Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr ‘Grasp Onto’ Their Friendship as the Only Living Members of The Beatles

Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney have a very special bond.

The longtime friends — who are famously one half of The Beatles — reflected on their bond in a July 2 profile of Starr in The New York Times. In The Beatles, the pair were joined by John Lennon, who was murdered in 1980 at age 40, and George Harrison, who died from cancer in 2001 at age 58.

“With John and George not here, I think we realize nothing lasts forever,” McCartney, 83, told the outlet. “So we grasp onto what we have now because we realize that it’s very special. It’s something hardly anyone else has. In fact, in our case, it’s something no one else has. There’s only me and Ringo, and we’re the only people who can share those memories.”

In December, McCartney and Starr, 84, reunited on stage for the first time in five years. Starr joined McCartney to perform “Helter Skelter” during McCartney’s show at  London’s O2 Arena. McCartney told the outlet that even though the song is “an out-and-out rocker,” he still ended up getting “a little bit emotional” to be on stage again with his longtime friend.

Much of the profile focused on Starr’s place in The Beatles as well as his legacy as a drummer; fellow drummers Max Weinberg and Sheila E. weighed in on Starr’s underappreciated talent.

“It’s the most ludicrous and funny argument that, you know, you had these three talented singer-songwriters up front, and then you had the guy who got lucky,” Weinberg — a member of The E Street Band who was also Conan O’Brien’s bandleader on Late Night — said. “That was so far from the case, if you really go back and talk to people who were in that scene. To get Ringo in what became The Beatles was a coup for the three of them.”

“He was a fantastic drummer,” McCartney echoed. “We asked him if he would be in our band, and luckily for us he agreed.”

Starr also sang lead vocals on a handful of Beatles tracks, but he was the last member of the band to start writing songs. “It’s hard to come to the front when you’ve got John and Paul,” he told the Times of songwriting. His earliest attempts ended up more humorous than anything else. “I’d say, ‘I’ve got this song.’ And halfway through they’d all be laying on the floor laughing, because I wasn’t writing new songs. I was writing new words to old songs,” he said.

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McCartney remembered, “We’d say, ‘Yeah, that’s a great one. That’s a great Bob Dylan song.’ ” The band ultimately released two songs Starr wrote solo, “Don’t Pass Me By” and “Octopus’s Garden,” and he was co-writer on songs like “What Goes On” and “Flying.” The Beatles were ultimately active from 1960 until they broke up in 1970.

Starr also reflected on his bond with McCartney back in 2023. “Paul loves me as much as I love him,” he told AARP magazine. “He’s the brother I never had.”

He told the outlet in a video that joining The Beatles widely expanded the people closest to his heart. “As an only child, suddenly I got three brothers. We looked out for each other,” he said.

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In 2023, McCartney and Starr released “Now and Then,” the final Beatles song. The song was started by Lennon before his death, and the three surviving members of the band tried to finish it in the 1990s. But the original tape of Lennon’s demo had too much background noise, and it was only when Peter Jackson created the 2021 documentary Get Back that McCartney and Starr learned of and got access to technology that could make clear the performance Lennon had left on the tape.

Source People.com