Why Ringo Starr Once Told John Lennon He’d ‘Gone Too Far’
While Paul McCartney drew much of his bandmates’ ire after The Beatles split, John Lennon angered McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison as well. In a 1971 interview, Lennon went after his former bandmates and their work in The Beatles. What he had to say about them was not flattering. Starr was used to Lennon’s sometimes painful honesty, but he thought he went too far in the interview.
Ringo Starr once said John Lennon went too far with his criticism
In a 1971 interview with Rolling Stone, Lennon reflected on his time with The Beatles and shared his opinion on his former bandmates. He described The Beatles as “the biggest bastards on Earth” and dismissed their solo albums. Naturally, his former bandmates were asked to comment on Lennon’s derisive interview.
“Well, the other guys, their reaction was public,” Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1975. “Ringo made some sort of comment that was funny which I can’t remember, something like, ‘You’ve gone too far this time, Johnnie.’ Paul said (stuffy voice), ‘Well, that’s his problem.’ I can’t remember what George said.”
Lennon said his bandmates should have known what to expect from him after all their years together. He didn’t want to hurt them, but he didn’t let their reactions bother him.
“I mean, they don’t care, they’ve been with me for 15 or 20 years, they know damn well what I’m like. It just so happens it was in the press,” he said. “I mean, they know what I’m like. I’m not ashamed of it at all. I don’t really like hurting people, but [interviewer] Jann Wenner questioned me when I was almost still in therapy and you can’t play games. You’re opened up. It was like he got me on an acid trip. Things come out.”
Still, he didn’t like that Wenner turned the lengthy interview into a book.
“I got both reactions from that article,” he said. “A lot of people thought it was right on. My only upset was Jann insisted on making a book out of it.”
He said there was no longer animosity between former band members
After The Beatles broke up, they were not on good terms. Lennon said that they’d put their issues aside by 1975, though.
“I talked to Ringo and George yesterday,” he said. “I didn’t talk to Paul ’cause he was asleep. George and Paul are talkin’ to each other in L.A. now.”
He believed people were making the feud between them a bigger problem than it was.
“There’s nothin’ going down between us,” he said. “It’s all in people’s heads.”
John Lennon worried about Ringo Starr in the period after The Beatles broke up
When The Beatles broke up, Starr felt lost for a time. He said he was angry and wasn’t sure what would happen to his career.
“I was lost for a while,” he said, per the book Ringo: With a Little Help by Michael Seth Starr. “Suddenly the gig’s finished that I’d been really involved in for eight years. ‘Uh-oh, what’ll I do now?’”
Lennon reportedly worried about his former bandmate.
“I remember John talking about Ringo when we were in Tittenhurst Park and he said, ‘I don’t want Ringo to end up poor, having to play the Northern nightclubs,’” journalist Ray Connolly said. “Because the worst thing in the world for an ex-pop star in England is to end up playing Bradford or Darlington, the northern nightclubs, because they are really awful places. The people eating chips and scampi while you’re trying to be heard.”
