RINGO STARR – Songwriting
The Beatles also includes “Don’t Pass Me By”; other than “Octopus’s Garden” (from Abbey Road), this is the only song written solely by Ringo Starr (listed under his real name, Richard Starkey as is normal in songwriting credits) that appears on an official Beatles album. Starr also shares a songwriting credit with John Lennon and Paul McCartney on “What Goes On” (from Rubber Soul), and the instrumental “Flying” (on Magical Mystery Tour) shows all four bandmembers as the writers.
Ringo Starr had written “Don’t Pass Me By” many years earlier and first played the song for the rest of the band not long after he joined the Beatles in August 1962. “Don’t Pass Me By” is a simple but clever song and provides a glimpse of the post-Beatles output from the band’s drummer; as I have written before, Ringo has arguably the best body of work as a solo artist of any of the four Beatles. Starr would typically have a lead vocal performance on each Beatles album – examples include “Yellow Submarine”, “Act Naturally”, “Boys”, and the terrific Carl Perkins cover, “Honey, Don’t” – but hardly any of his songwriting made it onto the Beatles’ disks.
(June 2015)
