“Will the people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands… and the rest of you if you’d just rattle your jewelry” (at the 52 second mark). It was a “Royal Show” so it was a mostly posh audience. The Queen Mother was a good sport about it.
Yep. Thanks. I remembered it was a Royal affair. John was such a wit. And The Queen Mother was gracious. A grand moment.
Coincidentally, while watching the video for Rain that choie linked to, I saw a link to Conan O’Brien’s interview with Ringo where he talked about that. Here it is.
Yes, Ringo was a lefty playing on a kit set up for a right handed player. No, he wasn’t playing like that because he was using Pete Best’s kit. At the time that Best was fired and Starkey was hired, the Beatles didn’t have the power to have a recording studio at Abbey Road set aside for them, or for them to set aside a storage room for their equipment. After first hearing them play, Martin told Epstein he’d be willing to sign and record the Beatles, but he didn’t like Best’s drumming at all. Epstein took this to the boys who already knew Ringo from the Liverpool and Hamburg circuits and got along well with him and the decision was made to hire Ringo and fire Pete. Martin didn’t know about this change in personnel, and for their next recording session, had arranged for a studio drummer to be there to record with the guitarist/singing Beatles. He didn’t care who drummed for them on tour or in clubs, just in the studio. So, when the Beatles showed up at Abbey Road with their equipment for their next session, they brought Ringo’s drum set with them. They didn’t know about the studio drummer either and Ringo was heartbroken when he was handed a tamborine to play in the first recording of “Love Me Do”.
One might keep in mind that Lennon, McCartney, & Harrison didn’t have a permanent drummer before they went to Hamburg the first time. They had been together for at least 3 years and they only took on Best because they needed a drummer to get the gig in Hamburg. And Best really hadn’t been in a band before, his mom owned the Casbah Club where the proto-Beatles played and helped paint, he had a drum set, and he played along with records. And Ringo had been drummer for Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, who, for a while, had been locally more popular than the Beatles.
nm. Sorry.
Ah, thanks for filling that in. As I read your post I started to recall some of what you’ve said from several books about The Beatles I’d read many years ago. That has come back to mind , thanks to you. Yea, Pete Best was sort of exploited by the lads, but his drumming just wasn’t up to snuff. And Yea, Ringo’s star was already rising when he was asked to join and he was a perfect fit.
I just watched “Hard Day’s Night” on AMC. Really enjoyed it; had not seen it since 1964. Has it been that long ago ? Hard to believe so but the calendar says it has.
They were never great musicians, but very good professional musicians nonetheless. I think they had a better or heavier drummer with Pete Best, as can be heard on his mid 60s solo records with the Pete Best Combo. And their producer GM shaved way too many rough edges off their sound. As to their songs being so easy play, not so. There are some very difficult Beatles songs. Some use very complex chord arrangements, and many use drop tunings for the guitars. I FEEL FINE has a riff that takes a little time to get the hang of, and the right sound. The lead solos are pretty simple, but I don’t like copying other peoples solos, and the guitar solos is another place Martin shaved too many rough edges, a more raw sounding approach would have on some songs been better. Finally, The Beatles did not invent Heavy Metal. Many band were playing much harder music before them during their time and before they even became a band. There are dozens of mid 50s rockabilly songs that far out rock HELTER SKELTER. You never hear them because they aren’t part of the mainstream. In context to the mainstream, The Beatles achievements look very far ahead of their time, but when you look deeper, The Beatles start looking like just another very good 60s pop rock band.
