On 11 September 1962, the Beatles made their second visit in a week to EMI’s recording studios at Abbey Road in north London, in order to complete their first single. With doubts about the ability of the group’s drummer, the producer, George Martin, brought in Andy White, a leading session musician. White, who has died aged 85, replaced Ringo Starr on versions of both Love Me Do and its B-side, PS I Love You.
Ringo, who later recalled his dismay at seeing a “professional” in the studio, was reduced to playing the tambourine and maracas while standing alongside the drum kit. When the first pressing of the single was issued in October 1962, it consisted of an earlier take of the A-side featuring Ringo, with White on drums on the B-side. But later issues of Love Me Do substituted an Andy White version for Ringo’s.
White grew up in Glasgow, where his parents managed a bakery and dairy. He first played drums as a Scout and at 15 joined the Rutherglen pipe band. After leaving school he became an apprentice patternmaker in a local foundry. But music became his ruling passion and he took lessons with a Glasgow drum teacher who taught White to sight-read.
His first professional job came, after national service in 1952, with the resident band at a ballroom in Ayr. This led to a summer season at a holiday camp on the Isle of Wight, after which White moved permanently to London.
In 1957, he toured both the UK and the US with a band led by Vic Lewis, supporting Bill Haley and his Comets. He returned from America with a new set of Ludwig drums, a highly prized brand difficult to find in Britain. He avoided import duty by packing the kit in the battered cases of the old Ajax drums that he had taken to the US and left in New York.
Back in London, White gained a reputation as a reliable and versatile recording session player. Among his early recordings was the much-praised album Sound of Fury, recorded live by Billy Fury in 1960. He also played in the house bands of the television shows Boy Meets Girls and Drumbeat, later performing in the West End in the pit band for the Anthony Newley musical Stop the World – I Want to Get Off (1961).
White’s subsequent studio career included sessions with Lulu (Shout, 1964), Peter and Gordon (World Without Love, 1964), Tom Jones (It’s Not Unusual, 1965) and with Burt Bacharach for the soundtrack to What’s New, Pussycat? (1965). White had met Bacharach when both toured as part of the backing group for Marlene Dietrich, with whom he worked occasionally for a decade.
In the late 1970s, White returned to Glasgow to join the BBC Scottish Radio Orchestra. After the orchestra was disbanded in 1983, he emigrated to the US. He settled in New Jersey where he performed as a freelance drummer, even recording a version of PS I Love You with a local group, the Smithereens. His car sported a 5THBEATLE bumper sticker.
In the US, however, he mainly focused on his first love, the music of pipe and drum bands. In addition to performing, he taught the Scottish pipe band style to young American drummers. White also tutored the rock guitarist Steven van Zandt for his acting role as Silvio Dante in the television series The Sopranos.
White is survived by his second wife, Thea. His first marriage, to the singer Lyn Cornell, a former member of the singing trio the Vernons Girls, ended in divorce.
• Andrew McLuckie White, musician, born 27 July 1930; died 9 November 2015
