Re: Ringo Starr
Ringo is an extraordinary drummer, one of those natural talents.
If you take a song like "It Won't Be Long" and look at the drum part, you will see some interesting things.
1) It is a simple Mersey Beat, but
Ringo accents the upbeat of two giving it a nice syncopated feel. It also requires some technique to accent that second note.
2) He phrases the drum beat in measures of two, which became a standard with funk drummers like Clyde Stubblefield. But most rock drummers at the time, even Hal Blaine, phrased their beats in one measure repeating intervals.
3) He integrates the flam into the fill he uses, and was one of the earliest, if not the earliest examples of rudiments in rock drumming. It takes some technique to execute that first fill. It is very musical, the way he simplifies the Mersey beat down into two bar phrases and then builds up to that fill. That's why the girls went wild.
4) He also got a fatter sound out of the drums.
In these four ways I see him as the precursor to guys like Bonham and Gadd.