Ringo Starr Was Uptight All the Time, According to a Beatles Insider
Ringo Starr helped The Beatles chart a course toward stardom. The band needed a drummer who could handle studio work, and he was perfect for their needs. Happy to be the fourth wheel when he joined, Ringo eventually praised his drumming skills with the Fab Four. Geoff Emerick was nowhere close to praising the drummer when he worked on his solo debut. Emerick said Ringo was uptight all the time, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter.
‘Ringo Starr was just uptight all the time,’ according to Beatles insider Geoff Emerick
Ringo started working on his solo debut, Sentimental Journey, in October 1969, with the Beatles still barely a band. The album came out around the time the Fab Four finally fractured in 1970. He covered several big-band standards on Sentimental Journey, which in some ways was a tribute to his mother and her favorite artists.
Emerick, the longtime engineer on Beatles albums, found dealing with Ringo’s persona to be a challenge, per You Never Give Me Your Money author Peter Doggett:
“Ringo was just uptight all the time, or perhaps it was just an act to keep me at a distance. The problem was that I never knew if I was talking to the actual person underneath the veneer or not.”
Geoff Emerick
In the end, Ringo being uptight while making his first solo record didn’t matter.
Ringo’s attitude while working with Emerick didn’t make a difference in the end
Emerick didn’t cut Ringo any slack when he called him uptight. Allow us to do it for him.
Ringo saw the end of The Beatles in sight when he started working on Sentimental Journey. Losing his bandmates and friends, the closest thing to brothers the only child ever had, couldn’t have been easy. We’ll give Ringo some grace for not having fully processed The Beatles’ divorce at that time.
George Harrison and John Lennon felt invigorated by The Beatles’ break up. Ringo leaned in the other direction. The drummer suddenly found himself without the band that brought him fame and prosperity. He admitted years later to being angry for 20 years after the split. Emerick, who Doggett writes never had a close relationship with the drummer, could have been witnessing the earliest stages of Ringo’s two-decade duration of anger and frustration.
The drummer found solo success soon after Emerick and Ringo worked on Sentimental Journey. That album more or less flopped, but several of Ringo’s solo songs found their way into England’s top 10 every year from 1971 to 1974.
His pristine drumming earned more praise over the years. He earned accolades for his musical contributions several times. Eventually, he made an obvious statement about his life — that it was like a fairy tale. And he was right. Emerick calling Ringo uptight is just a blip on the radar in the drummer’s notable career.
The drummer didn’t seem uptight during Beatlemania press conferences
Richard Starkey morphed into Ringo Starr once he ignored his family’s advice and made music a full-time job. His stage name came about organically. The Ringo name came because he loved to wear rings while performing (subbing out the ‘s’ for a more pleasant ‘o’ at the end). His last name was a truncated version of Starkey with an extra ‘r’ added.
Emerick called Ringo uptight, but that wasn’t the vibe he gave off during the height of Beatlemania.
The drummer seemed to relish the spotlight. He was often the most performative of the Fab Four during press conferences. Ringo earned the “the funny one” nickname because of his quick wit and sharp sense of humor.
Ringo Starr’s uptight persona didn’t sit well with Emerick while the pair worked on the drummer’s solo debut in 1969. But one snide comment won’t take away from the drummer’s many notable accomplishments over the years.
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