It’s incredible to think that by the time The Beatles had bitten the dust, none of the members had even hit their 30s yet. Off the back of a dizzying amount of work, the Fab Four’s relentless innovation and exhaustive catalogue of classic songs within eight short years is unrivalled, and likely, the world will never see such an impact on popular music again. With such colossal musical stature, their end was rather lacklustre, an incremental wane beginning from the late 1960s on their fractious self-titled double LP through their fraught Let It Be sessions, before finally John Lennon officially signing the legal documents in 1974 while on holiday, somewhat cynically, at Disney World.

Three of the four Beatles’ careers as solo stars were assured, Paul McCartney and Lennon achieving further commercial success with Wings and the Plastic Ono Band respectively, and George Harrison had seriously come into his own as a songwriter, contributing some of The Beatles’ most cherished songs including ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, ‘Here Comes the Sun’, and ‘Something’, which Frank Sinatra claimed “was the greatest love song of the last fifty years” and erroneously stated was his “favourite Lennon-McCartney” song.

So, where did this leave Ringo? One of the most cliché and tired statements that can be made about The Beatles is that “Ringo wasn’t even the best drummer”, which is usually spouted by idiots ignorant of Mr Starkey’s fantastic grasp of timing and creative approach to drum fills (go listen to ‘A Day in the Life’ right now and imagine that song without Ringo’s percussive magic). He was also an essential moderating influence on the rest of the band, deciding to jump ship from the more famous – at the time – Rory Storm and the Hurricanes and replacing original drummer Pete Best largely because they all shared a similar sense of humour and providing the band their ‘anchor’ throughout the eight wild years.

With that said, his songwriting chops weren’t up to the standards of most of his contemporaries, let alone the fucking Beatles. Journalist Ray Connolly recalled talking to Lennon at his Tittenhurst Park home, lamenting, “I don’t want Ringo to end up poor, having to play the northern nightclubs… because the worst thing in the world for an ex-pop star in England is to end up playing Bradford or Darlington, the northern nightclubs because they are really awful places… The people eating chips and scampi while you’re trying to be heard.”

Ringo’s commercial future beyond The Beatles was a concern for the other three members, all contributing writing credits on 1973’s Ringo, his first LP of original material, as well as performing on select cuts on the record. Two years prior, his first single outside North America ‘It Don’t Come Easy’ seemed too good to be true, a thoroughly infectious toe-tapper filled with thumping brass and boogie piano that reached number four in the UK singles charts and should’ve kicked ‘Octopus’s Garden’ off of Abbey Road and proudly stood in its eight-limbed place.

Credited solely to Ringo, Harrison lent a considerable amount of uncredited assistance with the single’s creation. However, there’s reason to believe that some of its parts were already recorded, with Harrison himself singing the vocals as a scratch demo before applying Ringo’s voice and that glorious horn section. Quietly embedded in the mix is the shout of “Hare Krishna” during the guitar solo as a nod to Harrison’s 1970 ‘My Sweet Lord’ hit, and there’s a dash of self-deprecating melancholy that hovers through ‘The Quiet Beatles’ best work.

‘It Don’t Come Easy’ would become Ringo’s signature solo song, being the opener when assembling his All Starr Band for the first time back in 1989, and has been a staple of his live performances ever since. A testament to Ringo’s amiable and universally loved role in the most famous group being gifted with such a tune, all Ringo needed to hit the ground running was a little help from his friends.