“Do You Think Ringo Is The Best Drummer In The World?”

An interviewer once asked John “Do you think Ringo is the best drummer in the world?” and he replied “Ringo isn’t even the best drummer in the Beatles”. It seems that all of the boys could play drums, and I think Paul was playing drums during their Cavern days - he certainly played them on a few of the later pieces (“The Ballad of John and Yoko” is one). But somehow people have gotten the idea that Ringo wasn’t a very good drummer. This somehow ignores why the most popular, innovative, and frankly powerful musical act in the world might keep a poor musician in the band. They surely wouldn’t have.

And yet there’s “A Day in the Life,” where he created something extraordinary with the drums. In Paul’s section the drums are sort of in their “support the tempo and shine things up a bit” role, though certainly not where pop drumming was then (or since), but in John’s segments, those drums are wonderful. Ringo did a lot more than just highlight beats, or even do a little figuring around the tempo. His work was just a bit bizarre when he comes in, and gets more and more avant-garde through the first segment, and when the last segment starts, he amps it up, but sort of subtly (if anything in this song is subtle).

Ringo’s been noted to have something like “perfect tempo”, a drummer’s version of perfect pitch. He could find what a song needed to have behind it, then bring more than just that to the music. Sort of like how a painter might put extra details in part of the background of a painting. This stuff didn’t stand on its own, but it wasn’t supposed to. It brought out the magic in the music.

Finally, I’ve read where people wondered how, “back in the day” the Beatles managed to do so many takes that could be intercut with each other without the currently ever-present click track. It was because Ringo WAS their click track, and he could keep each take at the same tempo with his drumming.

Humans have an intrinsic sense of rhythm to a greater or lesser extent, but this almost always is seen in how we join with others in clapping, walking, etc. It’s something that makes marching bands maintain a steady tempo, and groups of people marching stay both in step and at a constant pace. But in almost everyone it’s more a receptive sense…we synchronize with others, and together we establish whatever tempo we’re going to hold as a group activity. It’s related to how birds and fish move in groups, I think; something down in the very primitive parts of the brain.

But Ringo Starr had this as an expressive capability, and since just keeping the beat was trivial for him, he could go so far beyond what rock drummers did then, or do even now. I think calling him “the best drummer in the world” is a slight, because his work wasn’t just drumming, it was far more than that.

What does everyone think about this?

Ringo was never at any point close to being the best drummer in the world.

But he was a great musician and the perfect drummer for the Beatles (one of the greatest music groups of all time) and some other great music he helped make.

The end

Ringo was a whole lot better than people give him credit for. There are a couple of YT videos where actual drummers break-down what Ringo’s doing in various songs, and it’s surprisingly deft, detailed stuff.

John was the soul of the Beatles.
Paul was the heart of the Beatles.
George was the mind of the Beatles.
Ringo was the drummer.

I always thought Ringo was the glue that kept the band together. McCartney and Lennon had a contentious relationship with lots of ups and downs, and I reckon Ringo played a crucial role mediating.

Even though the comment I repeated was crafted to shit on Ringo, I think it unintentionally speaks to that.

Yeah, isn’t the common lore that the drummer gets the leftovers (accolades, groupies, etc.). Exceptions exist (Phil Collins comes to mind).

I don’t have any insight into the Beatles, obviously, but I know a few people where I ask myself “What are they contributing to this collaboration?!?” Yet, really good people keep on working with them, that can’t be a coincidence.

Nope.

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-Be...er-in-the-band

@Laminar
Thanks for the link, I wasn't aware that Ringo was the favorite Beatle in the US. I obviously wasn't alive at the time, and it is interesting how my perception was shaped by the solo careers of Lennon and McCartney.

I stand corrected on the veracity of my opening sentence. It sure sounds like what John might have said, and of the four of them, I feel that John was the most likely to kid about the others.

But if it hadn’t been clear, I was really simply gushing about how wonderfully Ringo’s drumming brought out the depth of the Beatles’ music, at least to me.

Side note: drumming is a branch of music that is far more mysterious to me than most of the rest of it. I understand “paradiddle” and that’s about it. But I don’t need to know the details to hear the impact of a single musician on a group’s music.