The Comparison Game
Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 Greatest Drummers placed Ringo Starr at number 14. John Bonham topped the list at number 1. Keith Moon came in at number 2.
On paper, that ranking makes sense. Bonham was a madman, a force of nature—thunderous, improvisational, playing like he was teetering on the edge of a cliff. Dave Grohl spent years in his bedroom trying to emulate Bonham’s swing and behind-the-beat swagger. “No one has come close to that since,” Grohl wrote, “and I don’t think anybody ever will.”
Keith Moon was chaos personified—explosive, unpredictable, theatrical. He treated the drum kit like an instrument of controlled destruction, abandoning the traditional timekeeper role to become a lead voice in The Who’s sound.
And Ringo? Ringo was neither of those things. He wasn’t trying to be.
This is where the debate gets interesting. For sixty years, a question has followed Ringo Starr like a shadow: Is he actually any good? The question seems absurd—here is a man who drummed on some of the most important recordings in popular music history, whose fills are instantly recognizable across generations, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice.
Here’s the full list of the Top 13 Drummers who Rolling Stone ranked ahead of Ringo:
* John Bonham (Led Zeppelin)
* Keith Moon (The Who)
* Ginger Baker (Cream)
* Neil Peart (Rush)
* Hal Blaine (session drummer—appeared on ~35,000 recordings)
* Clyde Stubblefield and John “Jabo” Starks (James Brown)
* Gene Krupa (jazz legend)
* Steve Jordan (session drummer, The Rolling Stones)
* Mitch Mitchell (Jimi Hendrix Experience)
* Al Jackson Jr. (Booker T. & the M.G.’s, Stax Records)
* Benny Benjamin (Motown’s Funk Brothers)
* Charlie Watts (The Rolling Stones)
* D.J. Fontana (Elvis Presley)
The Buddy Rich Test
If you want to understand how professional drummers view Ringo, start with Buddy Rich.
Rich was a jazz legend, a technical virtuoso, and famously one of the most brutally honest critics in music. He pulled no punches about anyone. When asked about Ringo’s playing, Rich offered what sounds like faint praise: “Ringo was adequate, no more than that.”
Coming from Buddy Rich, that’s actually a compliment.
What Rich understood—what many critics miss—is that “adequate” for the music Ringo was playing meant something very specific. The Beatles weren’t a jazz combo requiring improvisation and technical fireworks. They were a pop-rock band creating songs that needed to breathe, to groove, to serve the melody. Ringo’s job wasn’t to show off. His job was to make the songs better.
And at that, he was a genius.
Grohl, Keltner, and the Gospel of Feel
Dave Grohl knows something about drumming. The Nirvana and Foo Fighters founder is widely considered one of the finest rock drummers of his generation, often compared to his own heroes: Bonham, Moon, Neil Peart.
When asked to define the “best drummer in the world” for Ringo’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tribute, Grohl cut right to the heart of the debate: “Is it someone that’s technically proficient? Or is it someone that sits in the song with their own feel? Ringo was the king of feel.”
This distinction matters enormously. Technical proficiency is measurable—speed, precision, complexity. Feel is something else entirely. It’s knowing what a song needs and providing exactly that, nothing more. It’s the difference between a drummer who plays a song and a drummer who makes a song work.
Jim Keltner, one of the most revered session drummers in history—he’s played on everything from John Lennon’s Imagine to Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever—put it this way: “Everything Ringo played had such great, deep natural feel. He’s a song drummer. Guys that sit down and they hear the song and they play appropriately for that song.”
Lupe Flores, who drums for Wild Powwers, made the same point more bluntly: “Your job as a drummer, or any musician, is to serve the song—not yourself. Ringo epitomizes exactly that. Try and replace him with any other drummer, and the Beatles wouldn’t have sounded like the Beatles.”
Paul McCartney put it this way: “Not technically the best by a long shot, but for feel and emotion and economy, they’re always there, particularly Ringo.”
