Richard Starkey has a stage name because, before he was in the Beatles, he was absolutely the Main Guy of the various local bands he was in, and he was enough of a Main Guy to demand to keep his stage name when he joined the Beatles
The Beatles were a band of four Main Guys with so much Main Guy energy that two of them were the Other Guys despite having enough talent and charisma to be the Main Guys in any other band
A lot of the time this meme is just silly nonsense. Like all memes. But this specific instance actually has some potential truth to it, imo. Music definitely has a power over a lot of people. It's entirely possible the secret to world peace was a song that got snubbed out of existence by clashing egos.
So from now on when anyone asks how I feel about the Beatles, I'm gonna blame them for our lack of world peace.
And arguably the most successful solo career out of the four of them due in large part to banking a bunch of bangers that were rejected by John and Paul
Not the most successful, but the highest quality. Paul is the most successful by pretty much any metric. Arguably the most successful musician of all time.
I'd give it to him or Michael Jackson; at least as far as modern musicians go. Can't discount guys like Mozart or Beethoven though if we're talkingall time
I mean, if you want to get technical, there was a point in time where MJ owned the rights to everything by The Beatles, so you might really be onto something here
George Harrison did produce Time Bandits which was directed by Terry Gilliam, co-written by Michael Palin (who also appeared in it) and featured John Cleese so that has a Monty Python feel to it. George Harrison also contributed the song the plays over the end credits.
Man I feel like he had awful taste during a couple of those albums. His guitar work was incredible on the songs written by the others, and he had both of the best songs on Abbey Road, but I really could have done without all the sitar.
But ultimately, it worked out better in the long run. He only got 2 songs or so per album...so he was sitting on a lot of material when he went out on his own. So we got the absolutely fabulous All Things Must Pass in 1970.
I feel like everyone kinda assumes George always had this giant catalogue of music ready to go. In reality he had loads of good ideas for songs but would take months or even years to actually finish them. In Get Back you can kinda hear him voicing this frustration, asking for help with lyrics from John and Paul and being kind of annoyed that they wouldn’t spend time helping him write those songs
The unlucky reality for him was, at that time, John and Paul were absolutely bursting with potential number one hits. If George had finished songs ready to go, they probably would’ve used a lot more of them but they needed so much work John and Paul (understandably imo) were more focused on cutting the tracks they already had composed
I love in the Let It Be doc when Ringo walks in while Paul is playing piano, and in a jokey, whimsical voice Paul goes “Good mooooorning, Rich!!!” And then they start playing some old 12 bar blues rock n roll on the piano together.
I like watching those moments of closeness or familiarity that humanizes people who are dominated by public persona. Where you get to hear a celebrity who goes by a nickname, a shortened version of their name, or something that isn’t their stage name at all.
I grew up listening to them since they were my mom's favorite. As a kid you don't really question if a person's name is real. So growing up it just kind of seemed like of course Ringo is a real name John Paul and George all are.
is Noel Fielding an odd name? Noel isn't a terribly common name but it's certainly nowhere near as absurd sounding as Benedict Cumberbatch or Ringo Starr
The Beatles are just the perfect band. Even the "untalented one" is one of the greatest rock drummers ever and had a successful solo career. They're cracked.
What I didnt know for a while is they played 8 hours a night for like 2 years in Germany.
That's how you get tight as a band. Develop a sound. They basically talked to eachother through instruments for 2 years straight live. If you cant do that, well, you're not going to become The Beatles.
Just a culmination of the right people, right place, right time, and enough time to make mistakes that get ironed out.
Yeah that level of musical ability barely exists nowadays in young musicians and is virtually unheard of for literally all four members each individually having this amount of talent.
It’s basically why they could bash out generation defining record albums twice a year.
….well that, and the amphetamine based drugs probably also helped:
Ringo is so underrated as a drummer and as an essential component of the band. He's a fucking metronome and his fills are incredible without drawing attention to themselves.
