he could only lay down.”
He felt a sense of awe at the last words Harrison said to him.
“I was going to Boston, ’cause my daughter had a brain tumor,” Starr said. “And I said, ‘Well, I gotta go to Boston,’ and [Harrison] goes — they’re the last words I heard him say, actually — and he said, ‘Do you want me to come with ya?’ So that’s the incredible side of George.”
