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Busting the myth that Ringo Starr “isn’t even the best drummer in The Beatles”
In the long lore of The Beatles, one of the most famous quotes you’ll hear is Paul McCartney or John Lennon (depending on your source) being asked, ‘is Ringo Starr the best drummer in the world?’ and Lennon/McCartney responding, ‘He isn’t even the best drummer in The Beatles’. It’s a great pithy little line and, in fact, you can almost hear them saying it in their vowel-extending scouse drawl.
The problem with that joke is that they never actually said it. And worse still, it has cast a shadow over what should be one of the brightest drumming legacies in the history of popular music. The irony is that the quote actually came from the clownish British comedian Jasper Carrott (not a name often mentioned on Far Out).
The issue for Ringo was that the gag has a nice ring to it. Thus, the soundbite transcended the daft context in which it was spawned and suddenly this subliminal opinion that Ringo wasn’t a great drummer was born. The true tragedy of his enduring comment is that it perpetuates a massive fallacy about the art of drumming in general. And that has underpinned a great deal of sticksmith folly in subsequent generations, as drummers seem desperate not to succumb to Ringo’s comic condemnation.
After all, as Jools Holland has frequently asserted, a band is only as good as their drummer. Thus, you don’t need me to tell you what that says about Ringo. The other issue, however, is that fans also know that ‘Macca’ would sometimes abscond away from the gang and record the drums himself, but this wasn’t a slight on Ringo, it was merely because he was a musical monomaniac and found it easier to piece his inventions together like a mad scientist.
Nevertheless, the quip still endures that Ringo wasn’t a great drummer and you can’t help but feel it’s no small tragedy. You see, the brilliance of Ringo was that he was a reliable engine. As McCartney said himself when recalling his first audition, “The first few minutes that Ringo is playing, I look to the left at George and to the right to John, and we didn’t say a word, but I remember thinking, ‘S**t, this is amazing’.”
His simplicity was a strength that let the band gel, as ‘Macca’ appraised: “Look, I love Led Zeppelin, but you watch them playing and you can see them looking back at John Bonham, like, ‘What the hell are you doing? This is the beat. You could turn your back on Ringo and never have to worry. He both gave you security and you knew he was going to nail it.”
He provided both a bed for the songwriters to work with, but also a signature that pronounced the individualism of the group. As Dave Grohl said, if you hear a mere 15-second isolated drum loop of Ringo’s then you know the man behind it. Grohl continued: “Define best drummer in the world? Is it someone that’s technically proficient? Or is it someone that sits in the song with their own feel? Ringo was the king of feel.”
Savvier modern drum masters like Matt Helders have also put their finger on this fact that Ringo bore out: it isn’t all about thrashing your way to the forefront, especially when you’ve got wordsmiths in front of you. “Not everybody can play a simple groove for three minutes with no variation and have it mean something,” Helders said. “It sounds easy, but it’s not.”
As Helders brilliantly concluded, “For me, it’s not all about the flashy stuff and hearing some guy show off his chops. I’d rather listen to a drummer who knows how to play to the song.” Ringo personified that tactic behind the kit, and it made The Beatles soar. However, some of the bands and drummers that they helped to inspire missed the point, went bombastic and delivered one-dimensional songs as a result.
Moreover, the added profundity of Ringo’s playing is that he even seemed to know that this falsely maligned fate awaited him. As he once said himself, “At the beginning, because of the songwriters, which is a very powerful force in The Beatles and John and Paul mainly as the singers and I was just playing the drums and nodding my head so I didn’t get noticed.”
Continuing: “You look at Charlie Watts in the Stones and there is nothing really said and he’s an amazing drummer but the drummers tended not to get the writing. The drummer is the driving force but when you have songwriters of that calibre and singers they much prefer to talk about the songs and the writers.” After all, why would you want someone to thrash their way through ‘Blackbird’? But strip his intricate fills from ‘Come Together’ and you’ll soon notice the dish lacks salt.
Ringo was the seasoning in a soup we’re still guzzling and will be forevermore. The trick is in playing to the song because, in music, the song is all—nobody has ever done their first wedding dance to a Travis Barker isolated solo, and if they have I hope they reside happily in matrimony hell while we all live in a sanguine yellow submarine. As his pal George Harrison asserted: “Ringo’s got the best back beat I’ve ever heard and he can play great 24-hours a day.”
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