In 1984, Paul McCartney recruited Ringo Starr for his movie Give my regards to Broad Street. The film was largely unsuccessful both with critics and with the public, but most viewers enjoyed the soundtrack. McCartney wanted to mix new songs with old ones, including music from his days with The Beatles. He asked Starr to join him on songs, but she declined.
Paul McCartney decided to write a movie
Give my regards to Broad Street it was a comedy, but McCartney’s original vision looked quite different from the final product.
“What he described was a movie version of the Tug of War album,” director Peter Webb said, according to the book. Paul McCartney: a life by Peter Ames Carlin. “The sweeping sweep of English history would later seamlessly devolve into a pessimistic scene in contemporary Liverpool, where the hero, a young man in his late teens, was sweeping the floor like an underpaid janitor. Then we would find out that he wanted to escape this hopeless life to sign on as a mercenary in some foreign war.”
After writing more scripts, McCartney decided to shift the film’s focus to a rock star, played by himself. In it, he tried to find his master tapes.
Ringo Starr refused to perform Beatles songs with Paul McCartney for the film
Shortly before filming began, McCartney told Webb that Starr, his wife Barbara Bachand McCartney’s wife Linda would join the cast.
“He didn’t make any suggestions as to what his dramatic role would be,” Webb said.
According to McCartney, Starr was enthusiastic about the project.
“Ringo and I are good friends,” McCartney said, according to the book. Ringo: with a little help by Michael Seth Starr. “After all the years of The Beatles and all the problems of the breakup, it’s easy for us to get along. I saw him one night socially and he was very excited. I said, ‘I’m going to make this movie and I’m going to involve you.’ Will you do it with me? For some reason, he got the idea that it was like a Beatles movie. Well, we had had a few drinks.
However, Starr was not as eager to get involved with the soundtrack. He flatly refused to record Beatles songs with McCartney.
“So we scrapped the idea of making them,” McCartney explained. “Peter Webb, the director, really wanted to do ‘Hey Jude,’ and I was ready to do it, but Ringo said, ‘No, I already did that one.’ He felt that the records we had made of some songs were the definitive interpretations of those songs.”
Since then, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney have performed Beatles songs together.
Although Starr did not want to record Beatles songs with McCartney for the film, the former bandmates have performed them together over the years. Both have brought each other out on stage during concerts. Starr said that he always enjoys playing with McCartney.
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“I love that, getting up with him,” Starr told the irish news. “We did it at the O2 in England [in 2018]. And then he called me up and said, ‘I’m doing Dodger Stadium, if you want to do some numbers.’ Of course. So he picked three numbers, I got up and went downstairs. And it’s magical both for the audience and for us. I love playing with him. The audience goes, ‘Oh, that’s two! Wow’. He lifts everything up, in a joyous way. So, yeah, I had a great time.”