What does Ringo Starr call “the art of a drummer”?

When his son Zak was ten years old, Ringo Starr decided to give him an introductory lesson on playing the drums. He didn’t want to put any pressure on his kid to follow in the footsteps of the man who kept the beat for The Beatles, but he figured he might have some wisdom to instil.

As it turned out, Zak Starkey was indeed destined for a long career as a rock drummer, but his famous father’s educational lectures on the subject didn’t last long.

“I went to give [Zak] a second lesson,” Ringo told the Associated Press in 1995, “And he said, ‘I can do that’. I said, ‘OK, you’re on your own now’. He is doing great.” Starr knew that great drummers aren’t necessarily made by following instructions or practising their technique for hours on end.

“I learned by playing with other musicians,” he noted, “I’ve never been able to sit in a room on my own and play”.

More than 60 years after Starr joined the Beatles, there are still—remarkably enough—ongoing debates about his talent and whether he truly elevated the greatest band of all time or kept them in check. For a long while, he was easily eclipsed in the “greatest rock drummer” conversations by the more flamboyant bashers of this era, the Keith Moons and John Bonhams, followed by the technical wizards of the next, such as Neil Peart, Stuart Copeland, Jeff Porcaro, and more.

Over time, though, the Ringo apologists have started to win over a growing legion of believers, many of whom now claim that Starr wasn’t just a great drummer, but a genius-level player and an absolutely vital part of what made The Beatles special.

Ringo, ever the affable and humble gent, has rarely defended his own position in the percussionists’ pantheon. When he discusses the subject, it’s usually when he’s asked about his other creative pursuits as a singer, guitarist, actor, and painter. None of these interests, he constantly says, has ever matched his first love.

“I love the drums,” Starr told Goldmine in 2023, noting that he honed in on the instrument at the age of 13. “That’s all I ever wanted to play… It’s always been about playing the drums, that’s what I do”.

Like a person learning a new language through total immersion, Ringo developed his instincts by playing constantly in his Liverpool school days, a left-hander on a right-handed kit, learning when to be the metronome and when to occupy a gap.

“The fill is the art of the drummer,” he told Goldmine, “That happens in the moment. That’s always been the way with me. I can’t think about it. I don’t play drum parts. I have no idea how it’s gonna turn out. I don’t say, ‘Oh, 16 bars in, I’ll do that’. I have no idea at all what I’m going to do. It just happens.”

Ringo is basically paraphrasing that old Buck Owens tune that he famously covered as a Beatle: “All I gotta do is act naturally”.

Amusingly, this sort of abstract approach, more from the jazz world than the pop world, has also applied to his ventures into other art forms.

“I’m not good at figurative painting,” Starr admitted in 1995, noting that he uses brushes more often when drumming than painting, preferring his paint straight out of the tube. “If I paint, you it’ll never look like you,” he said. Still, like a good drum fill, he delights in the process of seeing what develops on the canvas: “It’s pretty exciting”. Guess you just have to have fun with it.