I have to correct someone here. Someone wrote a couple of comments before this one that George Martin hired a session drummer for The Beatles September 4th, 1962 recording session because he didn’t know The Beatles fired Pete Best and hired Ringo Starr. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. When The Beatles came into the studio that September 4th morning, the assistant producer (I always forget that guy’s name), was shocked that they had changed drummers. It had been two weeks since they made the change and because The Beatles were still a fairly unknown band outside Liverpool, word never reached them in London. Anyway, no sessions drummer was hired for that day, so Pete would have played again. They had rehearsed the new arrangement of LOVE ME DO with Pete all through June, July, and August, so it would have sounded at least the same as the version Ringo played that day. George Martin didn’t even show up- to show how seriously he took them at that time. Later that day or the next day, I heard both, Martin listened to the recording with Ringo on the drums and said he didn’t like Ringo’s drumming at all. On September 11, they came back into the studio to record LOVE ME DO again. This time Martin was there and so was a sessions drummer, Andy White. The Beatles protested, but to no avail. Martin told Lennon and McCartney that Ringo’s drumming was out of time. (Strange, since they eventually released the so called out of time recording on the single) In a 1989 interview, McCartney said Martin, who at that time had never produced for a Rock and roll band, didn’t understand rock and roll drumming and was used to the drumming he had heard on Cozy Cole and Frank Sinatra records. In all these white wash movies they make it look like Martin didn’t like Pete and The Beatles dash off and get Ringo the next day. It actually took them 11 weeks to find a new drummer. They spent those 11 weeks rehearsing a new arrangement of LOVE ME DO with Pete Best on drums, all the while asking other drummers behind Pete’s back to join the band and all of them turning the job down. The first drummer they asked was Bobby Graham, who was drumming for Joe Browne and the Bruvvers, a band that had just recorded a hit song called A PICTURE OF YOU. They heard Graham wasn’t getting along with Browne, but Graham turned the job down because they had a hit record and The Beatles had yet to release anything that made the charts. Graham later went on to become one of England’s top sessions drummers, playing on many big hits, The Animal WE GOT TO GET OUT OF THIS PLACE being one, and was the drummer on about all of Herman’s Hermits recordings. It got to be late August for the Beatles and they were running out of time, so they remembered Richard Starkey and gave him a call. In spite of the myth, Ringo was not their first choice. Much of the reason for the sacking of Pete was a jealousy over popularity. In early June, EMI told The Beatles that they wanted to feature one member of the band. Also, around early June the locals newspapers printed a headline which read, “Beatles to Record for EMI,” and below the headline was a picture of Pete Best and none of the other Beatles. The Beatles probably started thinking, we brought him in two years ago and played over 700 club gigs with him as our drummer, but there is no way we’re going to become Pete Best and The Beatles. With all those club performances, playing somewhere almost every day for at least 4 hours a gig, the irony is Pete probably has more time as a Beatles drummer than Ringo.
Dude. Punctuation. Why ask us to parse that block o’ text?
Lady Madonna is one of the songs where I feel like he shines as a Bass Player.
To answer the OP, no, no they’re not overrated.
I would add “Old Brown Shoe”, and “Think for Yourself”, both Harrison compositions, interestingly.
Also, there is a fast, staccato, 16th-note bass run in the song “Soily” which Wings performed live. (The song appears on the 1976 album “Wings Over America”, and was the B-side of the live version of “Maybe I’m Amazed”). The bass run occurs right before one of the later choruses (and immediately following the words, ‘commie with a tommy gun’). My brother, a bassist and professional musician, considered that run bad ass.
In the book (and movie) “Pumping Iron”, Arnold Schwarzenegger was explaining why, unlike fledgling bodybuilders, he as champion rarely dressed to show off his muscles. He likened it to the fact that you rarely saw drivers of Ferraris racing on the roads - they know they can pass anybody.
The fact that McCartney rarely showed off his Ferrari-grade bass skills (unlike countless showier players) succinctly answers the OP, and speaks volumes.
Word.
The word is love.
That’s all I need.
In their early days, their musicianship was ordinary, but (as has been pointed out) four trips to Hamburg over a 2-year period, where they spent countless hours on stage (one total has it at more than 1100 hours of performance time… in just Hamburg) really paid dividends.
Lennon was obviously a competent rhythm guitarist.
McCartney can be considered one of the more important bassists in rock and he was reluctant to pick it up, having to take it after Lennon and Harrison flatly refused after Sutcliffe’s departure (Chas Newby replaced him for a bit after they returned to Liverpool) but it sometimes gets lost in the mix that McCartney started out on the guitar and there are arguments that he was, perhaps, even the best guitarist in the band.
Harrison loved playing and loved working out leads, but he needed time to work them out and couldn’t really be counted as someone who could just wing it. That’s not to detract from his accomplishments in recording.
Starr’s skill is sometimes hotly debated. What gets lost in all of that is, at the time, he was considered one of the best drummers in Liverpool and his move from The Hurricanes to The Beatles squarely put them at the top of the heap.
After their break in the U.S., their tours became legendary in the sheer number of dates (for the time) and their limited time on-stage was due to their manager’s philosophy of ‘leaving them heaving and wanting more,’ so yes, their appearances took on a ‘rushed’ sense as time went on.
This was back when there were no massive stage amplifiers and, more importantly, no stage monitors for them to hear themselves over the absolute roar of the audience. So they did get sloppy as time went on. But, if you combine everything, it’s easy to see why.
I’m really surprised that so few people have mentioned George.
IMHO, he was the best of them all. Better than all the rest put together.
Clearly YMMV. He turned out to be far more than anyone expected, as did Ringo. George’s good songs are wonderful, he saw success post-Beatles and appears to have worked to be a Good Person, Husband, Father and Friend.
But “better than the rest put together”? Yeah…no.
Umm … I looked up YMMV and the only thing I could find was Your Mileage May Vary.
Is that what you meant?
I know some of this thread is old, but as I was reading the post about Paul basslines I thought the exact same thing. Once you could hear the bass on the remastered Yellow Submarine album, that song got a lot better. Here’s the isolated bassline, if anyone is interested:
Yes. It basically means “we all may have a different point of view on this.”
You are welcome to celebrate George - he is wonderful. But most music types would strongly disagree with your superlative statement…