The Only Other Drummer Besides Ringo Starr That George Harrison Depended On
There was one drummer besides Ringo Starr that George Harrison often depended on; Jim Keltner. Ringo and Keltner helped George make his 1987 album, Cloud Nine, sound authentic.
The drummer George Harrison first connected with in his career
During their time in The Beatles, George and Ringo worked well together. Ringo was the first drummer George connected with. They collaborated on each other’s songs. That didn’t change once The Beatles split.
George supplied guitar and songwriting help on many of Ringo’s albums. Meanwhile, Ringo added drums to several of George’s records. During a 1988 interview with Ray Martin (per George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters), George explained that he didn’t need to tell Ringo how to play his songs; he just understood and got to work. George knew what he was getting, asking Ringo to drum on a song.
“With Ringo, there’s certain songs with Ringo that, you know, I don’t have to tell him what to play, I just play him the song, and he just picks up his sticks, and he just does it, you know,” George said.
During a 1987 interview, George said, “You couldn’t make an ex-Beatle record without having Ringo, could you? It’s like a built-in thing… He’s got a great feel. Ringo, he’s like-I sort of don’t practice much on the guitar.
“I just pick it up and play it when I need to and he’s the same. He never practices, he’s a very naughty boy. But he just gets his sticks and he just does it, and it sounds just like Ringo.”
Ringo was always George’s first choice. However, George started depending on another drummer too.
The other drummer that satisfied George
Keltner drummed for George’s fellow Beatle, John Lennon, and that’s how the pair met. Later, Keltner added drums to tracks on George’s 1987 album Cloud Nine and the debut album of the former Beatle’s supergroup, The Traveling Wilburys.
In 1987, George spoke with Anthony DeCurtis (per George Harrison on George Harrison) about the recording process for Cloud Nine. DeCurtis asked George, “In the course of making the record, did a kind of core band emerge that were on virtually all the tracks?”
“Yeah,” George replied. “I always had in mind that when I did this record, I would like to have these proper drummers, and more or less do it like I did it in the late ’60s, early ’70s, which is to say [Jim] Keltner and Ringo.
“Those two are perfect. Jim is a very great session drummer, and he’s always kept ahead of or up to the technology, so Jim could just as well sit down on his drum kit and play whatever you need. At the same time, if you want to have a machine play it, Jim can play that machine like nobody else, and make it sound like real drums. I mean, he’s called the ‘Stenographer of Soul.'”
Keltner and Ringo made ‘Cloud Nine’ sound authentic
Both drummers had a hand in making George’s Cloud Nine sound authentic.
Martin pointed out, “Listening to the album, though, it sounds like it’s got that feeling about it of being a jam session, a bunch of musos get together and just play good music.”
George explained, “…I wanted to try and get it so it wasn’t so much like a computer record that didn’t have any human feel to it, you know? So that’s why we did those drum tracks, originally, with a guy called Jim Keltner and with Ringo, and we tried to get it so we had a feel, so it was a bit more like you’d do it in the late ’60 or early ’70s.
“But at the same time, these days people are so into computer timing that to have live drumming, you know, that does make it difficult, because people won’t accept anything less now than perfect time. So that was the only aspect about having live drumming, you know, that we had to watch out for, but I think we, you know, I think we got the best of both worlds really.”
George never had to worry about being out of sync with the two drummers.
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