The saga of Ringo Starr’s golden snare drum
Back in the early 1960s, not too many companies had figured out the full potential of brand placement marketing in the world of entertainment. Sure, there were advertising billboards at sports stadiums and endorsement contracts with celebrities, but the idea of a big fat logo right on the kit, be it a football kit or a drum kit, still seemed a tad too excessive and tasteless. Then a kid named Ringo Starr came along and changed the game forever.
Considering that The Beatles’ “drop-T” logo is arguably the single most recognisable emblem in rock and roll history, it’s hard to overlook how much positive second-hand smoke was funneled up to the decal right above it on Ringo Starr’s bass drumhead.
The Beatles’ first branding partner, it could be argued, was the Ludwig Drum Company, and the unlikely relationship between that well-established Chicago manufacturing business and a mop-topped young percussionist from Liverpool soon became the stuff of legend.
“I loved anything American,” Starr said in an interview with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015, recounting the purchase of his first Ludwig kit in London in 1963. Ringo wasn’t just content to buy an American-made drum kit, though. He wanted to advertise the fact. “As I am buying the kit, the [clerk] goes to rip off the Ludwig sign,” Starr continued, “and I said, ‘no, no, no! You gotta leave that on! It’s American!’ [laughs] And that’s how it became famous.”
That’s how Ringo remembered it, at least. According to William Ludwig, Jr., who was president of the Ludwig company during that same time period, his kits didn’t come with any branding or decals in the early ‘60s, so there wouldn’t have been anything there for a clerk to remove. Instead, he later claimed, “Ringo bought the Ludwig set under the condition that the name Ludwig be painted on the front of the bass drum head. [The salesman] said he’d do it, but asked why, and Ringo said he wanted everyone to know he had Ludwig.”
Whichever version of the folk tale you prefer, the result was the same: Ringo had his beloved American drumkit, and the Ludwig company experienced a massive new surge in business spurred by the affiliation.
William Ludwig was so pleased, in fact, that he decided to do something special to show Mr. Starr his company’s appreciation for the free worldwide advertising. “I suggested we make a Super-Sensitive 5-inch x 14-inch all-metal snare drum,” Ludwig recalled in Paul William Schmidt’s 1991 book, History of the Ludwig Drum Co., “and gold-plate it in 14 karat gold to present to Ringo. It was very expensive, but we did it.”
Ludwig, Jr, got tickets to the Beatles’ press conference ahead of their first Chicago gig at the International Amphitheatre on September 5th, 1964, and was given permission to personally present his gift.
“When we were all lined-up,” Ludwig recalled, “I said to Ringo, ‘We made up this special gold-plated drum for you in the honor of this occasion.’ He said, ‘Oh, that’s nice.’ He held the drum and they took pictures, and I introduced him to my daughter who was sixteen at the time and absolutely astounded by the event. But I’m not really certain if it really hit home with him who I was and what it was all about, because the policeman took the drum away after the photo, and the last I saw of it he had the drum under his arm walking through a door following the Beatles. I rather imagine it got lost in the shuffle.”
William Ludwig Jr, left the event a bit disappointed, and never followed up on what became of the golden snare drum, presuming that Ringo was so famous that “I doubt he cared about what the manufacturers of his drums cared about.”
The story was known for many years to certain Ludwig drum loyalists, but the whereabouts of the golden snare itself remained a mystery, as there was no footage of Ringo playing it as far as anyone could tell. As it turned out, though, the gift had never actually been lost.
In 2010, a Beatles exhibition at the Museum of Metropolitan Art in New York included the golden snare, direct from Ringo’s own collection, confirming that it had come back home with him all those years ago, although he claimed to have never played it. Sadly, William Ludwig died two years earlier, in 2008, so it’s unclear if he ever learned the good news.
Tellingly, the four other custom golden snares Ludwig produced in the 1960s all were given to drummers from the worlds of jazz and classical music: Bobby Christian, Joe Morello, Dick Schory, and George Gaber. Ringo was the outlier at the beginning of a new wave.
