Andy White
Drummer who stood in for Ringo Starr
ANDY WHITE, who has died aged 85, was a drummer who toured with Marlene Dietrich, backed Tom Jones on It’s Not Unusual and played with Bill Haley and Chuck Berry; but he became best known for a single session at the Abbey Road studios when he was called in at the last moment to stand in for Ringo Starr.
On September 12 1962, when John, Paul and George took Ringo along to the studios for the recording of Love Me Do, their producer, George Martin, was taken by surprise. He had been expecting Pete Best, but the three of them had just sacked Best. Martin asked to audition Ringo, but once he had heard him play, he decided to call in White, a seasoned performer who knew his way around a recording studio. White played drums with the Beatles on three tracks, including their first hit single, Love Me Do, and its B-side PS I Love You.
The first pressing of the single was the Ringo version, but the record released in bulk to the shops featured White, although those with sharp ears may just be able to make out Ringo somewhere in the background: feeling sorry for him, Martin had given him a tambourine (“which he didn’t play very well,” White recalled), before placing him at a discreet distance from the microphone.
But it was Ringo who gained a share of royalties when the track was reissued in compilation albums in later years. White got no more than his original pay for the session – five pounds (plus 10 shillings for taking along his own drum kit). “It is no good moping,” he reflected. “I was paid the session fee, and that was it.”
Andy White was born in Glasgow on July 27 1930 and started playing drums with a Scouts pipe band when he was about 12 years old. He got his first professional gig aged 22, playing the drums with a hotel dance band in the Scottish seaside resort town of Ayr. He then joined the Vic Lewis Orchestra, a swing band with which he toured America.
By the end of the 1950s, White was a well-established studio player in London. As well as the Beatles and Tom Jones, he played with Herman’s Hermits and Billy Fury, and on Lulu’s Top 10 hit
Shout. From 1964 he spent 10 years in Marlene Dietrich’s touring band. Later on, he joined the BBC Scottish Radio Orchestra and eventually moved to the United States, settling in New Jersey, where he taught Americans to play in pipe and drum bands and continued to perform as a freelance drummer.
White is survived by his second wife, Thea.