The 1930s singer Ringo Starr called his greatest influence: “My first musical experience”
In the world of The Beatles, none of the members’ legacies has been as strange as Ringo Starr.
He had no problem being the one band member that didn’t write the most songs or have the worst singing voice, but he has carved out a name for himself as one of the single greatest drummers that rock and roll has ever produced. He knew how to play for the song every single time he got behind the kit, but some of his biggest influences didn’t even need to come from the Chuck Berrys and the Jerry Lee Lewises of the world.
Because as much as Starr worked best playing rock and roll, he wasn’t afraid to experiment in other genres every now and again. He wasn’t exactly a jack of all trades, and it can get downright funny hearing him try to make disco songs like ‘Drowning in the Sea of Love’ or whatever the hell was going on in ‘Bad Boy’, but as long as he was having fun, that was all that mattered.
That’s half the reason why he made most of his solo records, and when you listen to some of his best solo work, their greatest strength is having the right people writing behind him. All the former Beatles knew that Starr would always work best by having a good time, and while they did give him a traditional ballad every now and again, there’s a reason why a song like John Lennon’s ‘Goodnight Vienna’ worked a lot better than whatever the hell Starr made on ‘A Man Like Me.’
It’s not like Starr didn’t have anything to say on his own, though. He has practically exhausted his mantra of peace and love for the past 30 years now, but a lot of his most gripping tunes usually came from the country world. He was the one who introduced the Fabs to people like George Jones, and when looking at his cowboy-hat-toting records, he isn’t half bad at this kind of style, either.
Beaucoups of Blues is one of the best albums that he ever made, and even in his later years, hearing him work off of people like Allison Krauss and Billy Strings on his later albums is a perfect fit for his everyman voice. He was already falling in love with rock and roll when listening to the radio as a kid, but Star was convinced that no one touched his heart more than Gene Autry as a youngster.
Autry wasn’t necessarily the coolest artist in the world, but Starr was never afraid to pay respect to him, either, saying, “Gene Autry was the most [influential]. It may sound like a joke– Go and have a look in my bedroom, it’s covered with Gene Autry posters. He was my first musical influence. He sent shivers down my spine when he put his leg over the horn on the saddle and sang, ‘South of the border, down Mexico way’ in a movie, right? It sticks in my brain. My first musical experience was that.”
And if you’re writing songs for Starr, country is usually the best course of action for his persona as well. When he wasn’t singing about having a party, a lot of his best songs were about him being a regular guy who was down on his luck, and half of country’s best tunes captured that feeling to a tee.
It wasn’t going to be easy for the average rock fan to latch onto country music every single time they listened to a record, but Starr wouldn’t have felt out of place singing a song like ‘Silver Haired Daddy of Mine’. He was always comfortable being one of the most ordinary members of the greatest band in the world, and if he was going to make his own records, he was going to showcase everything that made him tick.
