Ringo Starr has confirmed that the Beatles album, Abbey Road, was not meant to be the group’s last in a new interview.
Until recently, it was thought that the band went into recording the album knowing it would be their last until a tape, uncovered by Beatles expert Mark Lewisohn, revealed that the band were discussing a follow up album.
In a new interview with BBC 6 Music, Starr has now also confirmed this was the case and that the bad wanted to go on recording into the 1970’s.
Starr said: “We did do Abbey Road and we was like, ‘Okay that’s pretty good…but none of us said, ‘OK, that’s the last time we’ll ever play together’. Nobody said that. I never felt that.
“We’d made this record, and then we would go off and do whatever we wanted to do. And then Paul would call us and say, ‘Hey, you want to go in the studio lads?’ and we’d do another one.
“So it was not the end – because in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make. So I never felt it was in stone.”
“It’s a revelation,” Lewisohn told The Guardian about the tape. “The books have always told us that they knew ‘Abbey Road’ was their last album and they wanted to go out on an artistic high. But no – they’re discussing the next album.
“And you think that John is the one who wanted to break them up but, when you hear this, he isn’t. Doesn’t that rewrite pretty much everything we thought we knew?”
Starr also opened up about working once more with Paul McCartney, after the two recently teamed up on Starr’s latest album, ‘What’s My Name.’ The two worked together on a cover of John Lennon’s song, ‘Grow Old With Me.’
“It’s the best. I love playing with him…We played a lot together in ‘that band’ and he’s still in the most melodic player. He’s still incredible, for me, I feel the emotion when [he] plays.”
Starr uncovered the song after it was highlighted to him by music producer Jack Douglas. Starr added: “I had no idea about this song…I bumped into Jack this year and he says, ‘Did you ever hear the cassette?’ I said, ‘What cassette?’ He said, ‘Of John doing the songs! Doing the demos in Bermuda!'”
Starr added: “I love the song. It’s very romantic and so it’s probably, I’m guessing, written for John and Yoko.”