I just wanted to come on here after two years and say that i was the one who posted the "BOTTOM JOHN FOR CHRISTS SAKE!!!!" post, thank you to the people who lowkey got a little offended by that post. Anyways, more bottom john please? Let's get some John/Ringo. Ta friends.
In the last two years, I’ve encountered the quote “Ringo’s not even the best drummer in the Beatles” attributed to John more times than I can count.
It always hits my brain as wrong not just because I’m nothing if not a Ringo defender but because John knew how freakin lucky they were to have Ringo. If John did say it, it was almost surely intended as a joke and not one to be repeated by Ringo detractors as any kind of evidence of his skills 60 years later.
Fab Four Archivist says it never happened:
youtube
There are fans in the comments who swear they’ve seen video of the 1966 New York press conference where John says this. I’ve watched what I thought was the complete presser and do not remember it. It may be a case of the meme writing over memories.
Does anyone remember actually seeing this clip anywhere?
Trying to stay awake and alert while genius sorts itself out can be a major challenge! It was not only the engineers who suffered the tedium of attending on creative genius—I had to be there, too. And last but not least, all the Beatles had to be there, even if some of them were not directly involved. When he was asked what he remembers best about the recording of the album, Ringo replied: ‘The biggest memory I have of Sgt. Pepper is that I learned to play chess.’
Ringo listened very carefully to what was happening on any song in progress, all the same. He was critical, in the same way that I could be critical, of what the others were doing, and not afraid to voice that criticism. He would suddenly say to John, ‘John, that’s crap,’ whereupon John would look up over his glasses, and murmur, ‘Oh really?’ and change it. Either that or he’d make a rude remark back, and then change whatever it was that Ringo had picked up on.
Paul also took a great deal of notice of what Ringo said. He was a very effective guide, musically speaking; he had a good ear. Although he might not always have had all that much to do, you could never forget that he was a major part of the group.
[—from With a Little Help from My Friends: The Making of Sgt. Pepper, George Martin]