Ringo Starr Sat Down at George Harrison’s Sitar Backstage in 2023. He Couldn’t Play It. He Just Wanted to Touch It One More Time.
The sitar had been in storage since 2001. For more than two decades, it sat in a case, untouched, protected from the light, preserved like a relic from a world that no longer existed. George’s widow, Olivia Harrison, had kept it safe — not as a museum piece, but as a memory she wasn’t ready to release.
Then came the call.
Ringo was in the studio finishing “Now and Then” — the last Beatles song, built around John Lennon’s 1977 demo tape. It was meant to be a celebration, a final chapter, a chance for the two surviving members to complete something their bandmates had started decades earlier. But the weight of the moment pressed heavily on everyone in the room.
Olivia had the sitar sent to the studio. She didn’t explain why. She didn’t need to.
Ringo is 83. He’s the last drummer who ever sat behind John and Paul and George. The only one left who remembers what the room sounded like — not the recordings, not the documentaries, but the actual sound of four men playing together, breathing together, existing in a shared space that would never exist again.
He found the sitar in a corner of the control room, still in its case. He opened it slowly. He ran his fingers along the strings. Didn’t press down. Didn’t try to make a sound. He just wanted to feel it. To remember.
Paul walked in. Saw him sitting there. Didn’t say anything.
They stood together for maybe a minute. Two old men and an instrument neither of them could play. The sitar had always been George’s voice, his exploration, his search for something beyond the Western scales they had grown up with. Neither Ringo nor Paul had ever learned to play it. That wasn’t the point.
Then Paul said something quiet. What he said has never been repeated in any interview since. Engineers in the room later described it as “a few words, barely a sentence,” but whatever it was, it landed.
Ringo nodded. He closed the sitar case. He stood up. And he walked straight to the vocal booth.
Ringo chose to finish the song instead of grieving out loud. Was that strength — or was that just what John and George would have wanted him to do?
The question has no easy answer. Perhaps it doesn’t need one. What matters is what happened next: Ringo stepped behind the drum kit, picked up his sticks, and played the track that would become the final Beatles recording. He didn’t talk about the sitar. He didn’t mention Paul’s words. He simply played — steady, unshakable, present.
When the session ended, Ringo sat in the control room alone. The playback of “Now and Then” filled the speakers. He listened to John’s voice, recorded in 1977, singing lyrics about missing someone. He listened to George’s guitar parts, recorded in 1995, woven into the arrangement. He listened to Paul’s bass and his own drums — new recordings, made in this decade, in this studio, in this moment.
The past and the present, layered together. Four men, separated by time, united by sound.
Ringo did not cry. He did not speak. He simply listened. And when the song ended, he nodded once, stood up, and walked out of the studio.
The sitar was returned to Olivia the next day. But for a few minutes, in a quiet room, Ringo Starr had held it one more time. Not to play. To remember. And to say goodbye — without saying anything at all.
Some farewells don’t need words. Some gestures carry more weight than any sentence. And some moments — a hand on a sitar, a quiet sentence from an old friend, a walk to the vocal booth — become the final verses of a story that began more than sixty years ago.
Ringo chose to finish the song. And that, perhaps, was the only answer that mattered.
