What about Ringo as a drummer?

[Stratocaster]

@spooje

I always heard that Pete Best was a better drummer, but didn’t fit into the new scene the Beatles were hoping to create.

One of the Beatles–I think it was Harrison–said that Best played the same song every time, regardless of what they were playing. George Martin, upon hearing the audition tape the Beatles recorded, decided they were good enough to sign, with one exception: Pete Best’s drum playing.

[bup]

@spooje

I always heard that Pete Best was a better drummer, but didn’t fit into the new scene the Beatles were hoping to create.

Is this a whoosh?

If you listen to ‘Love Me Do,’ which has Pete Best on drums, it’s actually the harmonica that keeps the tempo of the song. The drumming tries to keep up to the harmonica, and not perfectly successfully.

[bordelond]

@pulykamell

His drum parts are melodic and essential to the music–think of a song like “Come Together” with the cascading triplets across the kit of the intro and the groovy, thumping toms of the verse – that’s essential to the song, and that’s quintessential Ringo, oozing simplicity, soul, and taste.

Yes.

See also “Strawberry Fields Forever”, “She Said She Said”, and “Something”.

[Jack_Batty]

@bup

Is this a whoosh?

If you listen to ‘Love Me Do,’ which has Pete Best on drums, it’s actually the harmonica that keeps the tempo of the song. The drumming tries to keep up to the harmonica, and not perfectly successfully.

You sure about that – about Best on drums on that song? I thought he was sacked before any recording.

In fact, if I recall correctly (bringing this all back round neatly) didn’t George Martin have a session drummer in for the first singles saying, essentially, “you can have Ringo on the road, but we need a better drummer on the recordings”?

[WordMan]

@Jack_Batty

You sure about that – about Best on drums on that song? I thought he was sacked before any recording.

In fact, if I recall correctly (bringing this all back round neatly) didn’t George Martin have a session drummer in for the first singles saying, essentially, “you can have Ringo on the road, but we need a better drummer on the recordings”?

Best didn’t play on Love Me Do - it was session guy Alan White on one take and Ringo on the other. George Martin wasn’t sure about Ringo, but I believe the story has become that Martin was skittish after Pete Best, who has generally been characterized as an on-beat plodder with no groove. Ringo grooves, not that anyone could make Love Me Do groove…

[WordMan]

@Sam_Stone

A big part of what makes a great musician is taste. Knowing what to do, and when, to being out the right feel, the right emotion, the right tone for the song where and when it needs it.

Too many people equate technical ability with talent. Technical ability can be taught. Put in enough hours, and you too can learn to do lightning-fast scales or wild hammering drum fills.

But taste and creativity is different.

As an example from the guitar world, take Yngvie Malmsteen, and compare him with Slash. Slash probably couldn’t keep up with him if they were doing some sort of shredding competition. But I know who I’d much rather listen to. And you can go on Youtube and find a dozen amateur guitarists who can display the pyrotechnic flash of Malmsteen, but ones who can compose an original solo that can make tears come to your eyes are not to be found.

Ringo has taste. When he does something different on the drums, he’s doing it for a reason. He may not be able to articulate it, but he can just hear the song and know what he should hit and when to help the essence of the song and make it something greater than it was without his input.

Another example is Miles Davis. Miles Davis is best appreciated by listening to not just the notes he plays, but the spaces between them. He puts rests in his music where you don’t expect them, and they build tension, and then hit just the right note at the right moment to pull it all together. Miles Davis is an acquired taste, and a lot of people who expect a great jazz player to be technically flashy just don’t get him. But there’s a reason why Kind of Blue is one of the best selling jazz albums in history.

Ringo is like that. Go listen to some Beatles’ songs, and really concentrate in just hearing the drums. Try to think about what he’s trying to do, and listen to the fills he uses, and when he uses them. You might gain a whole new appreciation for his simple, effective brilliance.

