[atari 2600]

Paul McCartney
"Paul has been recently quoted as saying that Ringo Starr is still his favorite drummer, much to the amazement of the drumming community and the world at large. McCartney's worked with Steve Gadd, Jeff Porcaro- he can have the pick of anyone, just about, but he still loves Ringo." --- Deborah Parisi, writing for Rhythm magazine(1990)

Ringo Starr
"F irst and foremost I am a drummer. After that, I'm other things. ...But I didn't play drums to make money. I played drums because I loved them. ...My soul is that of a drummer....It came to where I had to make a decision -- I was going to be a drummer. Everything else goes now. I play drums. It was a conscious moment in my life when I said the rest of things were getting in the way. I didn't do it to be come rich and famous, I did it because it was the love of my life." -- quoted in The Big Beat by Max Weinberg(1984)

Paul McCartney
"Paul has been recently quoted as saying that Ringo Starr is still his favorite drummer, much to the amazement of the drumming community and the world at large. McCartney's worked with Steve Gadd, Jeff Porcaro- he can have the pick of anyone, just about, but he still loves Ringo." --- Deborah Parisi, writing for Rhythm magazine(1990)

Ringo Starr
"F irst and foremost I am a drummer. After that, I'm other things. ...But I didn't play drums to make money. I played drums because I loved them. ...My soul is that of a drummer....It came to where I had to make a decision -- I was going to be a drummer. Everything else goes now. I play drums. It was a conscious moment in my life when I said the rest of things were getting in the way. I didn't do it to be come rich and famous, I did it because it was the love of my life." -- quoted in The Big Beat by Max Weinberg(1984)


John Lennon
"Ringo's a damn good drummer. He was always a good drummer. He's not technically good, but I think Ringo's drumming is underrated the same way Paul's base-playing is underrated. Paul and Ringo stand up anywhere with any of the rock musicians." -- from a Playboy magazine interview (1980)

John doesn't mean Ringo is not technically good compared to say, Ginger Baker, either. What he means is Ringo is not technical next to say, Gene Krupa.

Max Weinberg -- "D. J. Fontana had introduced me to the power of the big beat. Ringo convinced me just how powerful that rhythm could be. Ringo's beat was heard around the world and he drew the spotlight toward rock and roll drummer. From ;his matched grip style to his pioneering use of staggered tom tom fills, his influence in rock drumming was as important and wide spread as Gene Krupa's had been in jazz." (The Big Beat, 1984)

Phil Collins, drummer for Genesis -- "I think he's vastly underrated. The drum fills on A Day In The Life are very complex things. You could take a great drummer today and say, 'I want it like that.' They wouldn't know what to do." (interview for The Making of Sgt. Pepper, 1992)

D. J. Fontana -- "I was playing maracas or something behind him, just listening to him. I swear he never varied the tempo. He played that back beat and never got off it. Man, you couldn't have moved him with a crane. It was amazing. He played a hell of a back beat, Man, and that's where it's at." (interview for The Big Beat by Max Weinberg)


Mike Finkelstein -- "If you have ever been in a band where you had to recreate Beatle songs, you would have realized that Ringo Starr was no slouch. Those drum parts were very tricky and subtle. He did have a special ability to create interesting rhythmic structures within the music. This gave the Beatles a unique sound without loosing that distinctive drive in rock and roll. ... Ringo moved smoothly from verse to chorus without loosing the groove by subtly changing a texture in the rhythm. Ringo is an important drummer to study well." (Teach Yourself Rock Drumming, 1979)

Bob Cianci -- "He must have done something right. People today still look for people who play like Ringo. If you don't believe me, just check the musical ads. On top of all this, he certainly inspired countless millions of teenagers worldwide to learn drums. There's no doubt it, Ringo's a very important rock drummer. ... What Ringo does on the most basic of terms is make the music feel good. He refers to his playing as being fraught with silly fills due to his self-admitted lack of technique, but he says it proudly. ... Sometimes chops do not a real drummer make." (Great Rock Drummers of the 60s, 1989)


Kenny Arnoff -- "I consider him one of the greatest innovators of rock drumming and believe that he has been one of the greatest influences on rock drumming today... Ringo has influenced drummers more than they will ever realize or admit. Ringo laid down the fundamental rock beat that drummers are playing today and they probably don't even realize it. (Modern Drummer,Oct. 1987) . . Ringo always approached the song more like a songwriter than a drummer. He always served the music." (Modern Drummer, Dec. 1987)

Editor of Modern Drummer magazine, presenting the Editor's Achievement Award to Ringo -- "What is beyond question is Ringo's impact on an entire generation of drummers who first became drummers as a direct result of seeing and hearing him play in the early days of The Beatles. Literally hundreds of thousands of players -- including some of the greatest drummers playing today -- cite Ringo as their first motivating influence."

Peter Blake -- "Ringo is one of the most important drummers of the 20th century. While he hasn't got any technique to speak of, he realizes how important It is for a song to feel good. His feel is absolutely tremendous. He got some great sounds on the Beatles records. It wasn't all production and microphones, a lot of it was down to the way he tuned them. ... He has tremendous basic ability. Obviously there were people playing in a straight-forward manner before him, but he had a definite feel and he changed pop drumming around. He changed the sound from hat of the high-pitched jazz drummers. I think he's tremendous." (Speaking Words of Wisdom)

Mark Lewisohn -- "It is true that on only a handful of occasions during all of the several hundred session tapes and thousands of recording hours can Ringo be heard to have made a mistake or wavered in his beat. His work was remarkably consistent and excellent, from 1962 right through 1970." ( The Beatles Recording Sessions, 1988)
George Martin -- "Ringo has a tremendous feel for a song and he always helped us hit the right tempo the first time. He was rock solid. This made the recording of all the Beatle songs so much easier." (interviewed in 1988 for The Beatles Recording Sessions by Mark Lewisohn)

Martin Torgoff -- "If I could think of a single passage in which Ringo's quintessential style as a drummer is most identifiable, it could well be something as, say, the drumming behind George's guitar solo in Paul's "Let It Be" after the organ trails off. There, in simple 4-4 time, Ringo comes in with a trademark thump of his base drum, clear tattering snare, and his insistent smashing of the high hat, unvarying, unyielding, yet distinctively Ringo, and you can't help but smile not for its banality but because it is so perfectly adequate and because one can readily envision Ringo behind his kit as he plays, his beringed fingers clutching his sticks, swaying beatifically from side to side as he gets on with his work, blinking those astonishingly saturnine blue eyes." (The Compleat Beatles, 1985)

Don Was -- "Ringo's drums are one of the greatest things you can have on a record."

Lenny Kaye -- "He was always meant to be utilitarian, a drummer to provide feisty beat. He did this directly with wit imagination and the famous Ringo personality. And his Spartan Ludwig kit showed his ability to cut economically to the heart of the rhythm." (interview for The Compleat Beatles, 1985)