“A lot of emotion”: Ringo Starr’s favourite T Rex song
As a musician, it can be said that Ringo Starr was always compelled by his emotions.
Behind the kit as the backbone of The Beatles, Starr’s drumming prioritised a sense of feeling over technicality and, in favouring the former, he became virtuous. He inadvertently influenced drumming techniques – from tuning his drums lower to implementing muffling devices on tonal rings – for generations of musicians to follow, by simply leading by his instinct.
In a way, Starr had to be reliant on little else outside of himself when first introduced to drumming. In 1953, when he contracted tuberculosis and was sent to a sanatorium for two years, he joined the hospital band to encourage motor activity, at the motivation of the medical staff. With his bedside cabinets as his drums and a makeshift mallet as his drumsticks, Starr became a drummer, and it was his instrument of choice from then on out.
Arguably, there is little more to be written about the brilliance of The Beatles that has not been considered already, and the same goes for the charismatic allure behind Starr’s musicianship. From when he joined the Fab Four in 1962, there was just something about his performance: beyond craft, his sheer love of music and the spirited energy with which he plays made him unforgettable.
Curating a list of his favourite songs for Apple’s Celebrity Playlist Podcast in 2010, Starr’s musical tastes were given their moment, driven, of course, by his emotions. “Well, half the battle is, you can’t play them all, you know what I mean?” he explained of the difficulty of narrowing down his list. “So, I just picked things that I think would be interesting right now, and where my mood was.”
His chosen records include classics from Al Green, Bob Dylan and Little Richard, alongside a shoutout to his fellow Beatle, John Lennon, and his song ‘Scared’. His wide-ranging tastes shone through when choosing a tune by the Moroccan collective Tinariwen, a modern favourite from The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde and a record from Burning Spear that he names “one of the best reggae records”.
One of his first picks is ‘Bang A Gong (Get It On)’ by his old friend, Marc Bolan and his band, T Rex. “I mean, the guitar and that riff,” Starr notes, highlighting one of glam rock’s most unmistakable instrumentals, one that is a given to get anyone out of their seat from the first few notes. Bolan was the architect behind glam’s image: bold suits, glittering makeup and an androgynous sensibility that was subversive and enticing.
Starr directed a documentary about T Rex, 1972’s Born to Boogie, documenting the so-called “T Rextasy” mania at the height of their fame, as it mirrored the Beatlemania of the 1960s. This began the two musicians’ friendship, and Bolan would continue to inspire Starr in a multitude of ways.
“Because of Marc, I wrote ‘Back Off Boogaloo’”, Starr revealed, “because we had dinner at our house in England and he just talked like that, you know? ‘Back off, oh, boogaloo!’” The tune was released the same year as Born to Boogie as a standalone single, produced and co-written by George Harrison.
Starr went on to explain why he chose ‘Bang A Gong (Get It On)’ as a favourite: “You know, I just love that track, and it’s got a lot of emotion,” he said. “I think it’s one of the tracks where, besides [Marc] singing – and he wrote the song – the riff of the guitar tells you everything, you know what I mean?”
Starr’s enduring love of T Rex is not just nostalgic; it’s an understanding of the timelessness of a certain tune – and if anyone understands the importance of this, it’s one of the Fab Four.
