When musicians discover their passions, there’s no sense in being a snob about any particular artist. People gravitate towards whatever music sounds good to them on a personal level. While Ringo Starr is renowned worldwide as one of the greatest drummers to ever pick up two sticks, his history with rock and roll might not have happened if he hadn’t been introduced to country legends like Gene Autry before he heard Elvis Presley.
Then again, that’s not exactly the worst way for a rock star to be introduced to music. After all, many of the biggest early rockers tended to take a few pages out of the country playbook, like Presley, who originally rocked an acoustic guitar decked out in spurs in some of his most famous films.
There’s a certain stigma around country music in the mainstream rock world, though. Outside of southern rock acts like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Allman Brothers Band, only people like Johnny Cash tended to get respect in the rock and roll world, with most people thinking that it was closer to the “safe” music their parents listened to.
For as closed off as rock could be at times, The Beatles never really cared about what genre they played. Looking at their setlists from their gigs in Liverpool, it wasn’t out of the question to sprinkle in everything from doo-wop songs to Motown favourites to Chuck Berry tunes whenever they took to the stage, which is probably half the reason why their songs sounded so eclectic.
And, yes, that also included a fair bit of country from the likes of Autry. When talking about the biggest musical force in his life, Starr said the country legend got him hooked when he started, recalling in 1977, “Gene Autry was the most. It may sound like a joke– Go and have a look in my bedroom. It’s covered with Gene Autry posters. He was my first musical influence. He sent shivers down my spine when he put his leg over the horn on the saddle and sang, ‘South of the border, down Mexico way’ in a movie, right? My first musical experience was that.”
While Autry’s music is far from the best-aged product of its time, it was enough for The Beatles to put a little bit of twang into their sound. Aside from giving Starr the rockabilly covers to sing on their records like ‘Honey Don’t’ and ‘Act Naturally’, it wasn’t out of the question for John Lennon and Paul McCartney to put some country into their repertoire, either, like the groove of ‘I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party’ or ‘I’ll Cry Instead’.
Even after the group imploded in the early 1970s, they were still more than happy to bring some twang into their sound, from McCartney’s folk-tinged experiment on RAM to Starr releasing an entire album of country favourites before hitting it big on Beaucoups of Blues. Country and rock had never been far away from each other, but when you look closely at how The Beatles used both genres, they were always cut from the same cloth.
