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October 24th, 2026 · 3:45pm BST
When talking about The Beatles, it’s almost customary for people to have a few cheap shots thrown at Ringo Starr.
The guy has been dealing with more than a few critiques since he joined the band, but as soon as the band became one of the biggest acts in the world, it was easier for people to call him the lesser of the legends just because he didn’t seem to write any of their classic hits. But if you look through their discography together, there’s no chance that the band would have been anywhere near as good as they were without him laying down the groove for them.
Because what Starr could do with the rest of his mates couldn’t really be taught. He was one of the greatest songwriting drummers, which is a lot more important than being the most technically proficient player in the world. He was the one who could only hear a song once and play what he knew would be the perfect foil for whatever the band needed, whether it was the deep groove of ‘Come Together’ or keeping perfect time when he eventually worked with John Lennon on Plastic Ono Band.
That kind of groove is something that people need to spend years refining, but even if he was playing traditional rock and roll tunes, it wasn’t always easy for people to keep up with him. ‘Act Naturally’ is one of the more rudimentary Beatles covers that they ever did, but best of luck to anyone who has ever tried to keep up with what Starr was doing and has actually lived to tell the tale with their right arm still intact.
And that kind of groove is something that Pete Best simply could not do. While I mean no disrespect to the man for his role in building The Beatles, when you listen to the way that he played alongside his bandmates on their audition tapes, you can see what’s missing. He tends to be a little bit sloppy behind the kit, and while Starr eventually got demoted to the tambourine at his first Beatles session, he at least had better chemistry with the rest of the band.
Being able to style his hair in the same Beatles cut as everyone else would have been one thing, but Starr felt that one of the best ways to communicate with the band was by playing with them first. And while he was already a good friend of the band before he even got started behind their drum kit, Paul McCartney realised that the song ‘What’d I Say’ was the first time where everyone figured out the kind of powerhouse Starr was.
No one could really nail that drum part as well as Starr could, and when the band heard how they sounded together, there was no sense in going back to Best, saying, “Most of the drummers couldn’t nail the drum part, it’s a little bit [sings a bit of it]. It was a little difficult to do, but Ringo nailed it. And I remember the moment, standing there and looking at John and then looking at George, and the look on our faces was like, ‘Fucking hell. What is this?’ And that was the moment, that was the beginning, really, of the Beatles.”
Further reading: From The Vault
Playing along to one of the all-time classic rock songs would have been enough, but Starr was already looking to make a bigger mark on their first few records. He wasn’t a one-trick pony, and after Please Please Me, he developed just as much as the rest of the Fab Four, whether that meant switching his kit from time to time or even going so far as to make little percussion accents on tunes like ‘Words of Love’.
There were no rules when it came to what Starr did in the studio, but the main message that he wanted to impart was that it was OK to have fun whenever you got behind the kit. Music is something that you play rather than work, and Starr only needed one song to make the entire musical operation look easy.
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