“It was a miracle”: The song that made John Lennon choose Ringo Starr
Any good band normally comes down to their ability to play off each other. It’s easy for the best musicians to get together and play their individual parts to perfection, but if there isn’t any sense of groove in any of their tunes, there’s a good chance that no one will be all that impressed once they try to play in front of a crowd. Most people can only hope to have the kind of chemistry that bands like The Who or Led Zeppelin have, but by comparison, every member of The Beatles made the band feel like a singular entity.
Even though John Lennon had the idea for the group years before any of the other members joined, having Paul McCartney to bounce off and George Harrison on guitar gave them the best front line in Liverpool. Anyone could have a half-decent track record at singing rock and roll, but bringing in the massive harmonies on some of their favourite tunes made them the stars in the Liverpool scene without having to play anything too technical.
But according to everyone in the group, something was missing until Ringo Starr showed up. The drummer was always the hardest member to get a hold of in those days, and while McCartney had claimed that the rhythm was in the guitars at their first gigs, it was clear that Pete Best wasn’t going to cut it if they were going to get signed to a major label.
Before they had officially sacked Best, though, Starr had already begun working with them more than a few times. On the off nights when Best couldn’t show up or got sick, Starr would be the first person they would call to play with them. And while the idea of making someone learn every original song on a whim was bound to be a tall order, Lennon was more concerned with how he worked on their covers.
After all, a great rock and roll song is all about the backbeat, and some of the greatest drumming songs of the time were all about getting the groove right. Although McCartney remembered the song ‘What’d I Say’ as the moment everyone figured out that they needed Starr in the group, Starr himself remembered Lennon getting a thrill out of the way that he played ‘Rock and Roll Music’ by Chuck Berry.
“One great moment I remember playing with them for the first time and they were doing ‘Rock and Roll Music’. Everyone else was just rocking through it, but I was playing the tom-tom parts and John just went ‘wow’, like it was a miracle.”
Ringo Starr
The song itself can get monotonous if the drummer keeps everything straight, but Starr remembered Lennon loving him as soon as he switched up the groove, saying, “One great moment I remember playing with them for the first time and they were doing ‘Rock and Roll Music’ and then in the middle it says, ‘Don’t go ahead and play a tango’ and I went to the toms. Everyone else was just rocking through it, but I was playing the tom-tom parts and John just went ‘wow’, like it was a miracle.”
Although Starr’s arrival also made him the butt of the joke for many fans as the “least talented” Beatle, nothing could be further from the truth. Starr was the real heart behind the band, and his strength always came from him knowing how to play to the song, whether that was leaving everything incredibly sparse or knowing when to get a great shuffle going on tunes like ‘Act Naturally’.
It might seem easy to do what Starr did in some respects, but anyone doubting his abilities needs to look up him playing tracks like ‘Long Tall Sally’ in their early days. The British invasion hadn’t officially begun, but he was already channelling the same energy as Keith Moon years before The Who even began.
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