Ringo Starr and the development of the Air Fill | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

I’ll add some comments broken down by album, and see what you think. Hopefully you haven’t been too terrified or confused so far and maybe these comments will explain what I’m on about. So let’s start with just the first two albums, and associated singles if they’re relevant:

Please Please Me

You wouldn’t call the Beatles a surfer band, would you? But that’s the predominant rocker rhythm used here, a little too fast to swing like the Mersey Beat, and certainly too fast for anything but a quick fill, although there are exceptions. They tried very hard with the covers here (almost like they were trying to get them out of the way) and there’s only one song I would truly call a Mersey Beat tune.

If you don’t get what I mean, here’s a fantastic example by a great youtube drummer:

Notice that the Mersey Beat is really a slowed-down surfer rhythm with those same accents on the snare. That’s it, really, that’s the 60’s rock groove.

I Saw Her Standing There

The fills before the chorus get progressively more complex, but don’t pause the strong beat. I’l call this style of fill a ‘surfer fill’ after its common use in 50’s surfer music. Ranges from a quick ratatat to a more complex, stuttering catch-up fill, beats of quick triplets. I ‘ve never believed that Ringo couldn’t do a snare roll, it just wasn’t interesting or different enough, and that’s the core thing about his fills, they’re always interesting.

Anna

Surfer fill here just before the middle eight.

Chains

A lot of near-fill snarework in this cover as well as full around-the-kit fills, and noteworthy is the snare accented pattern between the chorus vocals.

Boys

Classic surfer drumming in here, you really hear the kick thumping! Tempo is closer to the Mersey Beat but still a bit fast to truly swing.

Please Please Me

I’m astonished at the strength of the surfer influence in this classic. Lots of tidy little snare fills, but what’s this just before the middle 8?! Everything stops and Ringo goes down the kit to the toms! Is this an air fill?! Yes and no. It fits the basic requirement, but does lack rhythmic variation. It doesn’t sound unusual in the context of the surfer rhythm, and there’s probably similar examples from this style. So I would call it a proto-air fill, the template that perhaps got Ringo thinking about alternative fills. Regardless, it really underlines Ringo’s importance to the style and songwriting this early in his time with the band.

Do You Want To Know A Secret

Here Ringo avoids the snare altogether in the pauses and thumps the kick, a clever way to contrast with the snare-heavy beat of the verses.

A Taste Of Honey

There aren’t any noteworthy fills here but what is important is the two-step vamp feel Ringo gets. In later period Beatles when this rhythm is used, it’s combined with the air fill to produce something new.

Threre’s A Place

Back to the surfer beat, with more surfer fills here and there.

Twist And Shout

Early Beatles is often characterised by their adaptation of surfer music rhythms to produce the so-called ‘Mersey Beat’, a sort of slowed-down accented surfer beat. Twist And Shout is a canonical example, it’s got the surfer fill, and that swinging accent.

SINGLE: She Loves You /I’ll Get You

A-Side: Same method, Mersey Beat plus surfer fills and a stabbing dramatic pause. The B-side is a more conventional Mersey swing, with that Buddy Holly start.

With The Beatles

This album is the Mersey Beat album: the surfer/rocker rhythms are slowed down to allow them to swing, and they adapt it to different styles of cover song too.

It Won’t Be Long

Right back on the Mersey Beat, complete with surfer fills.

All I’ve Got To Do

Interestingly they stop-start the Mersey Beat here, the first half of the verses are stripped back then a fill signals the beat returning.

Please Mister Postman

What I like about this one is how Ringo’s taken the RnB feel and fitted it to the Mersey Beat in the verses and choruses and the fills are actually the accents of that beat! Big air in those fills, hmm!

Roll Over Beethoven

This is a standard rocker, but there are the surfer fills and a very surfer middle eight. Imagine that slowed-down and you can see where the Mersey Beat comes from.

You Really Got A Hold On Me

Another cover that is start-stop, despite its clear country origins. Ringo starts the second verse with a rocketing set of triplets set off by the 3 guitar stabs. The Beatles were clearly getting comfortable with this kind of song structure, an important component in the air fill evolution.

Devil In Her Heart

Very cabaret, with a slouchy Mersey Beat, the dramatic pause with fills, it’s all there.

Not A Second Time

Once again, Mersey Beat with dramatic pause and fill, and this time the fills are a little more detailed with more room to spare.

Money

Back to the more comfortable surfer formula a la Twist And Shout .

A few more albums. We’re starting to get into true air-fill territory.

Rubber Soul

This is the album where rhythm broke loose into proper riff-based RnB. There are one or two little throw-backs and throw-forwards here. We get very very close to true air-fills but no banana. 3rd Phase now: He begins to use fills much more aggressively, which all fit a particular up-tempo RnB rhythm.

Drive My Car

The most confusing start ever to a song, but it’s a solid fill and those heavy snare accents leading up to the Title Lyric, are getting closer to air-fill territory, and gets repeated in the guitar solo also.

