Brief background for people who don’t know this stuff: Best was the Beatles’ original drummer, fired and replaced by Ringo Starr in 1962 shortly before they recorded “Love Me Do.” The band, to put it mildly, then hit it big.
Sucks to be Pete Best.
While I have nothing against Ringo, though, he’s never been considered one of the driving creative forces in the band. A good drummer, of course, but definitely the “lucky Beatle.”
So what if George Martin hadn’t expressed such reservations about Best’s drumming, and the other Beatles hadn’t fired him? Would their recorded output suffer much, aside from missing “Octopus’ Garden” and “Don’t Pass Me By”? Would Best have done vocals on “Yellow Submarine” and “Goodnight”?
Do you think they would they still have hit it as big? Would they have lasted as long – or longer? Would Best have been fired eventually, whether or not Ringo was asked in? What say you?
They probably would have hit it big with Best – their success was based on the songwriting of Lennon and McCartney. I suspect they would have dropped Best at some point anyway, though. He certainly didn’t have the chops to stay as a professional musician after he left the group, and the rest of the Beatles were not getting along with him all that much toward the end.
If they had refused to have Brian Epstein fire Pete Best, George Martin would have replaced him with Andy White anyway, until they got a drummer - which is what he did. Between the first and second sessions to record a first single, Best was excommunicated and Ringo brought in - and Martin didn’t even like him!. This is why there are two versions of “Love Me Do”- on the September 4th take, Ringo was relegated to tambourine, White drummed. They came back to recut the song on September 11th, with just Ringo. The 9/4 take was issued on their album, the 9/11 take was issued only on the single - there is no tambourine on this version.
But supposing Best stayed in the group - they couldn’t have got as famous as they did, as fast and furiously as they did. He was a plodding timekeeper, with no imagination, terrible fills, no steady meter to speak of, and the annoying habit of hitting the bass drum 4 in the bar for everything. I’m sure George Martin would have replaced him almost immediately. There was tension about it in the group anyway, and Paul in particular didn’t like Best much in the first place. He refused to get his hair cut like theirs, he wasn’t funny, he interviewed poorly, and didn’t hang out with the group. His days were numbered before they ever travelled to London.
Hypothesis: if Best had stayed, they would have been another mediocre group who bombed out quickly. It required the unique talents of all four Beatles to make the group what it became. Best couldn’t cut it.
My guess is that once they stopped touring in 66 that Best would have been fired and Macca would have taken over the drumming.
Apart from that maybe the White Album may have had ‘Child of Nature’ (?) on it instead of ‘Don’t Pass me by’ meaning that Lennon would have no Jealous Guy to release in the 70’s.
I played drums way back when, and, to learn drumming, I played along with records. Ringo was pretty dull and unimaginative. (Charlie Watts is godlike in comparison.) I can’t imagine the Beatles wouldn’t have become **The Beatles ** with anyone else.
I’m no musician, and even I can tell Pete Best is a terrible drummer from listening to his plodding beats on Anthology. I’m not shedding any tears for him though, thanks to those Anthology albums, he’s probably the richest ex-member of any band ever.
Without Ringo, we might see the Beatles on the nostalgia concert circuit with Gary US Bonds and the Skyliners, or they might not have even made it out of Liverpool and ended up in history alongside Rory Storm and the Hurricanes and all those other Liverpool bands we only know about because they were pals with the fab four.
You mean during the recording of “Love Me Do.” I believe there were like 6 different versions, with & without Ringo and one with Pete Best. But I could be wrong…
Ringo’s singing isn’t terrible. He’s no Freddie Mercury, or anything like that, but there have been plenty of rock and pop singers with voices no better than his. Country singers too, for the matter of that.
The Beatles were a media sensation, not just a band. Each of the Beatles played a role. Ringo, in addition to being drummer, was the comedy sidekick.
It may be worth pointing out that when Beatlemania first hit the US shores, it was Ringo that a lot of people remembered (the funny name, the Nose, the goofy drum playing). “Ringo” was the name used to parody the phenomenon on TV (the others having boring names) and so forth.
So, while he may not have been the most talented member of The Beatles, I think it could certainly be argued that Ringo Starr had a certain, what the French call…I don’t know what…that was at least somewhat critical in getting Beatlemania off the ground. Even when listing the members of the group, it was always “John, Paul, George and Ringo…” (Can you imagine “John, Paul, George and Pete?”) It was that final, funny twist of ‘Ringo’ among the other dull names that was amusing to a lot of people.
