Ringo Starr was the last person to describe himself as a flashy drummer. He was more than happy to play for what the song needed, and anyone else who tried to use the tune as a vehicle for their musicianship was thinking about music completely wrong. Starr was the one who listened to the song and put in the right accents for nearly everything he did, but the last thing anyone should ask him to do is solo.
Part of the reason why drummers are usually the silent ones is because of them being at the back of the stage. Starr always wanted to be on the floor playing with the rest of The Beatles when he started, but looking through some of his best drumming performances, he never felt the need to play too much flashy stuff outside of the iconic drum break on ‘The End’, which he was practically strong-armed into doing.
But listening to his early work, it’s not like he didn’t have chops. There were many moments where he seemed like a human metronome playing along to tracks like ‘Birthday’, and yet the outro to a song like ‘Long Tall Sally’ looks like one of the single hardest performances of the 1960s, complete with Starr putting his entire body to work on his kit as Paul McCartney hits those final high notes.
However, rock and roll was only one facet of what Starr could do. Being a drummer around Liverpool meant needing to have an extensive repertoire, and while Starr nailed down a shuffling rhythm and managed to keep some of the most incessant beats sounding effortless when singing along to tracks like ‘What Goes On’ or ‘Act Naturally’, he knew some of the best drummers came from the world of R&B.
“The only drum solo I talk about is Cozy Cole’s ‘Topsy’ from all those years ago. That’s the only one I liked.”Ringo Starr
There had been songs like ‘What’d I Say’ by Ray Charles that impressed The Beatles enough to ask Starr to join, but the drummer always had a soft spot for ‘Topsy’ by Cozy Cole, saying, “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.” But the real draw of ‘Topsy’ is how it goes against the conventions of what a drum solo should be.
It’s not necessarily the fastest drum performance in the world, but it’s not trying to be. Everyone might have fawned over Bonham the same way that Starr did when hearing him annihilate his drumkit, but for any drummer who plays to the song, it’s about emphasising that great groove rather than getting in the way of everyone else on the bandstand.
Bonham also wasn’t immune to this kind of playing, either. Most of his performances on Led Zeppelin would have been thunderous even if he only had a tambourine in his hand, but it made sense that all of his favourite records outside of rock and roll were all R&B artists, even incorporating techniques from people like Bernard Purdie into his sound when working on Zeppelin’s later records.
But no matter what style of music is playing, Starr knew that any kind of percussionist should be about more than pounding the life out of anything they could get their hands on. Just because someone has a non-melodic instrument doesn’t mean they should stop trying to be a songwriter, and even when the drummer took centre stage, Starr knew it was best to tell a story with his instrument instead of turning every song into his personal clinic.