Bonham vs. Moon vs. Ringo: Three Philosophies
To understand Ringo’s place in drumming history, you have to understand what separates him from the drummers typically ranked above him.
John Bonham played like a man possessed. His kick drum was a weapon, his fills were avalanches, and his sense of swing—that infinitesimal delay behind the beat—gave Led Zeppelin’s music its enormous, lumbering power. Listen to “When the Levee Breaks” and you hear a drummer who dominates the song, who is the song in many ways. Bonham’s playing demands attention. You can’t ignore it any more than you could ignore a thunderstorm.
Keith Moon took a different approach to domination. He abandoned the traditional role of timekeeper entirely, treating his kit as a lead instrument. Moon filled every space, crashed through every quiet moment, and created a wall of percussion that competed with Pete Townshend’s guitar for sonic real estate. His playing was technically messy but emotionally overwhelming. You couldn’t take your ears off him.
Ringo did the opposite. He played inside songs rather than on top of them. His fills were economical, his grooves were steady, and his ego was nowhere to be found. You could listen to a Beatles song a hundred times and never think about the drumming—until you tried to imagine the song without it and realized the whole thing would collapse.
The Beatles weren’t Led Zeppelin or The Who. They were a band built on melody, harmony, and songcraft. A Bonham would have been too showy. A Moon would have been too chaotic. What they needed was exactly what they had: a drummer with impeccable feel who made every song better without drawing attention to himself.
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Very Best Of Ringo
The Quote That Wouldn’t Die
“He’s not even the best drummer in The Beatles.”
You’ve heard it attributed to John Lennon. Everyone has. It’s become shorthand for Ringo skepticism, a devastating putdown from his own bandmate. There’s just one problem: Lennon never said it.
The line was actually delivered by British comedian Jasper Carrott in 1983, three years after Lennon’s death. It was a joke, not a critique. But it stuck because it confirmed what many people already believed—that Ringo was the lucky one, the affable sad-eyed drummer who happened to be in the right place when the original Beatles drummer, Pete Best, got fired.
The reality is that Lennon continued working with Ringo throughout the 1970s. He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t rate him. When the Beatles needed a drummer for their big recording audition with producer George Martin, they insisted on Ringo. When Martin wanted to use a session drummer for “Love Me Do,” the band fought back. Ringo was their man.
The Unorthodox Style
Part of what makes Ringo’s drumming so distinctive—and so hard to replicate—is that he’s a left-handed drummer playing a right-handed kit.
Think about what that means. When a right-handed drummer executes a fill around the toms, they lead with their right hand, and the sticking flows logically around the kit. Ringo leads with his left hand, crossing over his right, creating patterns that sound and feel different from what any typical drummer would play.
Listen to the opening of “Come Together.” That iconic tom-tom intro is played in an ascending pattern—floor tom to rack tom—because Ringo is essentially playing “backwards.” It shouldn’t work. But it absolutely works. You can hear it in the first two seconds and know exactly who’s playing.
Then there’s his hi-hat technique. Most drummers play straight up-and-down quarter notes on the hi-hat. Ringo developed what’s been called the “windshield wiper” technique, playing in a figure-eight pattern with the hi-hats slightly open. The result is a sizzling, swinging feel that turned the hi-hat into something almost like a ride cymbal. You can hear it on “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Please Please Me,” and “All My Loving”—songs that swing even though they’re not jazz.
Even when a Beatles song has a straight eighth-note feel, Ringo tends to swing his fills. Listen to “Strawberry Fields Forever.” That unpredictability, that looseness, is intentional. It adds texture and humanity to songs that could otherwise feel mechanical.
The Standout Moments
Ringo himself has named “Rain” as his best Beatles performance, and most critics agree. The 1966 B-side found him moving all around the kit with precision while remaining firmly in the pocket—a technical showcase that still served the song. It’s the track that proves he could play with complexity when the music called for it.
But some of his most brilliant work is subtler. On “A Day in the Life,” Ringo doesn’t just keep time—he plays melodically, using his toms to provide counterpoint to Paul McCartney’s descending bass line. It’s incredibly difficult to replicate because it requires thinking like a melodic instrumentalist, not just a timekeeper. The drummer as musician.
