I’m talking about when the Beatles played live in a large theater or stadium. I see monitors in front of the others, but Ringo is stuck in the back. Did he have monitors of his own? Could he hear the other’s monitors? The large guitar amps would of course be facing the audience.
My guess is that he couldn’t hear much, and was watching the others to determine when to start and stop… which is pretty amazing if you think about it.
Since he is reputed to be a human metronome I’d wonder if the others could hear him.
They all had difficulty hearing when they played Shea Stadium.
[QUOTE=wikipedia]
The deafening level of crowd noise coupled with the distance between the band and the audience meant that nobody in the stadium could hear much of anything. Vox had specially designed 100-watt amplifiers for this tour; however, it was still not anywhere near loud enough, so the Beatles used the house amplification system. Lennon described the noise as ‘wild’ and also twice as deafening when the Beatles performed. On-stage ‘fold-back’ speakers were not in common use in 1965, rendering the Beatles’ playing inaudible to each other, forcing them to just play through a list of songs nervously, not knowing what kind of sound was being produced, or whether they were playing in unison.
[/QUOTE]
From here:
“Because of the noise going on, all I had to do was just constantly keep the time, so we’d have something to follow. If you look at films, you’ll see I’m looking at their mouths—I’m lip reading where we’re up to in the song because I couldn’t hear the amps or anything.”
http://www.moderndrummer.com/site/2014/02/ringo-starr-meets-beatles-ringo-modern-drummer-interview/
Thanks everyone. Ignorance fought. I realize that this should probably have been posted in Cafe Society.
thanks for posting that
Moderator Action
I probably should have moved it there when I first read it as well. Oh well, better late than never.
Moving thread from General Questions to Cafe Society.
I hope this isn’t considered a hijack, but when I see a post about Ringo and the Beatles, I have to throw out how much I love the apocryphal quote from John Lennon where an interviewer asked John “Is Ringo the best drummer in the world?” to which John supposedly replied “Ringo isn’t even the best drummer in The Beatles”.
True or not, it cracks me up! 
It’s not true.
They could all have been singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat when I saw them at Comiskey Park. They seemed so far away, and all we did was scream.
Aye, thanks! Ddamn, Ringo is cool as hell, isn’t he?
When I saw them in San Diego, I could hear them well enough to enjoy the music as well as the sights and sounds.