After the recording of the Abbey Road album, John Lennon announced his departure from The Beatles to the rest of the group on 20 September 1969. He agreed to withhold a public announcement to avoid undermining sales of the forthcoming album. While the Beatles would live on in the public mind until 10 April 1970, when Paul McCartney released his own statement about the end of the band, the guys in the band had in effect been mostly done with band for a while already at that point.
Ringo did not wait long to start working on his own music. By February 1970 he returned to Abbey Road with a fresh batch of songs to start recording his first solo album Sentimental Journey.
One of the stand-out tracks in the batch was You Don’t Come Easy, which quickly was singled out for a standalone single release. Ringo had written the song with substantial help from his old friend George Harrison. This help was uncredited (with Harrison’s blessing) with Ringo getting the sole writing credit.
Ringo has acknowledged Harrison’s help several times. In an episode of VH1 Storytellers in 1998, right before performing the song, he said: “I wrote this song with the one and only George Harrison” before going on to say that Harrison suggested the last verse be about God. When Starr protested, Harrison suggested Hare Krishna. Starr protested again and Harrison suggested “peace” as a topic, which they finally settled on.
If we listen to Harrison’s original solo version of the song, we can hear that his original “Hare Krishna – ooh ooh!”-backing vocals are intact. That was never going to make it into Ringo’s version.
The song comes across as a very typical Ringo composition – full of charm and a light-hearted naivety, very much of its time. Had the Beatles continued, it is not hard to imagine this as Ringo’s next vocal performance following Don’t Pass Me By and Octopus Garden from previous years. It would have been a strong track on any album, and might even have been able to give Ringo his first Beatle single release similar to how Harrison finally got the same with Something from the Abbey Road album.
The themes of the song are also typical Ringo – on one hand romantic and reflective, on the other hand carefree and fun. It underlines the importance of living in the now. Why worry about what makes you sad?
Forget about the past and all your sorrows
The future won’t last
It will soon be over tomorrow
The song also asks for love and trust – it even pleads for it, while acknowledging that you need to work hard for it:
I don’t ask for much, I only want your trust
And you know it don’t come easy
And this love of mine keeps growing all the time
And you know it just ain’t easy
Early on, the song was known as You Gotta Pay Your Dues, and initial sessions were produced by George Martin.
Ringo had amassed quite a band for the occasion: himself on vocals and drums, Harrison on guitar and backing vocals, Stephen Stills (of Crosby, Stills & Nash) on piano and backing vocals, and Klaus Voormann (designer of several Beatle record sleeves and future performer on several solo albums by Starr, Lennon and Harrison) on bass.
The song went through several changes during recording. Twenty basic track takes were made on 18 February, but on the 19th Ringo decided to change and remake the song. Numerous new basic tracks were then taped, but ultimately that one was also discarded, with Ringo again deciding to remake the song even further.
The third version of the song would become the version we know. They resumed recording a few weeks later, on 8 March 1970 at Trident Studios. Produced by Harrison, who along with Stills and Voormann contributed to the song as before. The song was then left until October 1970, at which point further overdubs were made.
The song was finally released on 9 April 1971 in the UK, and a week later in the US. Reviews were strong, and audiences everywhere embraced it. It was #1 in Canada, #3 in Australia and Austria, and #4 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart and the UK singles chart. It even sold more than the singles of all of Ringo’s Beatle colleagues at the time: John Lennon’s Power to the People, Paul McCartney’s Another Day and Harrison’s Bangla Desh. Perhaps more than at any other time, Ringo had a track out that was not just on par with what the others were doing, but possibly even surpassing them. He deserved to be on top of the pile with that song.
Shortly after the release of the single, Ringo became the first Beatle to ever visit Norway on 23 April 1971. He was scheduled to be a guest on the BBC TV programme Cilla Black In Scandinavia that was shot there at the time. Ringo took the opportunity to film a promo video for It Don’t Come Easy at the same time, which shows a lone Ringo playing a piano in the middle of snowclad mountain landscapes in Geilo.
The song did well here, making it all the way to #5 on the Norwegian charts. The first print of the Norwegian single has an interesting misprint, displaying the title as I Don’t Come Easy. This obviously changes the meaning behind the song quite a bit, and understandably this version of the single is extremely sought after (but very rare)!
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