The breakdown of The Beatles was not just a historic event. As well as being a seismic moment in the music world, the group’s ending was also an explosion with a deeply personal impact on the band members. Beyond behind four of the world’s most famous musicians, the boys were best friends who had grown up together. So when the inevitable collapse came, all members went off to try and process what had just happened. ‘Early 1970’ was Ringo Starr’s attempt.
The songs that The Beatles wrote after their split cover just about every emotion a person could feel about the end of an important era in their lives or the breakdown of long-term relationships. Every stay of grief is present. John Lennon’s ‘How Do You Sleep?’ is full of anger. Paul McCartney’s ‘Man We Was Lonely’ captures the depression. George Harrison’s ‘Run Of The Mill’ feels more accepting and resolved to the fact of their breakup. In fact, some of the songs they penned about the split went on to be huge hits in their solo careers, like McCartney’s ‘Band On The Run’. However, poor old Ringo’s offering is all too often forgotten.
Within the band, Starr certainly wasn’t a songwriter. During his time in the group, he wrote a grand total of two songs, which is feeble in comparison to McCartney’s over 160 efforts. But once they’d broken up and Starr was out on his own, he had to turn his hand to the page. Clearly, in a similar state to his bandmate, the drummer was reeling. Having started the group so young, it was really all they’d ever known. Especially when it came to the music world and their careers, the moment they split and went solo, it was like all four members were suddenly standing alone against the world. And while the others dealt with that through anger, annoyance or acceptance, Starr’s own sonic effort to process the breakup seems characterised by mourning, not for the group, but for his friends.
In the early 1970s, Starr went through the band, member by member, considering them not as musicians or now as oppositions amidst the messy breakup but as the people he knew. “Lives on a farm, got plenty of charm,” he begins, singing about McCartney’s new life in the country. Next, he moves to Lennon, imagining him “Lying in bed, watching TV”. Of Harrison, he sings, “He’s a long-haired, cross-legged guitar picker.”
But the kicker is that at the end of each verse dedicated to an old friend, there is a subtly devastating measure of how that friendship is holding up now. “He’s always in town playing for you with me,” he sings joyously about his enduring bond with Harrison. Lennon’s statement is slightly more strained but still positive as he says, “When he comes to town, I know he’s gonna play with me.” But it’s McCartney’s verse that feels like the saddest reflection of how things had changed in the lives of these friends as he sings, with a mix of hope and desperation, “When he comes to town, I wonder if he’ll play with me.”
Starr saves himself till last as he dedicates the final verse to his own feelings. With self-deprecating lyrics about his own musical abilities now he’s out on his own, signing about how he can’t play bass “cause that’s too hard for me”, there’s a subtle sadness in the image of Starr attempting to become a one-man-band without his old mates. But it’s the song’s concluding lines that show his viewpoint on the whole split as he sings, “When I go to town I wanna see all three,” wishing for a reunion or, at the very least, a chance to hang out.
In comparison to the tracks penned by the rest of the group, ‘Early 1970’ is undeniably more subtle than the harsh words and big feelings thrown around by the others. But it’s the subtle sadness and loneliness held in Starr’s little ditty that makes it so crushing as perhaps the best reminder that the band’s split wasn’t just a musical moment, but a personal one too.
