Today is Ringo Starr’s birthday. I wonder if a certain gentleman nursing a pint in a Liverpool pub is at this moment slowly pushing hatpins into a Ringo doll. That gentleman would be Pete Best, replaced by Ringo just before the Beatles’ first recording session at Abbey Road Studios. Lots of reasons have been suggested for Best’s ouster: Their producer thought they needed an experienced session drummer. Best was a quiet guy who never really fit in. Other band members were jealous of the attention he got from the young ladies at gigs. Maybe all of the above. Best might have gotten a raw deal, but that’s show biz. And things worked out fine for the band; Ringo might be the most underappreciated drummer in rock—never flashy, but an absolute metronome. And in a band with two alpha males like Lennon and McCartney, he was the wise fool who’d crack a joke when things got tense. Although try as he might, he could never resolve the tension between John and Paul when Yoko came on the scene. But that’s a story for another day…
Posted on: Sun, 07 Jul 2013 15:19:24 +0000
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