And he was certainly more memorable than Pete Best ever would have been.
One of Ringo’s talents was KNOWING that he was lucky to be in the Beatles. He was willing to take orders, he wasn’t an egomaniac like the other three members of the band. When you look at John hating Paul and George, George hating Paul and John, and Paul hating John and George, there’s one member of the group that none of the other members ended up hating.
Plus, can you imagine “A Hard Day’s Night” with PETE BEST? Ringo MADE that movie.
Right on, My_Dog_Klaus. Ringo has always been hugely underrated just because he is limited in technique. Calling the guy who came up with the great “Ticket to Ride” drum lick “unimaginative” is preposterous. Some flashy drummer who spent his days copping licks from Art Blakey records would never have delivered the apocalyptic bashing that drives “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Ringo was no virtuoso, but he knew what he had to contribute to the Beatles that was distinctly his own, and the band would not have been the same without him.
Just because it’s relevant, and just in case a few Dopers haven’t heard it, here’s one of the greatest interview answers of all time. A journo was interviewing John Lennon…
Journo: “Don’t you think Ringo was quite lucky to be in The Beatles, given that he wasn’t exactly the best drummer in the world?”
Lennon: “Let me tell you something. Ringo wasn’t even the best drummer in The Beatles.”
To answer the OP, nobody knows, but I don’t think it would have made a huge difference to the scale and scope of their eventual success, which was predominantly powered by the fact the foursome happened to contain two of the greatest popular songrwriters of the 20th century who could also perform the songs they wrote. If you’ve got a band turning out songs like Ticket To Ride, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Penny Lane, Hard Day’s Night… (choose any examples from over 100 winners) then frankly it’s not going to make a huge difference who’s bashing the skins. And George was there anyway, to make sure it all sounded good. He would have ‘arranged’ Best’s departure / replacement fairly quickly if this had proved necessary.
I’ve seen that quote attributed to all three of the other Beatles, but never with a source. It’s bull. Here’s what John really thought of Ringo, from the 1980 Playboy interview:
I play drums a bit, too, and it was a very good drummer (who used to drum for two old Seattle bands called the Fastbacks and Flop) who really made me appreciate Ringo for what he is: a talented musician with tasteful drum chops. Before I really started listening to Ringo closely, I too thought he was horribly average and sucked. But now when I go listen to those Beatles records, I realize just how tasteful and delightlfully quirky his playing really was. Dull and unimaginative are the last adjectives I would use to describe Ringo. His drumming style was original and interesting. He didn’t always play your typical hi-hat eighths, snare on two and four, etc., like most modern drummers seem to play. I swear, most drummers I hear today are painfully generic. Ringo was not. As My Dog Klaus and Biffy have already pointed out, he played what was appropriate for the song. He rarely recycled his beats.
I just cannot understand how one can label Ringo as dull and unimaginative.
I think one thing that’s being overlooked here is the tremendous amount of personal charisma Ringo had at the time the Beatles broke through. He was easily as popular as John or Paul. The amused, bashful smile he had, the nose, the way he tossed his hair, the rings, etc. all made him a most compelling fellow. I remember the time clearly and I would say that aside from Paul, Ringo was the most popular among the ladies…and only barely at that. I knew lots of kids that wanted to emulate Ringo. I don’t remember anyone who wanted to emulate either of the other three. Beatlemania and the look that went with it, yes; but the other Beatles as personnas, not so much. John and Paul had the voices and the talent, and George was the lead guitar technician, but it was Ringo who really stirred up interest as a person in those days. I think the Beatles would have been successful without Ringo, but not as successful.
Another vote for Ringo being inventive and completely un-ordinary: please listen to the drums on “Come Together.” The rhythms he chose to accompany that song were so different from anything that had come before… and there’s been nothing like it since. He only used the hi-hat for the sixteenth-note fill in the intro figure. The snare doesn’t make an appearance until the chorus, and then only three times during it, and then only during the middle eight. The bulk of the song is carried on the toms. No cymbals except on the 1-beat of each intro measure, during the middle eight and the coda. Nobody does that!
And then check out “Old Brown Shoe.” If that isn’t world-class drumming for a rock song, I don’t know what is.