WI: Ringo Starr doesn't join the Beatles
- Thread starter Will Kürlich Kerl
- Start date
Assuming the (permuted) Fab Four still take off and get movie contracts, the plot of Yellow Submarine is quite different--OTL Ringo is the hero of that movie.
Come to think of it he's a big deal in all the Beatles movies I've seen (well, I don't recall his role in Magical Mystery Tour...) IIRC he was kind of pivotal in Hard Day's Night what with his goofy Irish uncle being catalytic and of course in Help! he's the one who gets the ring (Ringo, get it?) stuck on his finger.
It's very strange how hard it is to rent or buy any Beatles movies nowadays, or ever--I've only ever seen Yellow Submarine for sale in any format, videotape or DVD. I have a copy of Hard Day's Night on a disk--but it isn't a DVD, it's a CD from before DVDs were being sold, with the movie in Apple QuickTime format! I saw MMT once at a campus movie night screening back in the 1980s, and Help! came on the TV once that I saw early in the 1990s, and that's it.
What's up with that? The same ownership snafus that prevented Carl Sagan from putting any Beatles songs on the Voyager records?
Perhaps the only reason Yellow Submarine is fairly readily available is that except for their little end of the movie cameo and their voices in the recorded songs, the Beatles were not actually the voice actors in the cartoon, so it wasn't really a proper Beatles movie at all. (And it didn't count toward completing their contractual obligation of a set number of movies either, much to their consternation).
As someone else pointed out, Ringo was the butt of most jokes and if they kept their old drummer the newbie dynamic that kept him in that place would not have been operating, so it could have been any of the other three just as likely to be stuck with that--probably Harrison from what I know of the history and dynamics of the group. Or Pete Best, maybe. If they picked a different replacement for Best, they'd probably be the low one in the pecking order, unless their personality and talent was such that it happened differently.
Really we'd need to know enough about why Best left in the first place and who was available at the time to replace him, and what they'd have been like. And then consider the possibility that in the wonderful world of entertaining arts, talent is a necessary but not sufficient condition for fame and quite conceivably (horrible as it is to contemplate) lightning would not strike and no one outside of the nightclub scene of Hamburg ever hears of them at all.
Come to think of it he's a big deal in all the Beatles movies I've seen (well, I don't recall his role in Magical Mystery Tour...
) IIRC he was kind of pivotal in Hard Day's Night what with his goofy Irish uncle being catalytic and of course in Help! he's the one who gets the ring (Ringo, get it?) stuck on his finger.It's very strange how hard it is to rent or buy any Beatles movies nowadays, or ever--I've only ever seen Yellow Submarine for sale in any format, videotape or DVD. I have a copy of Hard Day's Night on a disk--but it isn't a DVD, it's a CD from before DVDs were being sold, with the movie in Apple QuickTime format! I saw MMT once at a campus movie night screening back in the 1980s, and Help! came on the TV once that I saw early in the 1990s, and that's it.
What's up with that? The same ownership snafus that prevented Carl Sagan from putting any Beatles songs on the Voyager records?
Perhaps the only reason Yellow Submarine is fairly readily available is that except for their little end of the movie cameo and their voices in the recorded songs, the Beatles were not actually the voice actors in the cartoon, so it wasn't really a proper Beatles movie at all. (And it didn't count toward completing their contractual obligation of a set number of movies either, much to their consternation).
As someone else pointed out, Ringo was the butt of most jokes and if they kept their old drummer the newbie dynamic that kept him in that place would not have been operating, so it could have been any of the other three just as likely to be stuck with that--probably Harrison from what I know of the history and dynamics of the group. Or Pete Best, maybe. If they picked a different replacement for Best, they'd probably be the low one in the pecking order, unless their personality and talent was such that it happened differently.
Really we'd need to know enough about why Best left in the first place and who was available at the time to replace him, and what they'd have been like. And then consider the possibility that in the wonderful world of entertaining arts, talent is a necessary but not sufficient condition for fame and quite conceivably (horrible as it is to contemplate) lightning would not strike and no one outside of the nightclub scene of Hamburg ever hears of them at all.
It depends on why Ringo doesn't join the Beatles. Does he get offered to replace Pete Best just like he actually was, but turns it down instead? In the OTL, they had been in talks with Ringo for a while about bringing him in before he finally agreed and they fired Pete Best. Without Starr, Pete Best stays, though they probably put emphasis on using a session drummer (Andy White) and attempt to look for a better drummer behind Pete Best's back. The session drummer issue would possibly lead to tensions within the group between Pete Best wanting to play and not being allowed to, except in concert. Pete Best's drumming may also hinder the Beatles in the live outings, dampening Beatlemania. Also, once you get to the Beatlemania, it would be much harder to fire Pete Best because the public knows him now as well, and he's part of the whole thing. Firing him would lead to a major backlash. It may be the case of the Beatles waiting until they reach some alternate parallel of their post-1966 iteration (it wouldn't have to be after 1966, but whatever alternate version like that period) for them to fire Pete Best.
Pete Best's biggest issue was he could have done it if he tried, but he was just always too lazy to learn. In the Tony Sheridan days they were telling him what he needed to do to be better, and he just slacked off and didn't do it. By the time you get to the EMI/George Martin era, the other three are just not in the mood for it nor in the mood for Pete Best in general with some of the things that had gone on, and sacked him because they weren't taking chances with not doing well.
Without Ringo Starr, the Beatles would have been stuck with him. They would have been looking all that time for a potential replacement, while acquiescing themselves to the fact of using a session drummer for all the recordings in the studio. Along with tensions of Best feeling alienated from that, you could also get tensions from the Beatles saying he has to learn and improve and him just not making the attempt, and the others hitting that brick wall.
You could also have as situation where Pete Best is fired after the Beatles record their earlier singles and albums but before the Beatles make it to the US. If he's fired after Please Please Me or With The Beatles, then the United States will get a Beatles with whatever guy they get for the drummer afterward, and it'll be a case where the British have this factoid of the US experiencing only this, while original British Beatlemania was based on Pete Best and the Beatles.
I made a thread on Pete Best. Feel free to look at it for any further information on the things about No Ringo involving Ringo.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=269604
Pete Best's biggest issue was he could have done it if he tried, but he was just always too lazy to learn. In the Tony Sheridan days they were telling him what he needed to do to be better, and he just slacked off and didn't do it. By the time you get to the EMI/George Martin era, the other three are just not in the mood for it nor in the mood for Pete Best in general with some of the things that had gone on, and sacked him because they weren't taking chances with not doing well.
Without Ringo Starr, the Beatles would have been stuck with him. They would have been looking all that time for a potential replacement, while acquiescing themselves to the fact of using a session drummer for all the recordings in the studio. Along with tensions of Best feeling alienated from that, you could also get tensions from the Beatles saying he has to learn and improve and him just not making the attempt, and the others hitting that brick wall.
You could also have as situation where Pete Best is fired after the Beatles record their earlier singles and albums but before the Beatles make it to the US. If he's fired after Please Please Me or With The Beatles, then the United States will get a Beatles with whatever guy they get for the drummer afterward, and it'll be a case where the British have this factoid of the US experiencing only this, while original British Beatlemania was based on Pete Best and the Beatles.
I made a thread on Pete Best. Feel free to look at it for any further information on the things about No Ringo involving Ringo.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=269604
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