Ringo Starr Threw a Biting Comeback at Paul McCartney During a Dinner With Dave Grohl

Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney have known each other for decades. While their relationship hasn’t always been smooth sailing, they think of each other as family. They collaborated after The Beatles broke up and try to maintain their friendship. While Starr has a reputation for his affability, his humor can take on a cutting edge, particularly when speaking with someone he knows as well as McCartney. During one dinner, Starr gave a brutal comeback to an offer made by McCartney.

The Beatles drummer has a reputation for being easygoing

Starr has been known for his easygoing, cheerful nature since the early 1960s. According to McCartney, he had a difficult childhood and had to build a shield around himself. 

“All of us except for George lost someone,” McCartney told Rolling Stone in 2015. “I lost my mum when I was 14. John lost his mum. But Ringo had it worst. His father was gone; he was so sick they told his mum he wasn’t going to live. Imagine making up your life from that, in that environment. No family, no school. He had to invent himself. We all had to come up with a shield, but Ringo came up with the strongest shield.”

Starr’s positivity had him viewing his childhood challenges through a rosy lens.

“I always thought I had a great childhood,” Starr said. “Then a therapist told me, ‘Well, actually, it sounds like you were abandoned and lived in a slum.’”

Ringo Starr insulted Paul McCartney at a dinner party

After The Beatles broke up, the easygoing Starr said he was angry for roughly 20 years. To cope with the emotion, he began drinking heavily. After going to rehab with his wife in 1988, he became sober. 

Years after this, Starr and McCartney were at dinner with Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl and their wives.

“I was having dinner with him recently in L.A. with Dave Grohl and our wives,” McCartney told Rolling Stone. “I know Ringo has been sober for years, so I joked, ‘C’mon, Ringo, have a whiskey.’”

Starr paused for a moment and then hit McCartney with a brutal comeback.

“Ringo looked at me for a second and says, ‘What, and end up looking like you?’” McCartney said. “I deserved it.”

Paul McCartney said that he and Ringo Starr are like family

Paul explained that though they don’t always get along, any anger passes.

“It’s family,” McCartney said. “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.”

After so many years of knowing each other, McCartney and Starr consider one another family. McCartney found it inexcusable that Starr wasn’t in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, so he set out to remedy this.

“I said, ‘Let me see what I can do,’” McCartney said. “And I talked to Bruce Springsteen, and I talked to Dave Grohl, and they both thought he should be in. And I said I’d do the induction. That took care of it.”