John Lennon and his fellow Beatles first started playing with Ringo Starr in 1962 when they welcomed him into the band after dismissing drummer Pete Best. Along with Paul McCartney and George Harrison they would go on to become the iconic line-up that would go down in history as one of the greatest and most influential bands of all time. Though The Beatles’ flame burned bright, their incredible career as a group was short-lived.
By 1970, Lennon had left the band and they had gone their separate ways, turning to solo projects.
Thought Lennon’s departure initially caused a rift between him and his former bandmates, they reconciled following a brief feud and he and Starr were good friends again before his untimely death in 1980.
The singer-songwriter and guitarist was shot four times by Mark Chapman on December 8 that year outside the New York home he shared with his wife, Yoko Ono, and was pronounced dead after medics at a nearby hospital’s attempts to revive him were unsuccessful.
The last time Lennon ever saw his ex-bandmate and friend Starr was just three weeks earlier when the drummer was visiting New York.
READ MORE: WHAT JOHN LENNON’S RELATIONSHIP WITH YOKO ONO WAS REALLY LIKE
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JOHN & RINGO, 1980⠀ Ringo: ‘I saw him on the 15th November. I was staying at The Plaza. We went over to New York for a while. And I hadn’t seen him for a while because, you know, we see each other wherever we are. And he came over with Yoko for an hour and we had such a great time because they stayed five hours. And it didn’t matter that it was a year between we didn’t see each other, it was always fine when we did, but it was a particularly great time that we, that I had, anyway… Oh, man, they were happy. They were two people in one.’ (Barbara Walters interview, 1981) This polaroid is the last known photograph of John and Ringo together.⠀ The Plaza Hotel, 768 5th Ave, New York, 15 November 1980.
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Their time together that day was enshrined forever in a polaroid picture.
The photo, recently unearthed and shared by the John Lennon official Instagram account with their 1.6 million followers, shows Lennon wearing an orange T-shirt and round sunglasses.
He leans in to hug Starr, who stares intently down the lens of the camera.
In an interview with Barbara Walters the year after Lennon’s death, Starr recalled the final time he saw his friend.
“I saw him on the 15th November,” he said. “I was staying at The Plaza.
“We went over to New York for a while and I hadn’t seen him for a while because, you know, we see each other wherever we are.
“And he came over with Yoko for an hour and we had such a great time because they stayed five hours,” Starr remembered. “And it didn’t matter that it was a year between we didn’t see each other, it was always fine when we did, but it was a particularly great time that we, that I had, anyway…
“Oh, man, they were happy. They were two people in one,” he added poignantly.
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The polaroid taken of the pair that day is the last known picture of Lennon and Starr together.
Last year, Starr reflected on Lennon’s death in a rare interview with Dave Grohl for Rolling Stone.
“When John went, I was in the Bahamas,” he explained. “I was getting a phone call from my stepkids in LA saying, ‘Something’s happened to John.’
“And then they called and said, ‘John’s dead.’ And I didn’t know what to do.
“I still well up that some b*****d shot him,” Starr continued. “But I just said, ‘We’ve got to get a plane.’
We got a plane to New York and you don’t know what you can do,” he added, saying he got to Lennon and Ono’s apartment and asked her what he could do.
“[She] just said, ‘Well, you just play with Sean [Lennon]. Keep Sean busy,’” he said. “And that’s what we did. That’s what you think: what do you do now?”
Lennon was survived by his wife Ono, their son Sean, his firstborn son Julian Lennon, whom he shared with his first wife Cynthia Lennon.
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