Despite comments to the contrary, The Beatles drummer Ringo Starr is one of the most accomplished acts to have ever picked up a pair of drumsticks. Yet he’s never been obsessed with the instrument. For Starr, it’s always been about music as a whole, and in his perspective, drumming is just another component which comes together to create something greater than the sum of its parts.
While many drummers of similar stature to Starr grew up trying to emulate their heroes and replicating them in their bedrooms. However, that was never of interest to Ringo, who has only ever purchased one instrumental record by a drummer, and apart from that singular release, there’s never been anything else of a similar mould that successfully captivated his attention.
Starr isn’t interested in hearing drummers in isolation, which speaks volumes about his playing style, which has always revolved around enhancing those around him rather than attempting to steal the show. While this has led to people attempting to slander his skillset, it’s an unselfish attribute that helped carve The Beatles’ impeccable legacy.
In 2019, during a conversation with Dave Grohl for Rolling Stone, Starr reflected on the beginning of his drumming career as a teenager, recalling: “My first band was in the factory with the guy who lived next door to me: “Eddie Clayton, who was just a really cool guitar player. And I always wanted to be a drummer since I was 13, and my friend Roy [Trafford] made a tea-chest bass — a tea chest with a stick and a string — and that’s what skiffle was.”
However, when Grohl tried to probe Starr about his favourite drummers during this transformative period, the former Beatles member provided a rather blunt answer, revealing he was never drawn to the instrument on records.
Ringo explained: “Well, Cozy Cole is the only one I ever mention, but anything Little Richard did — people always feel it’s weird, but I never listened just for the drums. I listened for the whole track. [Another drummer I heard at the time] had a section going where the hi-hat was part of the fill! First time I ever heard it.”
Furthermore, in another discussion with Rolling Stone in 2020, Starr again referenced Cozy Cole, telling the publication: “The only drum solo I talk about is Cozy Cole’s ‘Topsy’ from all those years ago. That’s the only one I liked. But John Bonham did quite a good one one time.”
Starr refrained from unleashing solos with The Beatles, apart from on ‘The End’. Paul McCartney said in The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions: “Ringo would never do drum solos. He hated drummers who did lengthy drum solos. We all did. And when he joined The Beatles, we said, ‘Ah, what about drum solos then?’, thinking he might say, ‘Yeah, I’ll have a five-hour one in the middle of your set,’ and he said, ‘I hate’ em!’ We said, ‘Great! We love you!’ And so he would never do them.”
Despite his disdain for solos, Starr appreciated the magnificence of Cole’s ‘Topsy’, released in 1958, which surprisingly became a hit for the drummer despite its uncommercial nature. While Cole didn’t particularly influence Ringo from a stylistic perspective, it significantly impressed him nonetheless.
