Ringo Starr Quotes

A drummer is usually like the backbone.

Most great records really start with the drums.

The bass should be the note of the bass drum, and then you've got the engine of the band that everything else builds on. Everything else, the guitar, the keyboards, is a colour.

It can even be a single note which defines the entire song.

The bass player's function, along with the drums, is to be the engine that drives the car... everything else is merely colours.

I tend to think of the organ as part of the rhythm section, rather than a frontline voice.

The drummer; he inspired me to play like no one else I have ever met.

I am just a guy who plays drums.

I think the rhythm is like the spine of the piece. If you change that, then the body that forms around it is changed as well.

I'm a bass player and I'm a drummer - I'm a big fan of bass players.

My playing is always just a little on top of the beat. I can't lay down the kind of groove that Brad Wilk can. I'd really have to lay back to do that; it just doesn't feel natural to me.

I wanted to play drums and if I didn't play drums, I wouldn't make music and drums are the foundation for what I do.

I can't get anything out of an orchestra if I have the 10 best guitarists, but I don't have a pianist or a drummer.

A band is as solid as its drummer is.

The beginning is the chiefest part of any work.

Some of [drummers] drop time because they want to hear what you're doin'.

I desperately wish I had my tambourine with me now, because even after everything I'm still wearing heavy boots, and sometimes it helps to play a good beat

Drummers - sometimes they play and they listen. And that little listen takes a speck away from the right tempo.

I intend to lay a foundation that will revolutionize the whole world.

I've wanted to be a drummer since I was about five years old. I used to play on a bath salt container with wires on the bottom, and on a round coffee tin with a loose wire fixed to it to give a snare drum effect. Plus there were always my Mum's pots and pans. When I was ten, my Mum bought me a snare drum. My Dad bought me my first full drum kit when I was 15. It was almost prehistoric. Most of it was rust.

Begin whatever you have to do: the beginning of a work stands for the whole.

Oh, I'm not a percussionist, I just like to hit things.

I miss the romance. I keep saying this over and over again, but dance follows music. And if the accent today is percussion and rhythm and loudness, then that is the way the dance numbers will be. But it is pretty hard on romance with seven guitars, three drums, and no melody instruments in the band.

I don't want no drummer. I set the tempo.