Says something about Rolling Stone.
Ringo is a pretty average drummer, but by all accounts a pretty nice and likable guy.
Anyone here remember "The Magic Christian"? My wife claims the only reason I liked it was because of the influence of chemical mood enhancers when I watched it in the 70s.
Your wife is right. In fact at that point almost anything by Terry Southern was an acquired taste and almost none of it holds up.
Well,that’s “greatest” not “best.”
Big difference.
Ringo is average, but oddly, he is perhaps the person most responsible for the Beatles' music's uniqueness. The drum beat for rock music of that era was generally loose -- had a bit of a lag -- which carried over from its R&B roots. That's what gave it a feeling of hipness. Ringo's drumming was more incessant. He played a more European beat. That gave their music more energy and that was their signature style.
I can't remember which Beatle said it, but he basically said that Ringo was the second best drummer in the Beatles, next to Paul. Paul did the drums on "The Ballad of John and Yoko", and he played all the instruments on his first solo album "McCartney", the one with "Maybe I'm Amazed."