Over the years, every Beatle picked a different album as their all-time favorite. This was Ringo’s choice.
What was The Beatles’ greatest asset as a band? It’s hard to pick one thing, but if we had to choose it would be the way the band members’ taste in music complemented that of the others.
John Lennon was a rock ‘n’ roller first and foremost; George Harrison was into Indian music and folk rock; Paul McCartney was the most into pop standards; and Ringo Starr loved country and western. And you could call producer George Martin the essential fifth man.
Looking back at their Beatles careers, each member of the group named a different album as their favorite. For George, Rubber Soul stood out from the pack for its quality songwriting and special moment in time. When pressed on his favorite, Paul chose Sgt. Pepper’s.
John and Ringo proved harder to pin down. Though he couldn’t endorse any album in its entirety, John spoke most highly of The White Album. As for Ringo, he couldn’t choose an entire album, either. But he came awful close.
Ringo said the ‘Abbey Road’ medley was a favorite for him.
Speaking to an interviewer in 1976, Ringo said he had his pick for an all-time favorite Beatles moment, even if it wasn’t a full album. “The second side of Abbey Road is my favorite,” he said. “I love it.”
Unlike John, who disliked the medley, Ringo wasn’t bothered by those song fragments in the slightest. “‘She Came In Through The Bathroom Window,’ and all those bits that weren’t songs … I mean, they were just all the bits that John and Paul had around that we roped together.”
Thirty-six years later, Ringo was asked the question (for probably the millionth time) by Rock Cellar. But he hadn’t changed his mind after all that time. “For me, that would be the second side of ‘Abbey Road,’” he said in 2012.
Ringo reiterated his love for the “bits and pieces John and Paul had been working on and pulled all together.” That time, he mentioned “Polythene Pam,” a track John gave Ringo hell about during the Abbey Road sessions. Clearly, he didn’t harbor any bad memories of that day.
For his favorite songs, Ringo chose 2 by John Lennon.
While we’re on the subject of Ringo’s favorites, the Beatles’ drummer has gone on the record about his preferred songs as well. When asked about his favorite song on The White Album, Ringo went with “Yer Blues,” a dark yet rocking track John penned in India.
In an interview with Parade earlier this year, Ringo could recall laying down that song in the studio — and how much it pumped him up. “We’re in a six-foot room — amps, drums, vocal mics. No separation. It was like, ‘Yeah!”
As for his favorite Beatles song as far as his own drumming went, Ringo took it back to the Revolver era, when he crushed it on another Lennon-penned track (“Rain”).
“I feel as though that was someone else playing,” Ringo told Barry Miles for Many Years From Now. “I was possessed!”
