Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/01/31/what-makes-ringo-a-great-drumm.html
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Everybody up, time to BB dance off!
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I gained a deeper appreciation for Ringo as a drummer with The Beatles: Rock Band. When you play the drum parts, even with the abstraction of a lower difficulty level, you get a hands-on experience to Ringo’s work.
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Well, aside from his obvious talent, I appreciate Ringo for not being thoroughly desperate to get back into the spotlight, the way his other remaining bandmate seems to have been for the last few months.
O_o
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Anyone who trashes Ringo is a fool. “Rain” is my favorite example I think.
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Gotta say - I’m loving this!
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I honestly never noticed how much he used his toms in his drum parts. Great video, great drummers both.
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Sorry let me geek out a little more on “Rain.” It’s apparently Ringo’s fav drum work so don’t take my word for it. Rain sounds trippy and cool because they used a tape trick where you play the song fast, then slow down the TAPE which streeetches the sound. Not only is the drumming on that song incredible, Ringo had to play that thing fast! It’s so good. Here’s a dude doing a good re-creation of it at original speed.
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That was most enjoyable and informative. I’m no muso, and so I was surprised when watching a recent acoustics set by NWOBM behemoths, “Praying Mantis”, just how much their drummer was doing. He was one busy dude.
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Very cool.
What would make this really fascinating would be for her to play more standard drum styles over the backing tracks. I think that would really drive home the point of how unique Ringo’s contribution is.
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Dang, Ringo’s looking good - like a teenager in fact! I wonder what his beauty secrets are?
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He wasn’t even the best drummer in the Beatles.
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That would be Pete B…
Oh…
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Of course you can find arguments for Ringo being overrated as well. 
I don’t understand all the criticism regarding the Beatles technical skills or sometimes lack of complexity when their artistic and creative merits far outweigh any other measurement. This is art, not accounting!
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Why was Ringo a great drummer?
Because he was in The Beatles. Duh.
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I’m glad someone made this reference and linked to the debunking of the quote 
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I’m not convinced he was all that great. He couldn’t play the tom fill in Back is the USSR (a basic surf riff) so Paul had to do it for him.
Ringo has a good sense of balance and played very competently on most of his tracks and he influenced a lot of people. He’s just never been on my list of drummers to listen to. The Beatles on the other hand are definitely on the short list.
Very cool video.
I’m a massive Beatles fan, but I’ll admit that I never gave Ringo much credit until very recently. It’s not that I thought that he wasn’t adequate, it’s just that the others are all-world and were the song writers as well. My thought was always that Ringo would have been the easiest to replace.
But there was a great interview with Stewart Copeland (the Police drummer) on the Beatles channel and he spent a long time describing in detail what made Ringo so great and then they played examples about what he was talking about. Much of what he highlighted where ways that Ringo was understated and yet unconventional. I was especially struck by his analysis of A Day in the Life where it is just a series of slow fills that do one at the time would have ever considered playing. As Copeland described it, it was just breaking every rule of what a studio drummer would have ever been taught.
The other thing that I didn’t fully appreciate was that Ringo was considered the best drummer in Liverpool when they got him. So, he had proven himself independently on the local scene before the Beatles took him to the stratosphere.
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