“He was the king”: the singer Ringo Starr once thanked God for
It’s not really that fair to consider Ringo Starr to be a lesser member of The Beatles.
Even though he would have admitted to having absolutely no desire to write any songs, it was a lot easier for him to sit with whatever his bandmates brought him and play the perfect accompaniment every single time they played. There’s no way to discount that kind of musical sixth sense when it comes to your bandmates, but Starr felt that he needed the right push before he was even able to play the drums.
Had the Fab Four continued on with Pete Best, we would have been in for a much different pop culture story. Best was a fine drummer for when they performed live, but when Paul McCartney first heard Starr perform ‘What’d I Say’ with them when they performed live, he felt that there was no way that they could go back to Best’s way of playing. They didn’t have to worry about the drums anymore, but that’s only thanks to Starr learning the drums before he could even stand up.
From the minute that he first picked up toys when he was a baby, he was already gravitating to the drums, but it took a long time before rock and roll was planted in any of the Fabs’ minds. This was still the days of post-war England, and while rock and roll had started spreading out of America with artists like Chuck Berry and Little Richard, it took a while for Starr to understand what it was all about. He had a knack for listening to country music, but there was a sea change happening the first time he heard Radio Luxembourg.
The stations might have been a little scratchy, but when Elvis Presley came on, he seemed like an alien from another world. He was making the best rock and roll that anyone had heard, and thanks to a few moments onstage of him shaking his ass, he was already causing a bit of a stir in people who didn’t really know what to make of someone that pretty acting so risque whenever they performed.
This was a long way from the likes of Sinatra, but if you look at what The Beatles were doing, they were all copying what Presley had done. They had their ‘Elvis legs’ down to a science whenever they performed, and even when the band had moved on from traditional rock and roll, John Lennon was still seen saluting their gracious rock and roll king when he found out it was his birthday.
So even if Starr didn’t have the same kind of moves Presley did, he thanked his lucky stars that someone like that came along, saying, “It was very weird. He was the king and he turned my head around– I always thank him for being born, you know, because I was into Johnny Ray. So then Elvis came out and he was like the first ‘teenage’ rock-and-roller for me.” And it’s not like Presley’s band wasn’t paying close attention, either.
Even though Presley did have a little bit of jealousy towards the Fab Four when they started, Presley’s bandmates were in awe of Starr’s sense of timing when they first heard him play. Starr was only trying to keep everything together on Fab sessions, but when he began working on his country album Beaucoups of Blues, Presley’s long-time drummer remarked that he was one of the most rock steady drummers that he ever worked with during his years of playing Presley sessions.
Starr didn’t necessarily intend to be part of a group that would ultimately overshadow Presley, but that’s the nature of the beast when it comes to rock and roll. ‘The King’ might have reigned for a while, but he was no match for the four-headed monster from Liverpool that would one day take over every single radio station in the world.
