When exactly did Ringo Starr become a plodder on drums ?

I always dislike when Ringo has someone else drumming with him and he's done plenty of that. To me that situation with Ringo almost always forces the thing to leaden out. You can't really swing too much because you have to be in sync with the other guy and not step on each others toes.

 

Great.That's the fun and the whole point of this thread. I'd like to hear some great solo era Ringo drumming, but I honestly couldn't think of much off the top of my head, so I'm depending on the top of yours, and other heads here.

Maybe Ringo isn't a plodder the last 40 odd years or so after all.

 

Yep, that's the one that came to my mind.

 

Ringo seemed to lose confidence in his drumming shortly after the Beatles broke up. Why else would he always use a second drummer on his solo albums? I mean, Jim Keltner was technically a better drummer but I don't think he could have done what Ringo did on Strawberry Fields or Rain. Sometimes great rock & roll is more about feel than great musicianship. Ringo had that in spades and he either lost it or didn't care anymore or maybe it was all the booze, drugs and partying.

Anyway, it's a shame that Ringo never put his heart into his drumming after the Beatles. All those wonderful fills, that unique left handed style or whatever, lost to the ages.

 

He was still the Ringo of old on the Stephen Stills tracks he played on: "To A Flame", "We Are Not Helpless", and "As I Come Of Age". However, I believe those tracks were all laid down in early 1970.

Just the other day, I was wondering what happened to the wonderful sounding drums (the tom toms) and playing from Abbey Road. It's almost like he got those new drum heads and never used them again. I'm assuming they are on other albums, but not given as much attention in the mix.

 

Elizabeth Reigns, great lyrics to go with your drums, and a very "Beatles" sounding track:

 

Here is a fun "making of" feature that came with the deluxe edition, that shows some of the recording sessions going on, and you can hear some isolated drumming too. It picks up about 5 minutes in. I had forgotten the part at the end of Instant Amnesia where he holds up his bleeding hands around the 11 minute mark, a la "I've got blisters on my fingers."

 

Sometimes maybe it's a perception thing. If this track was on Magical Mystery Tour I'd probably love it and consider it a classic. All these years later though, it sounds so Beatles pastiche that it kind of goes in one ear and out the other. Taken one track at a time I generally like most of the Ringo records I have I guess. I think my problem with Ringo's solo albums in general is..I start to drift off after one or two Ringo vocals in a row. One Ringo vocal on a Beatles album...great. Variety. Twelve or thirteen Ringo vocals in a row, not so great IMO. Maybe I should buy his latest albums but only play one track per day.

 

This says it all for me. Sgt. Pepper-ish slow groove, playing over the bar at the end, the fills, all classic Ringo.


Dan

 

Yep, this one is pretty classic but he was SUPPOSED to channel Beatle Ringo for this track.

 

Hah? So you're unsatisfied because he played in a way he's known to play? That he ripped himself off? That's called having a style. The thread asked for an old Ringo-style track produced after the Beatles, and this one fits the bill perfectly. Why shouldn't it have been on a Beatles-style track? OK, let's say for the sake of argument that both Jeff Lynne and George sat him down and asked him to play a musical caricature of himself. He still did it, although my understanding is that what he played on the track was NOT the result of producing...that's because it's Ringo and he played what he felt.
I guess I'm just confused.

Dan

 

Calm down man. Who are you arguing with ? Yikes, how did you divine all THAT from my one sentence ? Did you notice I said it was classic ? My thread opener was that generally I don't hear much fab drumming from Ringo since the early Seventies so please provide some if you have examples, nothing more, nothing less.

Playing like Beatle Ringo on a Beatles homage IS different to me than most of things I have heard Ringo playing on post Beatles .

 

I just love mentioning.......even more than Plastic Ono Band, some of Ringo's best ever drumming is on Yoko's Plastic Ono Band album. I know a lot of you won't go 1,000 miles near it, but a lot of the songs are structured more as free-form jam sessions, and Ringo cuts loose with some very aggressive drumming....especially the 1st song "Why?."

 

I'm a little late in mentioning this specific point and it's off my topic but...considering that Paul wanted "Helter Skelter" to be super heavy, Ringo's snare drum sound on the track annoys me. Take the tea towel off the snare for cryin' out loud, it sounds so wimpy. Tippy tap, tippy tap.

 

He started laying off the cymbals a little around the Help era. The arrangements kind of demanded it. Imagine later-Beatles recordings with all that cymbal wash from the early days. It would have been crap.

