Why Ringo Starr Refused to Play Drum Solos

On the twenty-third of July Nineteen Sixty-Nine, The Beatles were working at Abbey Road on the climactic sequence that would eventually become The End.

Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison would each trade short guitar leads. But Paul wanted Ringo Starr to have his own moment in the spotlight as well.

There was a problem. Ringo hated drum solos.

Despite playing in the biggest band in the world during an era when increasingly elaborate drum solos had become part of rock music, Ringo had spent his career avoiding them. When asked to play one for The End, his response was characteristically direct: he didn’t want to do it.

Getting those few seconds onto Abbey Road would take some persuasion.

A Different Kind of Drummer

Ringo’s approach to drumming had developed years before Beatlemania.

Growing up in Liverpool, Richard Starkey suffered serious childhood illnesses that resulted in lengthy periods in hospital. He eventually took up drums and established himself on the Liverpool music scene, becoming the drummer for Rory Storm and the Hurricanes.

Even then, Ringo wasn’t interested in dominating the stage from behind his kit. His job, as he saw it, was to support the musicians around him and keep everything together.

That reliability eventually helped bring him to the attention of The Beatles.

In Nineteen Sixty-Two, the group decided to replace Pete Best as they prepared for their first EMI recordings. Ringo took over the drum stool and quickly became an essential part of the band’s developing sound.

Ringo’s restrained approach to drumming became an essential part of The Beatles’ sound.

When Rock Drumming Got Bigger

By the late Sixties, the role of the rock drummer was changing.

Ginger Baker, Keith Moon and John Bonham helped bring drumming to the front of the stage. Large kits, powerful playing and extended solos became increasingly common.

Ringo went in the opposite direction.

He generally retained a relatively simple four-piece kit and concentrated on feel, timing and memorable fills. Being naturally left-handed while playing a right-handed drum kit also contributed to some of the unusual patterns that became part of his recognisable style.

His philosophy remained straightforward: the drums were there to serve the song.

But Ringo’s understated playing didn’t mean he lacked confidence. What did trouble him was the increasingly strained relationship between The Beatles themselves.

The Beatle Who Walked Away First

During the recording of the White Album in August Nineteen Sixty-Eight, Ringo became convinced that he wasn’t playing well enough.

The sessions had become difficult, with the four Beatles increasingly working separately. Ringo began to feel like an outsider and eventually decided to leave.

He escaped with his family to Sardinia while the remaining Beatles continued recording. Paul played drums on Back in the U.S.S.R. and Dear Prudence during his absence.

The other three wanted Ringo back.

When he eventually returned to Abbey Road, he discovered that his drum kit had been decorated with flowers as a welcome home.

The episode reassured him about his place in the band. Less than a year later, however, his bandmates would ask him to do something he had always resisted.

Thirteen Bars on Abbey Road

Paul McCartney and producer George Martin eventually persuaded Ringo to attempt the drum feature for The End.

It wasn’t designed as an enormous improvised showcase. Instead, Ringo’s contribution was carefully structured to fit the composition.

The result lasted only around fifteen seconds.

Ringo’s thirteen-bar passage leads directly into the famous sequence in which McCartney, Harrison and Lennon trade guitar solos. Rather than overwhelming the song, his drumming does exactly what Ringo had always believed it should do: it serves the arrangement.

Ringo’s brief performance on The End became his only conventional drum solo recorded with The Beatles.

Serving the Song

After The Beatles separated, Ringo maintained much the same philosophy.

When he launched his All-Starr Band in Nineteen Eighty-Nine, he surrounded himself with accomplished musicians and even shared the stage with other drummers, including Levon Helm and Jim Keltner.

It was an arrangement perfectly suited to a musician who had never been interested in proving himself through extended displays of technique.

Ringo Starr spent decades surrounded by some of rock’s most extravagant musicians, yet his drumming remained remarkably economical.

That is what makes his brief appearance in The End so memorable.

The only conventional drum solo Ringo recorded with The Beatles lasts just thirteen bars — and even that required his bandmates to talk him into doing it.