Well, that's an old urban myth. Ringo is a fine drummer and influenced two generations of drummers--ask any top drummer and he'll tell you. Better yet, listen to the remastered recordings where they have brought the bass and drums higher in the mix where you can really hear them. Ringo is on everyone's top-10 drummers of the rock era list. Ringo's "feel" for the beat serves as a standard for record producers and drummers alike. He's a major reason that the Beatles songs felt so damn good.
Drummer on Ringo . . .
"Ringo doesn't dazzle with flashy technique and pyrotechnics," says The Cars' lead guitarist, Elliot Easton. "What he does is so much more elusive and difficult: He plays songs on the drums. Anybody who has sat down behind a drum kit in the last 45 years owes him."
Jim Keltner, rock's top session drummer said, "When you think of Ringo, it's impossible to not think of the Beatles and you remember those perfect songs with the perfect drum parts. When you hear the live BBC tapes, recorded with no more than two or three mic's, and the way he's laying it down, you know Ringo is one of the greatest rock drummers of all time. If you were a professional drummer, no matter how good you were . . . after Ringo you had to be able to sound like Ringo."
"Before Ringo, drum stars were measured by their soloing ability and virtuosity," says Steve Smith. "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 very unique and 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.
"Ringo Starr’s drumming is infallible, untouchable, and he is quite simply the greatest drummer in the history of rock n roll music." -- Black Crowes drummer Steve Gorman.
"Ringo's ability to play odd time signatures helped to push popular songwriting into uncharted areas. Two examples are "All you Need is Love" in 7/4 time, and "Here Comes the Sun" with repeating 11/8, 4/4, and 7/8 passages in the chorus." --
"Ringo was also one of the first drummers I saw to bail on the traditional grip. For years drummers had to play everything traditional grip. If they were doubling in a symphony orchestra, they had to play timpani, xylophone, and marimba with matched grip, so why did there have to be a whole different grip for drumset, just because years ago the military guys had their snare drum at an angle and their left elbow was up in the air? Ringo brought the matched grip into the mainstream. -- Gregg Bissionette
Nirvana and Foo fighters drummer Dave Growl says, "Ringo is the original rock and roll drummer" citing Ringo's distinctive drumming style as that "thing that only Ringo can do" like the "Ringo roll," for example.
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."
Andy Sturmer, drummer for Jellyfish -- "Ringo is a great guy and really amazing drummer. He has that feel that's between a shuffle and straight eights -- Ringo territory that nobody else can do."
