When you ask some best drummers to pick out their favorites, it’s quite a difficult task for most of them, but not for the drummer for the thrash metal band Anthrax, Charlie Benante.
Charlie was ready to name out his 11 favorite picks and it will not be a surprise for most of the fans when we tell you that his first pick was nonother than the Beatles Ringo Starr. Let’s take a look at what he had to say for the drummer.
“The first one I’m going to talk about is going to be Ringo Starr,” said Benante.
“When I was two or three years old, the Beatles were all over my house, so of course, I always describe it as me being a sponge and just absorbing everything my sisters would play. His playing back then to me was so rock and roll, and what he brought to those Beatles songs, I don’t know, man, I don’t think anyone else could have done it the way he did it.”
He continued to praise him and mentioned the time, the era that remained as a remarkable moment for him; “He just had this great backbeat, and there are some songs where he plays better than others. But I felt Ringo’s playing from ’63 to ’66 were some of his best playing songs like ‘Boys,’ ‘Rain,’ like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows,’ that’s Ringo at his best.”
“He’s not a hard rock metal drummer, but other hard rock metal drummers took something from Ringo, whether they realize it or not,” said Charlie Benante and even included that; “I stole Ringo’s crash ride stuff; when he plays, he doesn’t play like, play a ride [slowly]… On the bell, he crashes crash rides, and almost every Anthrax song has that kind of a wash on the cymbal sound.”
It surprised the fans when Charlie mentioned that Ringo’s playing style had made remarkable components of metal tracks for him.
