There was a lot of tension among the members of The Beatles, but Ringo Starr always seemed to provide peace, even when he had good reason not to. In fact, even in times of hardship, Starr, for the most part, seemed to remain on good terms with everybody, even Paul McCartney, who once got so out of control that he started to point and shout in his face.
Many corners of the music industry will always be coated in mystery, but none more so than The Beatles’ disbandment, which at the time was wrapped in a complex web of accusations and bitterness. However, as much as the public, the media, and The Beatles themselves liked to embellish personal and public feuds, it never detracted from their mass fame.
The pervasiveness of The Beatles’ phenomenon cannot be understated, and many of the former members connected their longevity and successes to their band dynamic and enduring friendships despite the tumultuous nature of their latter years. In fact, Starr more recently credited McCartney for their wealth of musical material due to him being a “workaholic”.
In his words, despite the group having a “rouse”, it “never got in the way of the music no matter how bad the row was.” He added: “Once the count in, we all gave our best. And that was a little later too which I think it was a natural thing, you know.” Noting McCartney’s significant contributions, he added: “Because of Paul, who was the workaholic of our band, we made a lot more records than John and I would’ve made. We liked to sit around a little more and then Paul would call ‘Alright lads’, and we’d go in.”
Perhaps Starr always felt a certain connection with McCartney that differed from the rest, especially considering the fact that the two worked considerably closely in the early 1980s when McCartney was creating material for his album Tug of War while helping Starr with material for his project. According to McCartney, he ended up writing a couple of songs for Starr, one being ‘Take It Away’, which he realised wasn’t exactly the right for his former bandmate.
“There were a couple of songs that we ended up recording which Ringo asked me to write at a certain period,” McCartney recalled in 1982 during an interview with Club Sandwich. “I was writing some songs for Ringo and ‘Take It Away’ was in amongst those songs,” he added. “I thought it would suit me better the way it went into the chorus and stuff; I didn’t think it was very Ringo.”
According to the musician, the chorus made him feel like it was his song despite him writing it “with Ringo in mind”. This makes complete sense when you listen to the track, too: it included McCartney’s significant 1980s groove, the exact type that he began to explore with more fervour during this time, while its chorus seemed too aligned with his melodic vocals to ever seem suited to anybody else.