 

So is THAT the real reason why Pete got sacked??

 

when did I say that? RE-READ MY POST.

also:
I never suggested that Pete Best must go. All I said was that for the purposes of the Beatles' first record I would rather use a session man. I never thought that Brian Epstein would let him go. He seemed to be the most saleable commodity as far as looks went. It was a surprise when I learned that they had dropped Pete. The drums were important to me for a record, but they didn't matter much otherwise. Fans don't pay particular attention to the quality of the drumming.
George Martin

 

Love Me Do.

 

One could argue that the real problem there is simply that "All Those Years Ago" isn't a very good song. All the brilliant musicianship in the world isn't going to help if your source material is a dud.

 

It's Ringo playing in his sixties style, but I always thought the production overwhelmed the "Ringo-ness" of the playing. I like Jeff Lynne's production on pretty much everything he does, but in this era, particularly as it pertains to drums, the personality of the drummer was bound to get submerged under Jeff's influence.

Notice Ringo's playing on Paul's "Beautiful Night" though. Jeff had a lighter touch and Ringo shines. That song sounds more like Beatles-era Ringo than any I can think of. Doesn't hurt that he's playing on a Paul song, with orchestration by George Martin of course. Ringo is playing a part similar to his "Hey Jude" part (it's almost like Paul gave Ringo the directive to play it that way). Even when the song is uptempo part isn't plodding, in the way the uptemp Broadstreet tracks are. Also of note, Ringo's playing on "Six O'Clock" is almost the same right down to the the slow build up, the files fills. And it sounds like Ringo got out his Abbey Road skins. Maybe Paul really knows how to get a good sound from Ringo.

It's maybe worth comparing Ringo's part to Liberty Devito's part on the '86 version. Liberty plays a more varied part, with more emphasis on dynamics, mixing rim shots, eighth-notes on the hi-hat during the chorus (the 97 version achieves this effect with a tambourine playing double time, while a Ringo continues to play quarter notes), and some bombastic fills in places to accentuate certain parts of the song (Ringo ignores these "song cues" entirely and plays through them).

I was checking out Ringo's playing on Broadstreet tracks. "Wanderlust", for example mostly sounds like the same drummer from the sixties (not saying whether that's good or bad), in terms of the simplicity and his choices for what to accent and the types of fills he does, but again what is a little distracting is the production. It sounds "modern", so I think some of what we consider to be the "Ringo style" is due to the production and mixing in the sixties.

"Ballroom Dancing" doesn't sound like Ringo, but the credits say it's him. "So Bad" is Ringo all the way, playing a part he could have played 16 years earlier. It's maybe a little more streamlined, but the fills (and lack of fills) are certainly the Ringo we're used to from the sixties. The studio version from Pipes Of Peace is drier and sounds more like POB-style Ringo (minus all of the music of course - use your imagination).

I get the sense that the plodding happens more on his uptempo solo tracks. I've been thinking that Jim Keltner has turned into this type of drummer as well over the years.

I think this is too complicated to have a simple answer to. I switched over to some John solo tracks, and Ringo plays a little differently on those than he does on the Paul and George solo tracks, and different still than when he plays on his solo compositions. Ringo plays a cool part on "I'm The Greatest", but a lot of that is written into the song. That's a song John seemed to have more fully written and arranged than some of his others in which musicians had more room to add their parts. Is Ringo even playing on "Cookin'"? It doesn't sound particularly like him. I never heard Ringo play fills like those ones. Maybe he had two drummers on that one. "Private Property" isn't plodding. The playing isn't dissimilar from "Birthday".

I'd like to know why Ringo never played a part as cool as the one he played on "Cry Baby Cry" again. What a strange part.

 

holy crow.

I had absolutely no idea Ringo was on Stills' first record, much less playing on 'to a flame,' which blew me away when I first heard it--that's a serious track. and it totally sounds like him, doing the sort of thing he did on 'long long long' with the massive hits, playing his kit like a set of timpani.

thanks for that bit of info. also +100 to what LandHorses' said about Ringo's ripping, brilliant work on Yoko's plastic ono band.

Ringo's a great drummer. I can't say it enough. all the negative words I've heard spent on his playing come down to the equivalent of saying Page 'wasn't even the best guitarist in led zeppelin' because the band also included a brilliant multinstrumentalist and Page is no, y'know, Yngwie Malmsteen.

 

I can't imagine anyone ever saying anything bad about Sir Paul period. The guy is a class-act human being.

 

probably he lost his best when he hit the bottle !!

 

This is not true !!