Who replaced Ringo Starr in The Beatles in 1964?
In a strange turn of events, The Beatles‘ drummer Ringo Starr was temporarily replaced for eight dates on the Australian leg of their 1964 tour when ‘Beatlemania’ was at its peak.
As much a feature of Beatles lore as ‘Paul is dead‘ or ‘bigger than Jesus’, the curious story of original drummer and founding member Pete Best is one of the biggest cases of rock ‘what ifs?’ in music history. Knowing the band back when they were known as The Quarrymen, John Lennon and his school friends would rehearse in the Best’s household cellar, eventually recruiting Best for their Hamburg club circuit of 1960.
Through leather jackets, amphetamines, recording with Tony Sheridan and back to native Liverpool to dominate the city’s Cavern Club, by 1962, The Beatles were a well-oiled machine hungry for a hit. Initially rejected by Decca, it was EMI’s record producer George Martin who decided to take a punt on the group on one condition: Best be replaced pronto. Dissatisfied with Best’s timing, Martin recalled in the 1995 Anthology series suggesting a session drummer to manager Brian Epstein: “I decided that the drums, which are really the backbone of a good rock group, didn’t give the boys enough support. They needed a good solid beat, and I said to Brian, ‘Look, it doesn’t matter what you do with the boys, but on record, nobody need know.”
The pressure to give Best the boot agonised Epstein, well aware of his popularity with Liverpool fans and the marketing image he’d carefully built up in preparation for their debut release. Having struck a friendship during their Hamburg days, Ringo decamped from Rory Storm and the Hurricanes to step up to drum duties for the nascent Fab Four. From skiffle in the Kaiserkeller to The Ed Sullivan Show in little under two months, Ringo’s life changed forever.
Which leads us to The Beatles’ ‘third drummer’. On the eve of The Beatles’ first-ever tour of Australia and New Zealand, Ringo was struck with tonsillitis and hospitalised, out of action for the series of dates they had booked. Facing the choice between cancelling the gigs and letting the fans down, or hiring a substitute, Epstein went for the latter, eager to maintain Beatlemania’s momentum. Having worked with him while recording Tommy Quickley, Martin had suggested London drummer Jimmie Nicol.
It made sense. Nicol had experience drumming to Beatles ‘soundalike records’, budget imitation releases that almost sounded like the real thing. Knowing the beats already, plus his session work at EMI, the choice was made itself. What would the Fab Four think? Lennon and Paul McCartney quickly accepted the idea, but the very idea enraged George Harrison’s loyalty to his bedridden drummer, exclaiming, “If Ringo’s not going, then neither am I. You can find two replacements!”
After Harrison’s anger eased, Nicol was given a mop-top and distinguished grey Chesterfield suit and was playing to 4,500 fans at Copnhagen’s KB Hallen. Playing eight dates with them until Ringo’s return to Melbourne, Nicols enjoyed the unique experience of playing the Beatles while also enjoying a level of tourism impossible to the group due to the fan hysteria around them. In a rare interview with the press, Nicol recalled to Q: “The day before I was a Beatle, girls weren’t interested in me at all. The day after, with the suit and the Beatle cut, riding in the back of the limo with John and Paul, they were dying to get a touch of me. It was very strange and quite scary.”
After playing with several groups, including another chance encounter when his group The Fourmost shared billing with The Beatles in Brighton’s Hippodrome, Nicol eventually declared bankruptcy before entering the world of house renovation. He did directly inspire one of The Beatles’ much-loved tracks, however. Whenever Lennon and McCartney asked how Nicols was coping with the tour, his wry reply would always be “getting better”. As revealed in the group’s then only authorised biography, McCartney laughed when recalling Nicol’s routine retort when chatting to writer Hunter Davies, ‘Getting Better‘ for Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band dreamed up not long after.
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