Ringo Starr’s role as a drummer in The Beatles was pivotal to their sound, yet his contributions often remain overlooked. Unlike his bandmates, Starr didn’t delve much into songwriting, preferring to leave that to others. However, there were moments when he managed to strike gold with his lyrical contributions.
During his tenure with The Beatles, Starr wrote only two individual compositions for the band. The first, ‘Don’t Pass Me By’, came in 1968. While he often provided lead vocals on a track for each album, these songs were typically given to him by his bandmates in an almost charitable fashion. Of course, Paul McCartney or John Lennon would never willingly hand over something with the stature of ‘Yesterday’ or ‘A Day In The Life‘. Instead, they tended to be novelty creations suited to his voice and personality.
Due to being in a band with some of the greatest songwriters of all time, Starr was comfortable with accepting his position in the hierarchy and rarely picked up the pen to write a song consciously. With ‘Octupus’s Garden’, the process occurred in the most natural fashion imaginable, aided by marijuana.
The drummer once said of the Abbey Road track’s origin: “I wrote ‘Octopus’s Garden’ in Sardinia. Peter Sellers had lent us his yacht and we went out for the day… I stayed out on deck with [the captain] and we talked about octopuses. He told me that they hang out in their caves and they go around the seabed finding shiny stones and tin cans and bottles to put in front of their cave like a garden.”
Starr added: “I thought this was fabulous, because at the time I just wanted to be under the sea too. A couple of tokes later with the guitar – and we had ‘Octopus’s Garden’!”
While his bandmates had fairly low expectations for Starr’s songs, George Harrison was mightily impressed with ‘Octopus’s Garden’. In 1969, the guitarist remarked: “‘Octopus’s Garden’ is Ringo’s song. It’s only the second song Ringo wrote, and it’s lovely. Ringo gets bored playing the drums, and at home he plays a bit of piano, but he only knows about three chords. He knows about the same on guitar. I think it’s a really great song, because on the surface, it just like a daft kids’ song, but the lyrics are great.”
Furthermore, Harrison praised Starr by saying he found a “very deep meaning in the lyrics”, although he caveated this statement by claiming Ringo is likely unaware of its beauty. Harrison added: “If you get sort of deep in your consciousness, it’s very peaceful. So Ringo’s writing his cosmic songs without noticing.”
Although Starr was writing in a literal sense after a thought-provoking conversation about the sea creature, there’s a deeper meaning to be discovered in the mind-spinning ‘Octopus’s Garden’ as Ringo reached out in a desperate bid to find his utopia.
