Ringo Starr celebrated his 85th birthday last week and gave an interview to The Sessions Panel in which he recalled the proudest moment of his illustrious career with The Beatles.
It came, he says, during the recording of their debut album, Please Please Me. "We made a record,” he said. “And I went through hell personally, because George Martin had this Andy White session drummer. Anyway, he didn't know they changed drummers, and I was coming. I made him apologise every day."
The incident Ringo is referring to was the Love Me Do session. Pete Best had been evicted from behind the kit just weeks previously and Martin, unsure at that stage about Ringo’s ability, employed a session drummer, White, to play on the band’s debut single. Even more than six decades later, he clearly still feels the slight.
Martin, though, apologised, and was from then on always effusive about Ringo’s abilities. "Yeah, and I've got a lot of footage of George. He had that great line, he said, 'You know, and the Beatles did this,' and somebody said to him, 'Did you have a click track?' He said, 'Yes, we did. Ringo, his name was.'"
To this day, Ringo is very much proud of this. Indeed, later in the interview he reflects that: "God gave me just great time. Jeff Lynne - they did a documentary on him. Jeff would call me over, 'Could you play on this track?' because we live close, and I'd go over, and he'd say, 'Oh, just let me get the click.' I said, 'Jeff, I am the damn click."
He revealed he doesn’t know how he developed that distinctive Ringo ‘feel’. “It's been asked a million times. I don't know how I got to [play like] that. It just happened. And a lot of the way I play [it] just happens. I'll keep the time and play rock or shuffle or whatever, and then I'll come in wherever I come in, because you feel it from your heart.”