“Ticket to Ride” showcases what fans call the “Ringo shuffle”—a wildly swung groove that John Lennon called “one of the earliest heavy-metal records.” If you programmed that beat into a drum machine, it would sound like J Dilla. The wonkiness is the point.
And then there’s “Tomorrow Never Knows,” where Ringo’s lopsided breakbeat essentially invented a new way of thinking about drums in psychedelic music. His unexpected twitching snare pattern emphasizes the song’s feel of psychedelic discombobulation. It’s not complex, but it’s perfect.
The Son Who Chose Moon
Here’s where the story takes an unexpected turn.
Zak Starkey, Ringo’s eldest son, grew up to become one of the most respected rock drummers of his generation. But his style is nothing like his father’s. Where Ringo is subtle and song-serving, Zak is powerful and aggressive. Where Ringo influenced drummers toward restraint, Zak channels the bombast of classic rock.
The reason is simple: Zak’s primary influence wasn’t Ringo. It was Keith Moon.
Moon was Ringo’s best friend and Zak’s godfather. When Zak was a child, Moon would babysit him. “Keith was like an uncle, really,” Zak has said. “We would just hang out and talk about anything—girls, surfing, bands, drums. He was a really fantastic guy to hang out with. He wasn’t crazy in any way, except for that look in his eye. I was hanging out with my hero.”
Ringo didn’t push Zak toward drums. In fact, he expected his son to become a doctor or lawyer. But when Zak was six years old, he saw The Who perform, and his life changed. He became obsessed with drumming, spending hours listening to Keith Moon, John Bonham, and Billy Cobham. Ringo bought him a Ludwig kit for his eleventh birthday and gave him basic lessons in keeping time, but from there Zak was largely self-taught, developing his skills by playing along with records.
The irony is rich: the son of the most famous “feel” drummer in rock history grew up worshipping the most anarchic, technically explosive drummer of the same era.
Two Drummers, Two Legacies
Father and son represent two fundamentally different philosophies of drumming—philosophies embodied by the two greatest British bands of the 1960s.
Ringo Starr proved that serving the song is its own form of genius—that feel, economy, and musicality matter as much as technical virtuosity. He wasn’t Bonham. He wasn’t Moon. He was something else entirely: a drummer whose restraint made room for melody, whose grooves made songs swing, and whose fills became as recognizable as guitar riffs. He changed what drummers could be in rock music.
Zak Starkey proved that you can honor a legacy without imitating it. He took Keith Moon’s explosive energy and channeled it through his own meticulous precision, filling the biggest shoes in rock drumming while still being himself. His thirty years with The Who validated everything Moon saw in him as a child.
Both approaches are valid. Both require mastery. And both produced some of the most important drumming in rock history.
The Verdict
So is Ringo Starr actually any good?
The question misses the point. Ringo isn’t “good” in the sense that John Bonham was good—technically overwhelming, improvisationally brilliant. He’s good in a different and equally important way: he understood what songs needed and provided exactly that, creating parts that elevated the music without calling attention to themselves.
Dave Grohl understood this. Jim Keltner understood this. Even Buddy Rich, in his backhanded way, understood this.
There are plenty of drummers with chops. There are plenty who can play faster, louder, more impressively. But there’s only one Ringo—a drummer who made the Beatles sound like the Beatles, who invented a style by playing “wrong,” and whose influence echoes through every drummer who’s ever chosen the song over the solo.
And there’s only one Zak—a drummer who grew up in his father’s shadow, chose his godfather’s style instead, and proved himself worthy of both legacies.
The debate about Ringo will probably never end. But anyone who’s actually listened—who’s heard the swing on “Ticket to Ride,” the melodic toms on “A Day in the Life,” the perfect fills on “Rain”—knows the truth.
He was exactly the drummer the Beatles needed. Which is to say, he was exactly the drummer rock and roll needed.
Peace and love. 🥁✌️
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