There is a myth that goes around that Ringo Starr wasn’t a great drummer, and that is no small tragedy. The true cost of this falsehood is that it perpetuates a massive fallacy about the art of drumming in general. And that has underpinned a great deal of sticksmith folly in subsequent generations, as drummers seem desperate not to succumb to Ringo’s comic misquote of ‘not even the best drummer in The Beatles’ condemnation.
The brilliance of Ringo was that he was a reliable engine—a servant to the songs, with enough input to keep their journey groovy. As Paul McCartney said himself when recalling the Liverpudlian’s first audition, “The first few minutes that Ringo is playing, I look to the left at George and to the right to John, and we didn’t say a word, but I remember thinking, ‘S**t, this is amazing’.”
His simplicity was a soaring strength that let the band gel, as ‘Macca’ appraised: “Look, I love Led Zeppelin, but you watch them playing and you can see them looking back at John Bonham, like, ‘What the hell are you doing? This is the beat. You could turn your back on Ringo and never have to worry. He both gave you security, and you knew he was going to nail it.” He nailed it time and time again by ”playing with the song, with the singer”.
But on one occasion, he had to capture a mood that only the drum kit could offer. That track was ‘Rain’. “I don’t wish I’d played differently on any of them,” he said when reflecting on The Beatles’ discography with Drummerworld. “But ‘Rain’ I played differently. I was trying to be the rain.” This led to a more aggressive pitta-patta on the skin than we’re used to from the laidback rhythm man.
“I don’t do that sort of drumming,” he reflects, “but I did for ‘Rain’. You got what I could give you then”. What he could give is a reflection of the way that The Beatles saw music in general. An idea how to be fulfilled with sincerity—if they were delving into stormy disillusionment, then the music itself had to follow suit. Thus, it seems almost fitting that Ringo’s drumming wasn’t only rainy, but he was also outside of his own comfort zone.
His uncharacteristic snare work gives the song a dense and adrenalised atmosphere. Ringo was most certainly pleased with the result. “I think I just played amazing,” he told Barry Miles. “I was into the snare and the hi-hat. I think it was the first time I used this trick of starting a break by hitting the hi-hat first instead of going directly to a drum off the hi-hat.”
The result is a record that signposted the expanding scope of the band. The moodiness and psychological focus were not only a complete severance from their hand-holding days, but on top of Ringo’s innovative playing, you also had backmasked lyrics and burgeoning experimentalism.
The track remains a stoner anthem for the ages, and Ringo’s playing is no small part of that as he perfectly gave the idea the splashing rhythm it deserved.
