Yeah Yeah Yeah

As my favorite Beatle, Ringo Starr, turned 80 this week, he reminisced with the Sunday Mirror about a time when a promoter offered the Fab Four a pile of loot to Come Together one more time in concert.


But it wasn't Shark Week, so they said no.

It was 1976, six years after the stormy breakup of the band that changed everything, and a promoter named Bill Sargent peppered the group with an offer to shell out $50 million for a one-time show, but the opening act for this pay-per-view would have been a guy fighting a great white shark.

“We did talk one time. There was a crazy offer out there,” Ringo says. “We called each other to see what we think. We decided not to do it because the opening act was a guy biting a shark. So we thought no.”

1976 was also the year that Saturday Night Live offered The Beatles a check for $3000 to appear on that show, and as it happened, John Lennon and Paul McCartney happened to be watching...

Shortly before his death in 1980, Lennon told the story:  "Paul ... was visiting us at our place in the Dakota. We were watching it and almost went down to the studio, just as a gag. We nearly got into a cab, but we were actually too tired. ... He and I were just sitting there watching the show, and we went, 'Ha ha, wouldn't it be funny if we went down? But we didn’t.”

McCartney has confirmed that this took place. “John said, ‘We should go down, just you and me. There’s only two of us so we’ll take half the money.’ And for a second. … But It would have been work, and we were having a night off, so we elected not to go. It was a nice idea – we nearly did it.”

(Tell me you didn't just read that in McCartney's voice!)

Ringo also said in his interview that he always held out hope for a reunion, until John and George Harrison died.

“If John and George had not died there was surely a possibility of that. Paul and I are still on the road. John would have still been on the road,” he said. “I don’t know about George. We’d still be doing what we love to do. Maybe separately, maybe together. Nobody knows.”

Ever the cheerful optimist, Ringo also lets on that he figured the breakup would not be permanent...

“When we finished Abbey Road I did not walk away thinking that’s the last album. I thought ‘we’ll be back in how many months and we’ll do another’. Between times we did actually break. No one went away thinking ‘That’s it,'” Ringo said.

“I didn’t leave the studio thinking that will be the last record we’d ever make. I never thought that. I didn’t think it would be the last time we’d ever tour together either,” he added.

TCM showed "A Hard Day's Night" the other day, and it took me back to 1964, and I still wish that younger people had some way to know what it was like when The Beatles arrived.