Any group that remain together as long as The Beatles know each other’s artistic tendencies like the back of their hand. Considering how many people were screaming during their concerts, it was almost mandatory that they learn their set from back to front before they went on so they could keep track of where they were during any specific show. Things were on much steadier ground in the studio, but Paul McCartney remembered Ringo Starr being pissed off during the recording of ‘Back in the USSR.’
Granted, there’s probably no Beatle that didn’t have a horror story when working on The White Album. The mindset of every track was usually dictated by the person who wrote it, so the record doesn’t really have a set concept other than having songs piled up against one another with no rhyme or reason at all.
They still knew how to open an album with a barnburner, and McCartney’s ode to the women of the Soviet nation was a callback to their old days of playing Chuck Berry and Little Richard in the Liverpool clubs. Unfortunately, this was also the time when McCartney was starting to become a dictator on his material, which left Starr struggling to find out what beat he wanted.
Aside from people joking these days about how Starr just got lucky when joining the group, though, he was equally important as any of his bandmates. He didn’t write as much as his friends, but being able to listen to the song once and then lay down the perfect drum take with little trouble at all is the kind of virtuoso talent everyone seems to take for granted.
That kind of drumming makes recording seamless, but the lack of any stability left Starr frustrated, especially when McCartney decided the track would move along a lot quicker with him playing drums. It’s one thing to say that a tune doesn’t need drums, but Macca remembered that Starr was clearly furious that he couldn’t do his job.
Reminiscing about that session, McCartney recalled that Starr was very tense about his performance, saying, “I’m sure it pissed Ringo off when he couldn’t quite get the drums to ‘Back in the USSR’, and I sat in. It’s very weird to know that you can do a thing someone else is having trouble with. If you go down and do it, just bluff right through it, you think, ‘What the hell–at least I’m helping’. Then the paranoia comes in: ‘But I’m going to show him up.’”
While Starr eventually took a holiday from recording before being welcomed back with flowers around his drumkit, McCartney isn’t half bad behind the drumkit on this song. He’s not laying down the same kind of massive drum fills heard on ‘Rain’, but considering the tune is centred around just one driving beat the entire time, it’s more about just capturing the spirit than having everything hit at the exact same time.
Then again, Starr’s absence does feel like something’s missing when the whole group comes in. There’s still that sense of camaraderie, but when someone as laid-back as Starr has had enough of taking orders, that’s a tell-tale sign that the sessions are only bound to get messier.