You Won’t See Me

The start of this may almost qualify for a true air-fill. It’s got the same stuttery quality of previous snare fills, however. The song is full of Ringo flexing his fill-muscles, and we’re seeing quite a bit of variation in the snare and tom sounds, which are really clear in the mono version. The odd thing for me about the song is how the melodic bass plays against the rhythm instead of WITH it. If Paul had backed off the melody a bit and stuck to the rhythm a little more it might chug along nicely. To me the drums and bass seem at cross rhythmic purposes for too long.

Think For Yourself

No Dramatic Pause in this one but it does have a stuttery fill before the Title Lyric. That organ really chugs along doesn’t it.

The Word

Big fills under the refrain ‘It’s so fine it’s sunshine’ and after, and they’ve got that same quality from You Won’t See Me . But they can’t be air-fills because they’re sung AND played over.

SINGLE: Paperback Writer /Rain

I don’t think it can be doubted that Rain is the birth of the air-fill, even if the bass plays along. It’s at 2:25. But truly half the drumming on Rain is fill, accompanied or not and it takes the fills from the previous album and pushes that notch up. But, and it is the only but, it is still not swinging the beat in the open fill.

Revolver

The startling fact about Revolver rhythmically is how popular the two-step vamp is. It’s there in 4 songs at least, and its rhythm is more usually associated with Sgt Peppers. We don’t get an air-fill but we do get an important step towards it.

I’m Only Sleeping

The two-step vamp returns and what we hear first is not a drum air-fill but a BASS one. You could replace those bass notes with a snare-tom-tom-kick and you have all the requirements: unaccompanied and syncopated. Ringo gets a little fill in the space after ‘taking my time’.

She Said She Said

This is another fill-heavy song, very reminiscent of Rain rhythmically (except for the obvious 3/4 middle 8).

SINGLE: Strawberry Fields Forever /Penny Lane

SFF qualifies as an air-fill song despite being accompanied because it at least swings, and come on, those fills are iconic. Even I played air-drums to this song as a kid. Penny Lane brings the two-step vamp with a vengence, but there’s nothing for Ringo to do here but keep the beat.

Sgt. Peppers

Air-fill central. This is where some of the best live. The Beatles basically take the Dramatic Pause motif and let Ringo fill it, sometimes with the Title Lyric, sometimes just to have a nice breather. It’s also two-step vamp central but some omit any breather at all much like Penny Lane . The effect of the deliberate two-vamp/air-fill style is to flatten out a lot of the drumming, in some cases like Lovely Rita , the air-fills are the ONLY fills.

Sgt. Pepper ‘s Lonely Hearts Club Band

The true air-fill introduces the verse, blink and you’ll miss this amazingly assured development.

With A Little Help From My Friends

Classic air-fill in this two-step vamp after the guitar! Listen to the space in it, it’s so damn leisurely you’ll be dancing and singing with your terrified cat who will escape but stay to watch their strange human flailing about. What they did here is avoid having to go to the middle 8 early so after the first chorus, they buzzed down to the inverted V from I with a guitar riff and let Ringo air-fill the pause and started the next verse!

Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

BOM BOM BOM lucy in the sky with air-fills!

Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!

The expectation in this two-step vamp to have an air-fill is, I feel, deliberately exploited. At one stage, the Dramatic Pause is JUST the piano JUST to be different.

Lovely Rita

This has classic air-fills built into the structure on the pauses, and the accent is on the 3rd beat in the bar unusually.

Good Morning, Good Morning

This returns the fill to the Revolver stage of filling-in-the-pause-with-triplets, but Ringo gets to go mad with the entire kit at the end as compensaton!

Sgt. Pepper ‘s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)

The fills here are the same deal as Good Morning Good Morning

A Day In The Life

The fills here are another special case of being air-fills while being accompanied. They’re in a class of their own really, but we can see their pedigree stretching back as far as You Won’t See Me , although Rain is a closer fit. It’s rare that drum fills act like a counterpoint to lyrics!

Let’s bat it home with the last albums.

Abbey Road

We’re going in released order so this is a bit out of kilter. I would characterize this as being a bit jazzed-up after the rawness of the previous albums. There’s a lot of attention to detail, but the difference is chiefly improved sound for the drums, a bit more leeway for how the fills should work in with the rest. As noted in a few songs, he uses fills now to maintain or raise the energy of songs where needed, something he always sought to do but now it comes naturally as part of the song rather than something that stands out to say “this is a section boundary”.

Come Together

A special case, it’s really Ringo making the song completely his own, the instrumental pauses are extremely detailed. A lovely air-fill to rouse the boys for the coda and continues after every two riffs.

Something

By now characteristic fill to kick off, and a storm of fills to accent the middle 8.

Oh! Darling

Even a rocker like this benefits from air-fills.

I Want You (She’s So Heavy)

Classic 4th phase fills to up the intensity where needed, and not as an instrumental feature. He uses fills to appear to speed up and slow down during the coda which is pretty amazing against the white noise and the insane organ, so I’m grateful they edited in the Trident master for it, if my bootleg is correct of course. There is a classic fill on the coda which must be from Trident, imagine losing that!

