the inspiration to write what would become the sec-
ond, and last, Ringo-penned Beatles song, “Octopus’s
Garden,” he was his usual aff able self when the Beatles
began recording Let It Be in January. The sessions
were scheduled in order not to confl ict with Ringo’s
shooting schedule for The Magic Christian, which
began in February, a fact that Starr took as a sign that
the Beatles—himself included—were no longer all-in.
“With John and Yoko off doing their things and me
making the fi lm, it shows that we were going diff erent
places,” Starr said in interviews conducted for 2000’s
The Beatles Anthology oral history. “The energy for the
Beatles was waning. We used to put in one thousand
percent, but now it was like, ‘Oh, dear, do we have to
turn up?’ ”
The man behind the drum kit was the peacemaker
when tempers fl ared between the band members.
Along with Paul and George, Ringo resented Yoko
Ono’s presence in the studio at fi rst. “It created ten-
sion,” Starr recalled in Anthology. “Because the four of
us were very close and very possessive of each other;
we didn’t like strangers coming in.” But Starr alone
asked Lennon about it, got an answer he could accept
(“That’s how they started to live—every moment
together”), and, as a result, he said, “I was fi ne after
that and relaxed around Yoko.” And it was Ringo who
was dispatched to speak calmly to McCartney when
he insisted that Lee and John Eastman, Linda’s father
and brother, should handle the Beatles’ aff airs. Then,
when McCartney set a release date for his fi rst solo
album that confl icted with the release of both Let It Be
and with Ringo’s own solo debut, Sentimental Journey,
Starr again played diplomat, only to fl ee in the face of
McCartney’s anger, according to longtime assistant
Beatles manager-turned-author (The Love You Make:
An Insider’s Story of the Beatles) Peter Brown. Ringo in
turn “told the others that if it meant so much to Paul,
they should let him do it.” But acting as a go-between
seems to have been more about preserving amity than
about keeping the band together. Starr, for one, was
fi ne with ending things, telling People in 2013 when
his book Photograph was published, “You know, we’dTHE BEATLES 1969 PEOPLE 47
MEETING CUTE
Above: Ringo and
his wife, actress
Barbara Bach, in
the 1981 comedy
Caveman.MOVIE, MUSIC
Opposite: Starr and
first wife Maureen
at the 1969
London premiere
of The Magic
Christian. Right:
his first solo LP.