 Ringo Clapton Is God
By Jim Shahin
AND NOW, a few words about drummers.
Q: What do you call a drummer without a girlfriend?
A: Homeless.
Q: What’s the difference between a drummer and government bonds?
A: Government bonds eventually mature and earn money.
Q: What do you say to a drummer in a three-piece suit?
A: “Will the defendant please rise …”
I haven’t read any of the stories in this special issue on music, but if I had to guess, and this is just a wild hunch, I’d bet that none of the stories in this special issue on music are about drummers.
Q: What do you call someone who hangs around musicians?
A: A drummer.
Funny, huh? Unless you’re a drummer. Or, in my case, a former drummer. Then, you’re like the picked-on, snot-nosed kid: “Hey, guys, knock it off! Quit it! I mean it!”
Drummers are the Rodney Dangerfields of the music world. They don’t get no respect.
Take Ringo.
Please.
(See how easy that was?)
But, seriously, folks. I am here to say that Richard Starkey of Liverpool, England, drummer for the popular 1960s rock band the Beatles, is a genius.
I’m not kidding.
Back in the ’60s, “Clapton Is God” was spray-painted on a wall of the London subway. I’ll not make the same case for Ringo. Let me just say that if I did, it would be less absurd.
I’m not saying that Ringo is history’s best drummer or even, for that matter, a technically great drummer, or that Ringo is more of a virtuoso on drums than Clapton is on guitar. Just the opposite.
I’m just saying that Ringo had more impact on his instrument — indeed, on music — than Clapton.
That’s all I’m saying.
Q: How do you know when a drummer’s at the door?
A: His knocking speeds up, and he doesn’t know when to come in.
Ringo never sped up, and he always knew precisely when to come in, even if it wasn’t the exact “right” time. On “Let It Be,” Ringo keeps just a simple hi-hat beat through Paul’s somber, gospel-inflected opening piano and vocals, adding a dash of brightness, of hope, before kicking the song into a comforting solemnity with drums that tumble into the song like a rumble of thunder from heaven.
Q: What does a cheap cup of black coffee have in common with Ginger Baker?
A: They’re both awful without Cream.
In Ringo’s case, the reverse might be true. The Beatles would likely have been a lesser band without him.
Any of a hundred Beatles songs would prove the point, so I’ll randomly pick “Come Together.” Without Ringo’s repeated pattern — bob-bob on the bass drum followed by a floating chi-chi-chi-chi on the hi-hat, and concluding with a melodic fluttering babada-bop on his low-tuned toms — it wouldn’t be the same song. What it would be is a lesser song.
Q: Did you hear about the drummer who got into college?
A: Neither did I.
Ringo did not go to college. But he did take rock to school. He popularized the backbeat and the way to hold the sticks (gripping each the same rather than holding the left stick one way and the right stick another way — the traditional method back then). He even changed the sound of the drums, tuning them lower than others and muffling them.
But his enduring instruction was his remarkable feel. Technically undistinguished, Ringo created structures within a song that went far beyond keeping time or impressing with lightning-fast chops. His fills were perfect for the vocal phrasing here and the guitar solo there. He played with a patient, humble, attentive sensitivity that helped sculpt the song into its construction as much as the songwriters themselves did.
Q: What’s the best way to confuse a drummer?
A: Put a sheet of music in front of him.
I have no idea what happens when someone puts a sheet of music in front of Ringo. But it doesn’t matter. Ringo is a genius.
In the end, though, Ringo’s genius makes no difference. That’s because in his own goofy, sad way, Ringo is the everydrummer. A guy back there keeping time.
Keeping time. There is something great about that phrase. With all four appendages working at once, sometimes together, sometimes deliberately at cross-purposes (and that is, if not genius, mind-boggling), time ceases to become abstract. It instead is harnessed like electricity and worked like dough and made into, yes, music.
In a special music issue, it’s a good thing to remember, as the jazzmen used to say, to give the drummer some.
Q: What’s black and blue and lying in a ditch?
A: A guitarist who’s told too many drummer jokes.
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