Ringo Starr has nominated The Beatles' official debut single Love Me Do as the song that has defined his career.
Asked by Vulture's Devon Ivie to name his career-defining song, the drummer, who turns 83 tomorrow (July 7), responds, "Because it was the first song, my answer is Love Me Do."
"We were on vinyl," he continues. "We made a record. Even though when I got to the studio, George Martin had a session guy for the drums, Andy White, but I played on it anyway. He played it, I played it — he’s on the album, I think, and I’m on the single, so go figure.
"We were just blessed that George Martin took a chance on us because many record labels sent us down," Starr continues. "But the fun was the fact that we were still touring. And only the BBC was playing the song. It would say, 'Oh, at 3:14 p.m., this song will be on the BBC.' So we’d all pull over and think, Wow, we’re on the radio. I mean, it was a really big moment. It was magic because we were on this piece of vinyl all to ourselves.
"A lot of tracks we did after that I loved, of course," the drummer adds. "The Love Me Do arrangement just came out of our heads. We didn’t read music. We were buskers. There’s nothing quite like the first. George Martin apologized every time I met him after we recorded that song. He would say, 'I’m sorry, Ringo,' because he didn’t know that we changed drummers."
Meanwhile, Paul McCartney recently revealed that he has used AI to create the "final" Beatles song.
In conversation with BBC Radio 4's Today, the former Beatle explains how he sourced the technology to "extricate" John Lennon's voice from an old demo so that he could use it to complete an already-written piece of music.
Of the track, which is has not yet been officially revealed, but is rumoured to be the unheard 1978 John Lennon song Now And Then, McCartney says: "We just finished it up and it'll be released this year."