Here Comes The Sun

Some of the trickiest fills ever done to fit the beat and time signature. Accenting every part of the riff when needed and generally keeping the energy up.

The Huge Melody here is a bit of a cheat, Ringo mostly doing it before even hearing much of the accompaniment. Only Polythene Pam was redone in the sense of the drum rhythms, all the rest is basically the same after overdubs, initially just Paul on piano and Ringo. So much of the rest of the accompaniment was scored/written/overdubbed around this basic track, and it’s particularly noticeable on Golden Slumbers /Carry That Weight , a testament to Ringo’s core function to the songwriting, not just the recording.

You Never Give Me Your Money

Ringo’s job in most of this medley is to make sense of the instrumental changes so much of this are truly air-fills before the guitars were even tracked.

Sun King

Rather complicated but more kick-fills than anything!

Mean Mr. Mustard

This has a rhythm harking back to 3rd phase, but 4-step rather than 2. If it was the redo, there’s not much in it.

Polythene Pam

Revolves around the toms and massive snare hits, and nothing in pauses except Paul stuffing the bass up.

She Came In Through The Bathroom Window

Fills almost call-and-answering the guitar riff in this.

Golden Slumbers

Ringo does the massive fills to make the rhythm work here.

Carry That Weight

Once again, Ringo is called-upon to air-fill (or if you prefer, rhythm-fill) the instrumental changes in this one.

The End

You could call it a drum solo, or a connected series of air-fills, but it’s literally the last word on Beatle Ringo’s technique.

Let It Be

This was of course recorded before Abbey Road . They were trying to write simpler, more rockabilly songs, but Ringo’s style remains pretty much 4th phase throughout when he was doing fills at all, so its interesting that the songs still have pauses and Ringo still does his elongated fills.

Dig A Pony

Rhythm-fills here mainly to keep the energy up and a air-fill at the pause.

I Me Mine

Ringo gets in a rhythm-fill in here

I’ve Got A Feeling

Air-fill here at the pause and especially after the guitar solo.

Get Back

Depending on which version you have, it’s very short on fills, except for the one air-fill. The snare shuffle is like a metronome, it’s mesmerising. And he got it right every time and I’ve heard dozens of versions of the song over those Get Back sessions.

Don’t Let Me Down

Air-fills crucial to keeping this one together.

Old Brown Shoe

This is a B-side that doesn’t fit anywhere else. Being a George song, it’s relatively straightforward but still sports his favourite motif, a diminished progression! Ringo really drives the track here, playing on the off-beat and catch-up fills in the verses, but I’ve always loved the full-on middle-sections best, so solidly matching the riff’s rhythm but pushing forward, you feel like you’re flying.

LAST SINGLE: Let It Be /You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)

The A-side is different depending on which solo you prefer (there are now 3 versions!), but Ringo doesn’t do anything particularly special on it, although his ride cymbal is particularly splashy on the track. YKMN is a comedy track done in the medley style, and Ringo’s work demonstrates just how good at parody they were.

Conclusion

So here we are at the end. Taking the Beatles from a Ringos-eye view is valuable. It shows us just how strongly the band could back up a style of songwriting that I find more peculiar the more I look at it. Ringo took the basic notions of rhythm behind many songs (except when Paul, who could hear everything it needed, gave him pointers), and fleshed them out with originality and intelligence. We haven’t even got onto his incredible timing and ability to reproduce the same performances, but the key quality is his ability to see what the song needed, driving it and complementing vocals and instruments. I’ve only ever played with one drummer who came close to matching this kind of musical intelligence, they are the rarest musicians.

Silly Girl said

Thanks for these fabulous posts, @ewe2. I found them very informative– and  I understood nearly 60% of what was being said. 

I can only imagine how much time this must have taken, to go through the catalogue like this and type it all up. Did you dream of Beatle drum tracks that night? 

I know it looks like a lot of work, but really, I’ve been a Beatles fan for well over four decades and have heard everything they did for about two decades, something has to rub off surely Also, I’m a musician and the curse of the way a musician thinks is to see the patterns and scaffolding around the Art. If I didn’t, that would be a possibly greater problem! I hope it inspires people to take a look from a different angle, it certainly refreshed my picture of the songs. And yes, certain fills in songs have been repeating themselves in my mind for some days now , I’ve caught myself unconsciously beatboxing Beatles!

Yes. The point of a good song is that you’re not meant to notice the mechanics, how the fills are done, what the song structure is, you get the effect of the sounds and the emotion of it, but a musician comes along and goes my god what a great bass sound and that drumming is awesome and what’s that effect on the piano and that can be the birth of something new in their mind. For better or worse, recordings ARE the new sheet music, because there’s far more to the effect of several instruments and vocals than can be written down. Recently Pharrell Williams lost a lawsuit because he deliberately mimicked the sound of a 1960’s RnB song and the fact that it was musically very close didn’t help either. So in a very real sense that might force people to be even more experimental (which I detest, there’s nothing to my mind wrong with quoting other artists, but that’s the music industry for you).