Startling Music

• 1. Startling Music

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  Startling Music Ltd was Ringo Starr's answer to Northern Songs. Dick James and Beatles manager Brian Epstein had set up that publishing house in 1963 to handle the band's catalogue. Lennon and McCartney, as the principal songwriters, owned roughly 15 percent each when Northern Songs went public. Starr and George Harrison together held about 1.8 percent, on top of the writer's royalties from their own songs. That gap was not an oversight. Starr and Harrison found their work under-promoted and their interests treated as secondary to those of the band's main writers. When the band's publishing deal expired in 1968, Lennon and McCartney renewed theirs. Starr did not. He built Startling Music. Harrison built Harrisongs. What happened next to Northern Songs, and to the music Starr now controlled himself, would show exactly why those decisions mattered.

• 2. Ideas and Titles

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  Starr wrote the fewest songs of any Beatle, but his creative input extended beyond the tally of credited compositions. He contributed ideas for lyrics and themes, the occasional one-liner, and several titles that would become among the most recognizable in rock. "A Hard Day's Night" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" both originated with him. Within the Northern Songs structure, that kind of work classified Starr as a "paid writer." That designation came with a smaller income share than his ideas helped generate. Startling Music changed the arithmetic. With his own publishing company, Starr held a sounder business footing. Two songs from his time with the Beatles would be the first to pass through Startling Music's books.

• 3. The First Catalogue

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  "Don't Pass Me By" and "Octopus's Garden" were the first Starr compositions to be published through Startling Music. Both had emerged during the Beatles' recording sessions. Startling Music also handled the royalties for Starr's co-written material with the other Beatles on their final albums. That dual function meant the company was administering a broader body of work than Starr's credited songwriting alone would suggest. The arrangement would look well-considered when the corporate ownership of Northern Songs began to shift.

• 4. Northern Songs Falls

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  In 1969, Northern Songs fell victim to a buyout from ATV. Lennon and McCartney cashed in their shares in a company they no longer controlled. Starr and Harrison retained theirs, continuing to hold a minority voice in Northern Songs. Having founded their own publishing companies beforehand had left both men somewhat insulated from the worst of the transaction. Startling Music placed Starr's primary catalogue entirely outside ATV's reach. His own compositions and the royalties attached to them were not available for any buyer to acquire. What he would write and publish next was now entirely his own decision.

• 5. Solo Prosperity

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  When the Beatles broke up in 1970, Starr wrote or co-wrote much more of his own material for his solo records. Vini Poncia became a longtime collaborator. George Harrison teamed up with Starr on "Photograph" and other songs. In 1970, Starr also recorded Beaucoups of Blues, his second solo album and a venture into country and western music. He bought the publishing rights to the songs from that record. A string of hit singles and two hit albums followed in the early 1970s. The rights to Beaucoups of Blues rounded out Startling Music's catalogue. It now held Starr's Beatles compositions, a country album, and the new songs emerging from his collaborations with Vini Poncia and George Harrison.