Ringo Starr was the best rock / pop drummer of the sixties.

No I'm not kidding. Bring it.

It's hard to find a musician who has more of a bad rap than Ringo Starr. Most of the criticism of his skill is centered around his "lack of chops" as compared to his flashier contemporaries, chiefly, Keith Moon, Ginger Baker, and Mitch Mitchell. I will admit that he is not nearly as flashy, but the man was the most innovative, creative, and influential of his time, and easily the most predictive of the future of drumming.

The things Ringo was doing on Help and Rubber Soul were decades ahead of their time. Decades. Unfortunately for Ringo, but fortunately for the rest of us, his innovations are now so commonplace that we suffer from a classic case of Seinfeld is Unfunny. Things as unremarkable to us as the rhythmic syncopation of "Ticket to Ride" or the short sixteenth note high hat runs as part of the main beat used repeatedly in Rubber Soul had simply not been done before in pop music. Listening again to Rubber Soul, Ringo could have been playing for any modern indie rock group today. From Sgt. Pepper's, his only bass drum fills and sliding between 6/8 and 4/4 were equally ahead of their time. Hell, Ringo is one of the earliest users of matched grip, and definitively the popularizer of the style. Yes, we even owe the way drummers hold their sticks to Ringo. Every single drummer in pop / rock today is using techniques that Ringo pioneered.

Compare this with Keith Moon, Mitch Mitchell, and Ginger Baker - their playing has already been dated. No one is all over the kit the way Moon and Mitchell were anymore - drummers today prize the tight control of Ringo Starr. Ginger Baker's excessively tom heavy sound is found only in varying subgenres of rock, relegated to niche audiences. Yes, their influence is still felt - Moon's penchant for accenting the four, Ginger Baker's descending tom fills, and Mitchell's loose time and hard driving feel have been incredibly influential - none of them have made the impact Ringo did on the way even basic beats are kept, because it was Ringo's beats that really took pop beats from generic snare on two and four to a fully voiced instrument.

As for his supposed lack of skill, Paul Mc Cartney has been quoted saying that they NEVER had to do a second take on account of Ringo. That kind of consistency is one of the hardest things to master on drums, and speaks volumes to his a ability. A drummers most important job is to play to the song, and Ringo did that better than anyone else in his day. His drumming on every song in the Beatles catalog post Help! is completely distinct, yet still distinctively Ringo. It's an achievement perhaps only Mitch Mitchell of his peers could match - and even he only did it for three albums, not like eight.

edited 31st Jul '12 2:07:52 PM by Cthulboohoo

That's because he played with the Beatles! If he wasn't with the Beatles, than he wouldn't be so copied.

Seriously Kieth Moon was simply born to play drums. He didn't practice - he had to re-learn the drums for 2 weeks before recording. He didn't play the back beat, he played the beat and everyone followed him.

Ringo could have been playing for any modern indie rock group today.

Modern indie rock bands are mostly lame regurgitation. Most influential /=/ best. No one sounds like Kieth Moon anymore because no one can.

Here you''ll find plenty of detail that Ringo Starr put in at twice the speed.

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

If you want something more technical, than he's another Moon masterpiece. (couldn't find isolated track)

Another thing: maybe in pop music, yes, but pop music isn't known for performance.

edited 31st Jul '12 2:06:11 PM by Erock

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

Keith Moon and Ringo Starr both had very different styles of drumming, and I don't think you can compare them.

I'll give you Sturgeon's Law there, but that can apply to any genre of music

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Also, we need a page for Keith Moon.

edited 31st Jul '12 2:10:30 PM by 0dd1

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He started the comparison when he said rock / pop.

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

Really, are we really going to resort to "He started it!" now? I'm talking in general.

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I'm merely replying to his post. He brought superior drummers into this.

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

I'm just saying, the ability to be perfectly consistent and the ability to go hog wild on a drumset are two different, incomparable concepts if you ask me.

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Except everyone can sound like Keith Moon today. Seriously. Everybody. I went through a Keith Moon phase. All my other drummer friends went through a Keith Moon phase. His stuff is not nearly as technically challenging as you think it is. His sloppy, all over the kit sound was relegated to the sixties and out of style by the mid seventies. The reason you don't hear more drummers playing like him is not because they can't. It's because no bands are making music where that style of playing is relevant.

Ringo's tight creativity beats are still the model for any rock drummer, hell even every funk, R&B, and hip hop drummer borrows from him every measure they play. He pushed the music forward far more than Moon's limited influence. To me, that does make him a better drummer, because he literally reinvented the instrument's role in popular music.

