Ringo Starr Worried The Beatles Were Going to Fire Him Shortly After He Joined the Band: ‘I Was Shattered’

In 1962, Ringo Starr joined The Beatles, replacing drummer Pete Best. The band had hired him because they believed he was a better drummer than Best, but Starr soon began to worry that they were questioning his abilities. Just two weeks after Starr joined the band, they replaced him with a session drummer during a recording session. Starr immediately began to worry that they were going to fire him.

The drummer struggled with a song

After replacing Best, Starr joined the band in the studio. He struggled with his timekeeping on the song “Love Me Do.” Producer George Martin wasn’t happy about this. 

“I didn’t rate Ringo very highly,” he said per the book Ringo: With a Little Help by Michael Seth Starr, “He couldn’t do a roll — and still can’t — though he’s improved a lot since.”

Martin was unsatisfied with Starr’s performance, so he decided to replace him with Andy White, a session drummer, in another recording session. 

“Andy was the kind of drummer I needed,” Martin said. “Ringo was only used to ballrooms. It was obviously best to use someone with experience.”

Ringo Starr once worried that The Beatles were going to fire him

Starr immediately worried that he wasn’t good enough to record with the band. It wasn’t unheard of to use session drummers as a way to save time while recording, but Starr took the blow hard.

“I was nervous and terrified of the studio,” Starr said. “When we came back later to do the B-side, I found that George Martin had got another drummer sitting in my place. It was terrible. I’d been asked to join The Beatles, but now it looked as if I was only going to be good enough to do ballrooms with them, but not good enough for records.”

He became concerned that the band was going to fire him, just as they had fired Best.

“The other bloke played the drums and I was given the maracas,” he said. “I thought, ‘That’s the end. They’re doing a Pete Best on me.’ I was shattered. What a drag. How phony the whole record business was, I thought. Just what I’d heard about. If I was going to be no use for records, I might as well leave.”

Martin later apologized to Starr, saying he had no idea how deeply he’d hurt him.

The drummer said he was angry for years following the band’s break up

Eight years later, The Beatles broke up. Starr remained with the group until the end, and he said that he was furious in the aftermath of the break up.

“I was mad,” he said, per the New York Daily News. “For 20 years. I had breaks in between of not being.”

As a coping method, Starr began drinking heavily and using drugs. He said that many of the years after the breakup were a complete blur.

“I was drunk,” he said. “I didn’t notice … some of those years are absolutely gone.”