The Beatles song Ringo Starr considers the height of his career: “I was possessed”
Thankfully, in 2026, the derision that once surrounded Ringo Starr as a drummer has long been eroded, and he’s now, correctly, viewed as an integral piece of the puzzle that made The Beatles become the Fab Four.
He was the last member of the four-piece to join the set-up, and with him as a member, anything was possible. At the start, not even producer Giles Marted trusted Starr’s drumming, and roped in Andy White as a session musician to record ‘Love Me Do’ while Ringo sat in the corner twiddling his thumbs.
Other drummers may have thrown the towel in out of frustration at being overlooked, but Starr got his head down and proved his doubters wrong.
By the time it rolled around to making Revolver in 1966, The Beatles were entering their imperial phase by 1966, pushing their artistic integrity to the fore and wholly demonstrating their growth.
The album is full of classics, whether this be ‘Eleanor Rigby’ or ‘Tomorrow Knows, but on a personal level, and the track that Ringo is proudest of, on a personal level, didn’t even make the cut. At this time, they were firing on all cylinders creatively, so rather than let ‘Paperback Writer’ and ‘Rain’ wait for their next album, they put the pair of songs out as a 7″.
‘Rain’ isn’t most people’s favourite Beatles song, but for Ringo, it proved to him and everybody else that he was the total package as a drummer. He was given a license to play with freedom on the song and performance, which holds the entire song together while also giving the recording a psychedelic edge. Significantly, it marked a sign of things to come for the band ahead of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band the following year, which was trippier than anything they’ve done before.
There’s no flashy solo from Ringo to prove he’s a technically-proficient drummer; instead, it was his inventiveness and creative approach that made his ‘Rain’ performance a stand-out moment from his career. Producer George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick also played their part, implementing pioneering methods like the use of reverse tape effects, which, coupled with Starr’s incredible technique, helped make ‘Rain’ a masterclass in drumming.
In Many Years From Now, the biography of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr explained why he views ‘Rain’ as the greatest singular recording of his career, sharing, “I feel as though that was someone else playing,” he said, before adding of the out-of-body experience, “I was possessed”.
Ringo then peeled back the curtain to explain how he made ‘Rain’ sound like he did, revealing, “I was into the snare and hi-hat. I think it was the first time I used this trick of starting a break by hitting the hi-hat first instead of going directly to a drum off the hi-hat,” Ringo said. “I think it’s the best out of all the records I’ve ever made.”
The Beatles weren’t setting out to make history and pioneer a new method of recording with ‘Rain’. Remarkably, it was the result of immense fatigue on behalf of John Lennon, who later admitted, “After we’d done the session on that particular song — it ended at about four or five in the morning — I went home with a tape to see what else you could do with it. And I was sort of very tired, you know, not knowing what I was doing, and I just happened to put it on my own tape recorder and it came out backwards. And I liked it better.”
Sometimes, as ‘Rain’ proves, the best moments of musical magic can be completely unplanned, whether this be how they implemented Lennon’s backwards vocals, or Ringo’s dreamy approach to the drums. None of these techniques would be taught in school, and that’s why ‘Rain’ is a perfect encapsulation of The Beatles at their creative best.
Yet, despite ‘Rain’ being a very Lennon-coded Beatles song, it would have fallen apart without Starr. Although, as was typical, he went about his business in an understated manner and didn’t want the plaudits from others, Starr was more than happy to give himself a well-deserved pat on the back for this one.
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