RINGO & PAUL :: Rainy Days & Mondays [reflectismo]

THIS IS NICE

RINGO & PAUL: A MINI COMPILATION

More often derided than truly appreciated Ringo as one of the world’s greatest drummers. Name another signature drummer?

I can name him as soon as I HEAR him!

BTW The apocryphal story that has one of the Beatles is being asked if Ringo is the world’s greatest drummer “He’s not even the greatest drummer in The Beatles!” is a pathetic example of a joke! It was said by the risible Jasper Carrott and shows an ignorance of a deceptively simple style/ 

It isn’t!

McCartney offers a further, more emotional reminiscence: “I probably bore him by telling him the moment when the three of us realised he was The Guy. In my recollection it’s at the Cavern and there’s me, John and George — which, right there, is pretty cool — standing at the front doing our thing, facing out on the mics. And then behind us there’s this new guy depping, who we knew we liked — we’d seen him in another band. But now he was playing with us. And it just felt so different. It felt so amazing, and it just locked in with what we were all about. And I have this very vivid recollection of kind of looking at John and him looking at me and looking at George and him looking at me, and the three of us are going, ‘What the fuck, this is fucking amazing!” As McCartney describes this, he wipes his eye. “And as you can see, it gets emotional. There was a moment.” 

Keith Smith, Assistant Engineer: All I can say about Ringo is that you just have to listen and watch him playing drums with Paul on bass, it’s pure synergy. I can’t think of any other way to describe it. He is a completely unique drummer and when they play together it’s as near to perfect and natural as I have ever witnessed. It is something that still to this day hasn’t changed.

McCartney digresses for a moment to describe the most recent example of getting-together-with-Ringo, nine days before this conversation, at the end of his show at Dodger Stadium: “Just the other night we finished our tour in Los Angeles and Ringo got up and we were doing 'Helter Skelter’ together, and when I wasn’t on the mic, in the solo breaks and stuff, I really made a point of turning round and watching this guy drum. And thinking, 'My God, you know, the memories across this ten-yard gap here,’ with him on the drums and me on the bass. The lifetime that’s going on here, and here he is! And I was just listening to him during that song. I was doing my performance but basically [he sings] When I get to the bottom I go back to the top — as I’m doing that bit, there’s normally just the guitars sort of playing, but Ringo did what’s on the record” — McCartney sings the drum part to demonstrate — “building. So I’m going, 'Oh yeah, great.’ So you know it’s a sort of magic.”

“It’s always a special experience to play with Paul,” says Ringo now. “I love Paul and I love his playing and, you know, we spent a lot of time together in the sixties.”