Ringo Starr reveals the solo song he always struggled to play: “I’m not that efficient”
The best type of drummer is the one who understands what every song needs. As much as some session drummers like to flex their chops as some of the greatest people to ever pick up two sticks, there’s a certain finesse that comes with the restraint that a song needs, whether that’s a medium-tempo groove or one of the bombastic performances they have ever laid down. However, in the case of Ringo Starr, his talents seemed to be overlooked because of his association with the greatest songwriters of all time.
Considering how much love he put into his art, Starr having the other members of The Beatles at the front meant that he would only be relegated to the back of the stage. There was no way that he would write something as good as ‘She Loves You’ or even ‘Yellow Submarine’, but he knew that any of those great songs would need a drum part, and that was where he came in.
While Paul McCartney could get incredibly particular about how he wanted the drums to sound on a song like ‘Ticket to Ride’, Starr was willing to go the extra mile and think like a true artist in the same way his bandmates were. Not everything was defined for him when he went into the studio, but his creative intuition is what led to him creating some of the finest drum breaks of all time, whether it’s that looping drum solo at the end of the medley on Abbey Road or that drum-machine precision on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’.
Once he got outside the band’s shadow and into his solo career, though, he could still call upon his old mates whenever he had the chance. They knew that he was no match for what they could do songwriting-wise, so having John Lennon give him ‘I’m The Greatest’ or Harrison helping him work up ‘Octopus’s Garden’ for the band’s final album was further evidence that his friendships could go a long way.
Then again, it also might have been a case of getting out some passive aggression, too. Harrison already had a sleight towards McCartney after their breakup on ‘Wah-Wah’, but Starr’s ‘Back Off Boogaloo’ was his soft-hearted jab towards his old bandmate, only wishing that he would lighten up and not have to worry about the sour side of their relationship every time he attacked them in the courtroom.
“George wanted me to play that pattern on the bass drum, but the problem is I’m not that efficient as a drummer. I can’t go and play regular.”
ringo starr
It might have been a bit more sinister than what Starr was known for, but that didn’t mean the tune was a picnic to work through, saying, “You see, George wanted me to play that pattern on the bass drum, but the problem is I’m not that efficient as a drummer. I can’t go (imitates a beat) and play regular. So I started doing it on the snare, and it worked a treat. You know, it was just out of the blue.”
That’s not even the first time that Harrison came to him with something a bit irregular. Starr could have easily spent time listening to a song to get the right feel for where to play a fill, but hearing a track like ‘Here Comes the Sun’ with its odd sense of metre was murder for him to wrap his head around, eventually working in the right fills until the beats lined up perfectly to come back on the downbeat.
But since the vitriol hadn’t calmed since the days of The Beatles, the fact that Starr had to work hard to get ‘Back Off Boogaloo’ right should have been an omen. After all, the band had talked about how all we needed was love, so a song all about slating his old bandmate may as well have been a case of them going back on their promise.