Well said, sir. Before I read your post, I had thought of going in the opposite direction - Joy Division and the Ramones. I remember reading about the actors in the recent movie about Ian Curtis and how the members of the film’s Joy Division spent all this time learning the songs and how credible they were. Then I found out that “all this time” was about 2 - 3 weeks. The music was simple - just like the three chords n’ downstrokes of the Ramones - but sometimes, with taste, simple is just right. Ringo’s drumming is like that…

[Stratocaster]

@WordMan

Best didn’t play on Love Me Do - it was session guy Alan White on one take and Ringo on the other. George Martin wasn’t sure about Ringo, but I believe the story has become that Martin was skittish after Pete Best, who has generally been characterized as an on-beat plodder with no groove. Ringo grooves, not that anyone could make Love Me Do groove…

Just a bit more detail:

In his book *Summer of Love *George Martin concedes that his version of events differs from some accounts, saying: “On the 6 June Beatles’ session (audition) I decided that Pete Best had to go [and said to Epstein] I don’t care what you do with Pete Best; but he’s not playing on any more recording sessions. I’m getting a session drummer in.” When Ringo Starr turned up with the group for their first proper recording session on 4 September, Martin says that he was totally unaware that the Beatles had fired Best. And, not knowing “how good bad or indifferent” Starr was, was not prepared to “waste precious studio time finding out.”

Martin became a great fan of Ringo’s drumming. From the cite I provided earlier:

George Martin – “Ringo always got and still gets a unique sound out of his drums, as sound as distinctive as his voice. … Ringo gets a looser deeper sound out of his drums that is unique. …This detailed attention to the tone of his drums is one of the reasons for Ringo’s brilliance. Another is that although Ringo does not keep time with a metronome accuracy, he has unrivaled feel for a song. If his timing fluctuates, it invariably does so in the right place at the right time, keep the right atmosphere going on the track and give it a rock solid foundation. This held true for every single Beatles number Richie played … Ringo also was a great tom tom player.” ( Summer of Love, 1994)

[Typo_Negative]

@WordMan

Best didn’t play on Love Me Do - it was session guy Alan White on one take and Ringo on the other.

Is that the same Alan White who would later join John Lennon in The Plastic Ono Band, then Yes?

[DfrntBreign]

@WordMan

<snip>Ringo grooves, not that anyone could make Love Me Do groove…

I bet Bernard Purdie could have.

Bottom line is this: Ringo was the right man for the job. Nothing he did with the Beatles is difficult for a half-way decent drummer* to reproduce. The same could be said for Charlie Watts with the Rolling Stones. But that doesn’t say anything about how good a drummer either was/is. Charlie Watts has done some jazz playing that shows he is Very, Very Good.

If you go back and listen to what the jazz guys were doing when the Beatles were active, I don’t think Ringo is remotely in the same league. But so what? The Beatles weren’t playing jazz and Ringo played the perfect parts for the music they were doing. That is no small feat as they were (arguably, I know) doing something that had never been done.

Ringo never was and never will be the greatest drummer in the world. There’s always somebody better out there in one sense or another. But he was by no stretch of the imagination, a “hack”.

• I define a “half-way decent drummer” as one that has a certain level and equal measures of technique and that undefinable “feel” that turns mechanics into music. That’s what I strive for, anyway.

[Stratocaster]

@spooje

Is that the same Alan White who would later join John Lennon in The Plastic Ono Band, then Yes?

It was Andy White on “Love Me Do,” different guy.

[mambocrow]

@WordMan

Best didn’t play on Love Me Do - it was session guy Alan White on one take and Ringo on the other. George Martin wasn’t sure about Ringo, but I believe the story has become that Martin was skittish after Pete Best, who has generally been characterized as an on-beat plodder with no groove. Ringo grooves, not that anyone could make Love Me Do groove…

The Beatles Anthology 1 includes the June 6, 1962 recording of “Love Me Do” with Pete Best on drums (disk #1, selection #22). It’s pretty bad. The guy seems to have a difficult time just keeping tempo.

[WordMan]

All very cool.

**Strat **- thanks for the drummer catch and the great quotes. The Martin quote especially. **DB **- right you are: right man for the job. Playing counterpoint to Lennon, McCartney & Harrison is an admirable role.

**mambocrow **- I gotta check that out…no surprise from everything I have read…

[Nonsuch]

@mambocrow

The Beatles Anthology 1 includes the June 6, 1962 recording of “Love Me Do” with Pete Best on drums (disk #1, selection #22). It’s pretty bad. The guy seems to have a difficult time just keeping tempo.

I was going to make that exact point. Pete played himself right out of a job on that audition.