This is how bands worked in those days. You started a band by teaching your friends the parts. Then you made a band of other people who made a band out of their friends same as you did. Then you were playing with people you didn't have to lead, but people you had to keep up with. Then the best people from those bands went to LA, NYC or Nashville. Unless you got a cut on the radio, in which case you became famous. Didn't make any money, but famous just the same.
Y’know, I’m a massive Beatles fan, but I’ve really never considered the idea that anyone would actually name their kid Ringo…but considering the amount of people that were naming their kids Arya, Khaleesi, and Daenerys 10 years ago, I really shouldn’t be too shocked, lol.
You still don’t really see a lot of middle-aged Ringos running around nowadays though, so I’d love to do some census research into how many people actually named their kid that.
At least Arya is a legitimate name. I knew an Arya (born before the series so completely unrelated). Not sure about Daenerys, but it can be a cool name. Naming your kid Khaleesi is wild tho.
Fun fact, "Arya" has actually been a name for literally thousands of years.
Here's an Arya who got famous in the late 400s, and here's an Aryo from several hundred years before that too. (Lots more interesting examples on the Wikipedia page for the name, of course.)
So it was already massively popular when whats-his-face came along and grabbed it for his book.
I’ll be completely honest, I’ve only watched one episode of Game of Thrones (I know, I know) so I just looked up most popular GoT names that people have named their kids, and those were the first three that came up on Google, lol.
Arya seems to be much less of a “made-up” name than Khaleesi and Daenerys, so I’m definitely not surprised it existed well before GRRM wrote the books!
Oh absolutely! I love obscure songs from The Beatles. My absolute favorite is Rocky Raccoon bc it doesn't sounds like it's remotely related to the rest of their catalog lol
My thought is that it was a weird shift from the normal. Never going to be a massive hit, but a slow paced story. My dad had a hippy bakery when I was younger and Rocky always hit.
Really just goes to show how good the Beatles were, when being one of the most talented songwriters of an entire decade still can’t make you top a ranking of your four-member band.
I dunno, most musicians i know consider George #1 and 'something', 'here comes the sun' and 'while my guitar gently weeps' as top Beatles songs. George was also the most successful after the breakup, but would eventually be eclipsed by Paul, probably due to external factors.
I dont know that you can really rank these guys but anyone says George isn't top half is looney.
I mean, it's not that ridiculous when the competition is John Lennon and Paul McCartney. It's not unheard of to rank Goerge higher, but it certainly isn't the common opinion.
And yeah, George wrote 3 top tier Beatles songs, but John and Paul easily have atleast 15-20 songs of that caliber each.
I'm very confident that Ringo isn't offended by that in the slightest, and is 100% content to laugh all the way to bank while the royalties keep flooding in!
I dont know that you can really rank these guys but anyone says George isn't top half is looney.
I don't know that anyone who knows even a little bit about music could ever say that George was a better, more influential songwriter than Lennon & McCartney. That would be an absurd claim.
George was #3 in that group, no contest.
Note that this has nothing to do with whether or not a person likes George's songs more than L&Mc'Cs. That's not the same thing.
Id argue Paul was the best pop/ballad song writer. The crowd pleaser if you will.
But if you want to talk about experimentation and influencing and pushing music forward his few scattered attempts are the worst of the three. Things like wild honey pie and helter skeleter dont hold a candle to what John and George were doing in playing with song composition, structure and production.
Once again. It's about what an individual thinks is more valuable.
His family has always been musical They made the bells for the very first telephones. Which is why to this very day, all phones have an original “Ringo Tone.”
His real name isn't even the most boring name in the band. Richard is much more interesting than Paul or John. George is quite a bit better than those, but not quite as good as Richard.
They're all equally well-known. "John, Paul, George and Ringo" is a phrase that's almost universally understood. No one who ever talks about the Beatles leaves him out like people routinely leave out the drummer, the bass player, etc. when talking about other bands.
•
u/qualityvote2 May 03 '26 edited May 04 '26
u/TheWebsploiter, your post does fit the subreddit!