10 Artists Who Slated The Beatles

With no shortage of people unafraid to take a sideswipe at The Fab Four, Quincy Jones took it further than anyone else in a New York Magazine article.

“They were the worst musicians in the world. They were no-playing motherf**kers. Paul was the worst bass player I ever heard.”

If that sounds harsh, Ringo fairs even worse, Jones having arranged a track for Ringo’s standards album Sentimental Journey.

“I remember once we were in the studio with George Martin, and Ringo had taken three hours for a four-bar thing he was trying to fix on a song. He couldn’t get it. We said, “Mate, why don’t you get some lager and lime, some shepherd’s pie, and take an hour-and-a-half and relax a little bit.”

So he did, and we called Ronnie Verrell, a jazz drummer. Ronnie came in for 15 minutes and tore it up. Ringo comes back and says, “George, can you play it back for me one more time?” So George did, and Ringo says, “That didn’t sound so bad.” And I said, “Yeah, motherf**ker, because it ain’t you.””

There’s something slightly odd about that Ringo story. It’s not just that Ringo proved himself for years in The Beatles, coping ably with their various stylistic switches and studio experiments. No, the strange thing about Quincy’s tale is that Ringo didn’t actually play any drums on Sentimental Journey, focusing his efforts on lead vocals.

Is it possible the legendary producer threw Ringo under the bus for the sake of a good but entirely made up story?