Speed and flashy fills are merely an exercise in muscle memory. With enough time, a child could do that. It's a musician's creativity that really impresses me; hitting one note in a spot that you'd never expect but just perfectly compliments the song is far more challenging than a big tom fill.

edited 31st Jul '12 2:38:17 PM by Cthulboohoo

Except everyone can sound like Keith Moon today

No, they can't. He plays a lot of fuckin' notes, and you don't hear all of them if you don't listen for them. If you practice drums, you can't sound like Moon. And it often only sounds sloppy - between enjambment and simply defying percussion tropes, his playing wasn't just slop.

Speed and flashy fills are merely an exercise in muscle memory. With enough time, a child could do that. It's a musician's creativity that really impresses me; hitting one note in a spot that you'd never expect but just perfectly compliments the song is far more challenging than a big tom fill

But Ringo's playing is just muscle memory too! And Kieth Moon played plenty of unexpected notes - it's just he'd rather throw a fill or off-beat section to punctuate what the guitar, singer, or bass was doing. All that stuff you say Ringo Starr does Kieth Moon did in a rock setting.

Listen to I Can't Explain (1964) - at the first chorus, he plays with the vocals - drummers aren't supposed to do that. He also used fills to compliment what Townshend doing - he'd throw a fill in and end it right when vocals start, or when Pete hit another power chord section. He does it all in that song.

Or listen to one of the instrumental tracks on Quadrophenia - here Moon plays almost like a whole percussion section.

Now, if you're a pop fan, than I totally see your argument (I don't know pop very well). But once you wade into rock territory, Ringo's drumming loses out.

Can we agree to disagree?

edited 31st Jul '12 2:44:28 PM by Erock

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

Nah, Keith's playing isn't half as difficult as you're making it out to be. And yes, I hear the notes, and I know how to listen for them. Sixteenth notes all over the kit are cool and flashy, but they're not hard. If you want to make an argument from a pure chops perspective, Mitch Mitchell and Ginger Baker both wipe the floor with Keith. Mitch especially.

edited 31st Jul '12 2:52:50 PM by Cthulboohoo

Did you listen to the first video I posted? He isn't playing sixteenth notes - he's playing something crazy.

And I've heard plenty of both those drummers, and neither quite compare. I really like them, yeah, but they both are clearly inspired by Moon.

The problem for making Moon's case is that he never did drum solos, so you can't show a video like you can of Neil Peart going off for 2 minutes.

But I really want to not continue this argument, so you can have the last point. My problem is the way you did the thread - if you had said "here's why I think Ringo is the best" than it would have been better. But any reply that doesn't agree with you starts an argument.

edited 31st Jul '12 3:01:54 PM by Erock

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

Nothing in "Young Man Blues" is particularly crazy - it's mostly just crushed sextuplets - and it sounds incredibly dated. It's sloppy as all hell. His timing in his fills is all over the place and he relies on sustained volume from riding on his crash to cover up the holes between his notes.

You could pick MUCH better examples of Keith Moon's playing to use if you want to showcase his abilities. He didn't really mature as a musician till Tommy in '69, by which point, Ringo was already done recording.

And the way drummers play behind other musicians tells you far more about their abilities than any solo ever could.

It's a little silly to look for chops in rock musicians outside of prog rock anyways; if you want chops you should just be listening to jazz.

edited 31st Jul '12 3:58:49 PM by cthulboohoo

John Lennon was once asked if Ringo was the best drummer in the world.

Lennon replied that he wasn't even the best drummer in the band.

X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.

He's also praised Ringo greatly, though.

Really, if you're going by John Lennon's opinions of things, you're not going to get consistency.

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John Lennon had some ego issues when it came to his bandmates. He also said that Paul Mc Cartney hadn't "done anything since Yesterday." In the SEVENTIES - after songs like, oh you know, Hey Jude, Penny Lane, Eleanor Rigby, two thirds of Abbey Road, almost a dozen number one hits, and half the Beatles catalog. Which means you should take anything he says with a grain of salt. Or six.

It's pretty telling that when Ringo left the band briefly during the recording of the White Album, John was begging him to come back. The two songs Paul recorded drums on during that period, as the next best drummer in the band, were solid, but not exactly remarkable.

John is an - unreliable - first hand source. When the decision was made to hire Ringo Starr, John, Paul, and George all said they considered him the best drummer in Liverpool. After the break up, John Lennon still chose Ringo to play drums on his first solo album - he could have worked with any other drummer in the world.

edited 1st Aug '12 6:23:01 AM by Cthulboohoo

Here's a quote from Steve Smith - drummer of Journey, today regarded as one of the foremost rock, fusion, and jazz drummers and educators in the world, five time Modern Drummer #1 All Around Drummer - that basically states the main point I'm trying to make:

"Before Ringo, drum stars were measured by their soloing ability and virtuosity. Ringo's popularity brought forth a new paradigm in how the public saw drummers. We started to see the drummer as an equal participant in the compositional aspect. One of Ringo's great qualities was that he composed unique, stylistic drum parts for the Beatles' songs. His parts are so signature to the songs that you can listen to a Ringo drum part without the rest of the music and still identify the song."

