Ringo Starr Says Paul McCartney Pushed Beatles Beyond Just Two LPs
Ringo Starr said the Beatles’ catalog might have consisted of only two albums if Paul McCartney hadn’t constantly pushed the “lazy” band to work harder.
The drummer recalled that some members thought “Oh, no, not again!” when they were pressed to return to the studio, but they enjoyed themselves when they finally started recording.
“When the four of us played, it was just the best space on the planet to be in,” Starr told KMRS in a recent interview. “Besides being famous, I was in all of those spaces, with the joy of playing with John, George and Paul. I have great memories of that and the emotion of all of that.”
He added that "the other side of that story was that we worked really hard. … I was telling someone the other day, if Paul hadn't been in the band, we'd probably have made two albums because we were lazy buggers. But Paul's a workaholic. John and I would be sitting in the garden taking in the color green from the tree, and the phone would ring, and he would go, 'Hey, lads, you want to come in? Let's go in the studio!'
"So I've told Paul this - he knows this story. We made three times more music than we ever would without him, because he's the workaholic and he loves to get going. ... Once we got there, we loved it, of course, but [at first], 'Oh, no, not again!’”
Starr described the Beatles as “the greatest band in the world." “Who knew it would get as crazy as it did?” he asked, admitting that he didn’t think about his late bandmates Lennon and Harrison every single day anymore. “It doesn't mean I don't love them, but some days you're into whatever you do. And then some days it really hits home. I do miss John and I do miss George. … I’m an only child and I had three brothers. It was just the best of me.”