Ringo's Beatle Kits

Ringo Starr

This interview was excerpted from the July 1997 issue of Modern Drummer.

Last year, twenty-six years after their break-up, The Beatles had one of their best years. Three double set anthologies were released, giving the public the closest glimpse yet into the creative process of the group. Recordings of songs in various stages allowed us to peek inside the studio--an incredible honor. Also, now that Beatles albums have been released on CD, the drum parts are so much more audible than on their vinyl counterparts. The time was definitely right to get back in touch with Ringo with whom I had had the thrill of interviewing sixteen years ago.

We were to meet at a hotel suite and the photographers and I set up with the help of Todd Trent from Ludwig, who delivered a full kit to the hotel room. As the anticipation of his arrival increased, the quiet resounded in the room. The silence was broken by the suite's doorbell, ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, ding dong--who else would be so cheeky? As I opened the door with a, "Okay already," there was Ringo, looking much the star (Starr) with his finger on the doorbell, and he made a sweeping entrance with his lovely wife of sixteen years, Barbara Bach.

RF: In The Beatles Recording Sessions, (by Mark Lewisohn), George Martin is quoted as saying you made very few mistakes.

RS: Very few break-downs were because of me when we were making the track. The break-down would happen either when they sang the wrong words, John got his fingers stuck in the strings or something like that. Very seldom it was me. They found that out when they played all the tapes (to prepare the anthologies). I had been willing to take some of the blame. [laughs]

RF: You have said that you black out when you do fills.

RS: I absolutely do. I've always said that. We know how to play "boom chick," 4/4, the rhythm patterns. For me, the drummer, as an artist, becomes himself in the fills. I always found it very difficult and usually couldn't double track a fill because it just came whenever it came and that's the only time you'll get it.

RF: What about when you played live?

RS: We played the songs. The drum parts in those early Beatles records had a specific rhythm pattern all the way through. They weren't complicated and there wasn't a lot of jamming. The song was only two minutes ten and we did half an hour show. All those singles had their definite patterns. There are not a lot of fills, if you listen to the early records. The fills came later when we started doing Rubber Soul, that's when it started loosening up.

RF: The Recording Sessions book said you had the toughest role in the band.

RS: It's the drummer's joke that I was surrounded by three other drummers, pretending to be bass player and guitarists. [laughs] Everyone knows what the drummer should play and if anything goes wrong on stage, the front line looks at the drummer, automatically. I found it was really helpful that John, Paul, and George would say, "Do this, do that, what about that?" But the classic one was John brought some Motown classic and said, "I want you to play like that." And I said, "Well, there are two drummers on that." "Yeah, but just play like that." So I played the best way I could like that and that's how we got a lot of the things. It's not like I invented everything. I was being forced by the writers to do other stuff, too--not forced, but they had these crazy ideas.

One of the fun stories is when we first went to London to show George Martin "Please Please Me," I was playing the bass drum with my foot with a maraca in one hand, a tambourine in the other, and I was crashing the cymbals on the accents. I think that's what made him bring in Andy White. [laughs] It was, "Oh well, better get a real one." I was trying to get all the accents and all the sounds, so I was hitting the snare with the tambourine and shaking the maraca.

RF: The recording book makes the point that you had the hardest job; that you had to play the song over and over again....

RS: ...while they broke down. I have one rule. While we're playing, I don't stop. Whatever happens, I don't stop because that can turn into part of the song. Unless it's an absolute screw up. If John stopped, the three of us might have kept going. We couldn't do that in the early days because we were all on the two mic's, but later on, we would carry on even if someone broke down, to see if it was worth it. And sometimes it was.

RF: Can you describe the roles each one of you played within the musical context?

RS: For me, the roles weren't like everyone thinks--"You do this, you do that." The role was that we supported each other. No matter who was on, the others were supportive, the best that they could. We wanted to be really well known. We wanted to make records. We were musicians, playing to more and more people and it was this gradual roll that went on and on and, of course, got out of hand.

RF: As I watched the video anthology and saw my life flash before me, I wondered what it must be like to be you, watching all of that?

RS: It was really eye opening. George, Paul, and I did watch every damn frame of it. There's so much stuff that we hadn't really forgotten, but it wasn't something we had just thought about, so it was, "You said that," and "Oh yeah, and you did that. Remember this? Remember that?"

RF: Is it almost like watching a separate person?

RS: Not really.

RF: While you're watching it you can actually feel...?

RS: Oh yeah, I'm there. I never felt like it was someone else. For me, what I got out of going through all that footage was hanging out with George and Paul. And we made some music together and it was still the best. "Free As A Bird" was the most incredible musical experience I had in the past ten years. John was there, because coming out of the speakers, he was there. The whole thing was a very moving experience for me. And like a lot of experiences, it was very moving, and it moved out.

An interview with

Jim Keltner 

From Modern Drummer Magazine:

JK: I never took gear to his (George Harrison's) place because years ago I had DW send him a real nice drumset with all the hardware and everything, and then Paiste sent a bunch of cymbals and stuff. So he pretty much had everything I—or anybody—would need. So when I would go to his studio at Friar Park later on, I would hardly ever take anything with me, maybe just a certain cymbal and a snare…little things. Now, George had this tremendous living room, which was like three stories high, with a balcony overlooking it. My bedroom was on the third floor—"the loft," they used to call it. It was a beautiful place with a kitchen and den and everything. I used to come down in the morning and stand on this part of the balcony that extends out over the room a little bit. A few times over the years I’d snap my fingers to hear the sound, and I’d say to George, "It would be great to have the drums here," and he’d just laugh, because he had a major studio built in another part of the house; why would he want to put drums there? But when I arrived for this recording, I walked in and the drums were set up right in that space. I was so knocked out. He did that for me. I guess he asked the engineer John Etchells whether the sound would be controllable. So he went out and tested a few things and said, "It would be great." I remember they had a whole bunch of 87’s [mic’s] out over the room to get the room sound. And I ended up using George’s drumset. I didn’t even use any of my snares.

MD: How about cymbals?

JK: I might have used one of my cymbals. The hi-hats were a pair of Arbiters that said "602" on them. So they were early Paistes before they put their company name on their cymbals. They were given to Ringo, and he gave them to George. Ringo always played a beautiful Paiste 602 crash-ride, and his hi-hats are 14" Zildjians that are so old you can barely see any logo. He preferred those, so he left the Arbiter Paiste hats with George. George had them in his studio for years. I used those hi-hats on everything I ever played with George—Cloud Nine…everything.

MD: The Traveling Wilburys albums too?
Jim: No, both Wilburys recordings were done in California, so it was all my gear.
Anyway, on the last day of the sessions for Brainwashed, as I was packing up, I was putting the cymbals back in the box like I’d done for so many years, and I said, "George I’m going to take these hi-hats with me." He said, "Why are you taking me hats?" And I said, "I’ve been coming here for years, and nobody else ever uses them but me. Year after year, I come here to record, I go to the box they’re in, and there they are in the same position I put them in the last time. [laughs] Other people who have recorded here, Ray Cooper or Jim Capaldi, they come by and play, and they never use them. They use the new batch that I had sent, or something else. So it’s a shame to just leave them here un-played. They’re still yours, though, so I’ll bring them back." And he said, "Okay." But I never got a chance to give them back to him. So I’ll probably give them back to Dhani.