It was Ringo who created the very idea of the modern rock drummer as a musician. Distinctive beats custom tailored to the song, yeah we owe that to Ringo. Sure, Moon and Baker had huge influence in how people fill and solo, but 99% of a drummers job is the beat, and Ringo is the reason that our beats are more interesting than bass snare bass snare bass snare ad infinitum.

edited 1st Aug '12 6:42:23 AM by Cthulboohoo

Ginger Baker is a jazz drummer, not a rock drummer, and he'd be the first to tell you as much...

Somehow you know that the time is right.

Ginger Baker is a crappy jazz drummer by any standard, so he should stick to claiming to be a rock drummer, where he has some credibility. If you're going to credit any of those drummers with being a jazz drummer, it's Mitch Mitchell, who used many jazz inspired licks and rhythms, though not a jazz drummer himself.

Ginger Baker did have a habit of challenging well known jazz drummers to drum battles, losing spectacularly, and then throwing a tantrum whilst claiming he won. I will give you that. His bout with Elvin Jones was particularly hilarious, apparently.

edited 1st Aug '12 5:41:03 PM by cthulboohoo

I'd just like to point out: I'm a drummer, and I take about as much inspiration from Keith Moon and Ringo Starr. Ringo did revolutionise pop drumming, and set the stage for rock drummers forever. However, Moon was pretty goddamned awesome- it isn't his technical proficiency, because he's not really a very technical drummer, but rather his energy and passion.

Additionally, I don't care who you are, you're better off shoving your drumsticks up your ass than trying to take a Jazz drummer.

Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-

I want to reiterate that I do not think Keith Moon was bad. He was one of my main influences in my early drumming development.

And yes, challenging the jazz cats never ends well. Especially Elvin Jones, John Coltrane's drummer. He was probably the most proficient drummer in the world at that point.

Nah, I'm sorry, Keith Moon was a better drummer "of the sixties" (and the seventies).

edited 3rd Aug '12 8:59:30 AM by SeanMurrayI

Helen Wiggin was the greatest drummer ever.

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Moon is an interesting case to me. He was indisputably a great drummer, but I think most of his influence lies in crafting the IMAGE of THE rock drummer - which is ironic, because rock music went the opposite way of his style - it trended towards more control, more beat, less fill, more repetition, less improvisatory. In the '60s, the height of his influence, he lacked the versatility, control, and musicality to be truly considered a great musician. In the '70s he really became a great rock drummer, gaining that technique and subtlety he needed.

However, the seventies also probably saw the greatest increase in musicianship technique in pop music ever. He was eclipsed by John Bonham, Stuart Copeland, Steve Gadd, Bill Ward, Bigfoot Brailey, Ian Paice, Terry Bozzio, Vinnie Colaiuta, Clyde Stubblefield, Billy Cobham, Bill Bruford, Bernard Purdie, David Garibaldi, Neal Peart, Lennie White, etc. in skill and about half those guys in influence and innovation.

But that image he created, of THE rock drummer, is tremendously appealing. The organic feel of his playing and his wild personality will always be highly regarded, and, because of that popularity, he will always finish in the top five or ten of every list of great drummers by regular folk and rock critics. Much like Jimmy Page will always place highly on a list of best guitarists, despite never being near the best or the most influential, but because he's the most popular. In a way though, that might make him one of the best artists - after all, an artist's job is to connect with people, and Moon undoubtedly did, more than almost all drummers.

The list of drummers who are technically better than him would be pages long. The list of drummers who were more innovative would certainly be twenty or thirty long. The list of drummers who were more influential would be at least ten.

But the list of drummers who are more beloved? He's in the top three. Most certainly. His only competitors? Ringo and Bonham. And I think in a reader or more casual critic poll, Moon would win pretty handily.

I would never ever want to play like him; unless I was working a Who cover band, '60s style jazz rock fusion band, or throwback garage / punk band, I would never work again. No one would have a use for me. But, like everyone else, I love the organic feel of his drumming, his wild man persona, and playing his stuff is simply a blast.

edited 3rd Aug '12 1:44:42 PM by Cthulboohoo

You really just like trying to get into arguments, don't you?

I don't know very much about the technicalities of drumming. Ringo had good enough breaks on the odd occasion he was given them, which makes him a decent enough drummer in my opinion. Best drummer of a given era? How would you even quantify that?

sometimes I feel like I know you from somewhere any information please call 555....