@FastBikerBoy, Do you know who Beethoven is?  He is much older and less influential than The Beatles.

Ringo, in his modest way, claims not to be very good technically.  I don't know if that's true or not, but, in art, creativity beats technique every time.

Not enough credit is given to Paul McCartney's stand in. After Paul died it could have been the end for them but that fella who took over was great... until Wings.

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Although it was not Pete's decision...

Pete Best was sacked because, as George Martin puts it "He couldn't keep time very well"

Which is kind of ironic because  a lot of their records have several different tempos due to splicing together various takes. I think they had Cakewalk's metronome from Sonar 6 ie the one that went missing.

I always thought Ringo to be one of the good guys. A great drummer and he didn't have his ego hitting others in the face.

George was also a good guy. John and Paul not so much.

As to the Beatles having more influence than Beethoven that is a very incorrect statement. If anything Beethoven had influence over them and not the other way around. He is responsible for the the romantic movement in music. One would be hard pressed to say the Beatles changed music to the the degree Beethoven did.

Heck a lot of the Beatles music can be traced back to Beethoven. Structure, themes and chords are in many ways traceable to their use in the Beatles work directly to Beethoven.

Beethoven never gets the respect he deserves from rock and roll musicians. LOL

Anyone that made that statement hasn't listened to Beethoven enough.  

The best way I can sum up Ringo's playing: " Subtle Awesomeness"

Rocky

Nowadays they would use EzDrummer - Vintage Kit  (for awesome subtleness) 

John, I was just giving FastBikerBoy a hard time about acting like he didn't care about older music.

I grew up on the classics and they were very influential on me.  I actually started out classically trained, playing concertos, sonatas, and all that stuff.  I studied piano with a private instructor for many years and did a few years on organ (as in pipe organ) at TCU.  My first experience in a recording studio was with an ensemble (string section, horns, woodwinds) that I brought in to back my rock band which was doing strange music I wrote: an odd mix of drums, heavy guitars, synthesizer, piano, and small orchestra.  It was a little ambitious but interesting.
 
I leave it to a historian or anthropologist to figure out which musicians most influenced music, culture, politics, etc.  I think we can agree that Beethoven was an enormous force and that The Beatles were the catalyst for a huge change as well.  Of all the famous composers from the classical and romantic periods, Beethoven is far from my favorite, but that is just a personal thing.  He definitely was a genius.