Andy White's Drumming in P.S. I Love You | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

As I’m sure most of us know, Ron Richards had session drummer Andy White take the lead on percussion during the September 11 recordings of “Love Me Do ” and “P.S. I Love You”. On each, Ringo was asked to perform the tambourine and the maracas, respectively. One thing that has always confused me is the actual style of White’s percussion on the latter.

If you look around on YouTube and whatnot, most “full-band covers” of P.S. I Love You replicate Andy White’s percussion by tapping the drumsticks on the rim of the snare drum, which creates a sound that seems … pretty accurate, on first glance. Yet, some articles I’ve read (i.e. Beatlesebooks) claim that Andy White only performs the bongos.

Is there any proof for either claim? Personally, I’m torn. It really sounds to me like it could be either, though one thing that kind of sways me toward the “bongo” argument is the fact that, if you listen *really* closely to the song, it sounds like the pitch of the hits changes a few times, especially during the first few seconds of the song. It wouldn’t be easy to change the pitch of rim hits. It makes me wonder if Andy White had a thought to go back and forth between the two bongo pitches at first, but suddenly decided to keep the pitch constant throughout the song.

Additionally, since they were using a “professional” studio drummer, I feel like it would make more sense for them to decide to use bongos on a song like this, since it would fit the Latin vibe that the song otherwise has – and might have been the same reason why Ringo was asked to play maracas, in the same vein.

Thoughts?