“Nothing bigger than that”: the 1962 song Ringo Starr said nothing ever beat
Every story has a defining moment, but when it comes to the tale of The Beatles, picking out just one defining moment becomes much trickier.
Not only were they the biggest band in the world, after all, but they managed to pull off the impossible task of maintaining that impact throughout the entirety of their tenure and beyond, reinventing music itself along the way. Ringo Starr, it is fair to say, was living the dream.
Starr was the final piece of the puzzle when it came to The Beatles’ success story. After rubbing shoulders with the young, developing outfit during their days in Hamburg, the drummer soon found himself replacing Pete Best in the band, spurred on by George Martin’s dismissal of Best’s percussive skills – or lack thereof, according to Martin.
By the time that the ‘Octopus’s Garden’ songwriter joined the ranks, the Fab Four were on the cusp of their early successes; one of his earliest tasks as a Beatle was recording a session for EMI, which didn’t give him very long to find his feet with his new outfit.
Those sessions, which eventually produced the band’s inaugural single, ‘Love Me Do’, were famously tumultuous, and producer George Martin wasn’t overly convinced by Starr’s playing, so much so that he hired a session drummer, Andy White, for a future session. Nevertheless, when the single eventually hit the mainstream airwaves, Starr’s position in the biggest band in Britain was cemented, and he never quite came down from that feeling.
Recalling that otherworldly experience to AARP in 2023, Starr shared, “We were playing clubs, and then we made a record, ‘Love Me Do’.”
Remarking, “My God, there’s nothing bigger than that, our first vinyl.” Even in comparison to the dizzying heights the band later achieved, dominating the global airwaves, jetting off around the world, and playing before millions of screaming fans, the experience of being able to hold that first single in his hands was as good as it got for Ringo.
“We found out the BBC was going to play ‘Love Me Do’ at 2:17, or whatever time it was,” Starr continued, immersing himself in the youthful excitement of that time in 1962. “And we pulled the car over. ‘Wow! We’re on the radio, man!’”
‘Love Me Do’ likely stands out in Starr’s mind as the first taste of the colossal success that The Beatles would experience in the months and years that followed. In terms of his own life, the release of that first single was the defining moment where his entire future seemed to shift. Without it, he might have found himself back in Liverpool on the dole, or performing with another hopeful young Merseybeat outfit who never quite made it into the big time.
Even still, you could forgive Starr for viewing ‘Love Me Do’ with a kind of bittersweet feeling, particularly at the time of its release. Although the original UK pressing of the single featured the drummer in all his glory, subsequent reissues were actually taken from the session featuring Alan White, as was the version included on Please Please Me and on US issues of the single. It isn’t difficult to imagine the ‘peace and love’ drummer being more than a little perturbed with that fact – although, to be fair, he has had over 60 years to get over it.
Even if the most widely recognised version of the song didn’t feature Ringo Starr at all, ‘Love Me Do’ still marked the exciting beginning of the drummer’s time with The Beatles, and even today, decades later, the song is still evocative of the defining moment that changed his life forever.
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