Ringo Starr Said He Copied a Beatles Song to Create a Solo Hit
Ringo Starr was very proud of one Beatles song. He liked it so much that he borrowed from it while working on a solo hit.
In 1969, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr recorded The Beatles song “Get Back.” In 1972, Ringo Starr released a solo song that had some strikingly similar elements to The Beatles’ hit. He admitted he copied part of the song.
Ringo Starr took inspiration from a Beatles song in his career as a solo artist
Much of The Beatles’ experience recording Let It Be was agonizing. Beatles producer George Martin said the album was such an “unhappy” one that he was surprised the band reunited to record Abbey Road (per The Beatles Anthology). Still, there were some bright spots in the recording process. Starr said they enjoyed working together when they felt they were recording a good track.
“‘Get Back’ was a good track. I felt, ‘This is a kick-a** track.’ ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ also,” Starr said. “They were two fine tracks. Quite simple and raw — back to basics.”
He liked “Get Back” so much that he borrowed part of it for his own 1972 song, “Back Off Boogaloo.”
“I’d done a hook to the track in ‘Get Back’ which sounded good and it’s been copied since — by myself, in fact, in ‘Back Off Boogaloo,’” Starr said. “That’s perfectly allowed by me!”
Ringo Starr once accidentally copied another artist while working on a Beatles song
Starr once accidentally lifted elements of another song, and it wasn’t one of his own. McCartney fondly recalled a time when Starr spent hours working on a song, and the result was a Bob Dylan hit.
“I was always pretty keen not to repeat other people’s tunes, because it’s very easy to do when you write,” he said, per the book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles. “Ringo’s got a funny story of the most brilliant song he ever wrote. He spent three hours writing a very famous Bob Dylan song.”
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
