I'm sitting here listening through headphones to "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" from The White Album.

The stereo image is interesting.

Clapton's guitar, a bit of piano/organ hard left.

Vocals down the middle, later some percussion and other padding bits as well.

Hard panned to the right there is the grunty bass and Ringo's sparse but absolutely right for the song drums.

Which places all the weight and low frequencies on the right. Not an approach that's considered "wise" today.

Dropping the track to mono actually sounds better (to me) because it focuses everything into a more coherent whole. Then again, I'm not a world-famous songwriter/musician with a career history and reputation that means I can tell a major label how I want things to sound and be absolutely certain they'll release and publicise it. :-)

those early beatles mixes, when they were trying out stereo for the first time,
really bug me!!
 
LOL
 
 

I'm with the others. Though it doesn't really matter, I personally prefer listener perspective when mixing....drummer perspective when actually tracking for myself or any drummer that comes through my doors.
 
When I mix a song in drummer perspective, it not only sounds wrong to me, it now literally bothers me! LOL!! That said, it took me a year to get used to listener perspective. But now I won't have it any other way unless someone asks for drummer perspective. Again though....there are no rules.....do what you feel sounds best. :)
 
Just whatever you do, don't go cymbal and tom "pan crazy" where cymbals and toms pan completely hard left/hard right. Realistically listening to that, it sounds bad in my opinion and makes your drum kit sound separated and VERY disconnected.
 
Toms and cymbals are accent instruments. They don't really need "oh my God" pans to jump out at you. I'm not saying don't pan them...what I'm saying is, keep them within the drum kit. In real life pans....you wouldn't hear a cymbal or a tom completely to the left or right of you to where it can step on top of a hard panned backing vocal, rhythm guitar track or even a keyboard line. It's more stuff you have to worry about as far as mixing and masking with other instruments goes.
 
Granted, the frequencies used by drums are different than the instruments you will have hard panned....but you can still have issues every time a drum walks on top of another instrument IF you're not careful....especially if you're a novice. You just don't need the extra headaches. We have 200 pan possibilities. We can create beautiful music that all has a place in the field without having any of it walk on top of something else. In a nutshell, just be careful or you can make yourself work so much harder to clean stuff like this up. :)
 
-Danny

Ringo was a lefty, was he not? Considering how influential those recordings were the "it matters not" sentiment does get driven home a little more. I just think it adds a little quirky flavor but I still do audience just 'cause I ain't that adventurous yet.
 
I love Moon (duh... I'm a spazz) but when you really listen to Ringo... well just so much being done with so little. The way all his hits kind of "wash" in and out and the imbeccable meter is just really cool. He gets (or used to get) a bad rap and been the butt of Beatles jokes but take him out of the equation and they may not have been the phenomena they were. He WAS a click track and really as cool and crazy as Moon and some of the other lunatics were in the early days it was all kind of fluctuatiing weirdness which I'm starting to realize is a little subconsciously offputting to the general public (and perhaps why that blasted electronic *OONTZ OONTZ OONTZ* erm... music... is so popular these days).
 
And back in the day Ringo really was smashing those buggers in comparison to other popular drummers. You'd have to reach out to swing weirdos and Buddy Rich/Gene Kruppa to get any heavier. I find that a little hilarious because the beats, lysical content and general attitude of those older, acceptable acts was actually WAY more out of control and suggestive than the really early rock and roll.
 
Meh... blathering break.

Ringo led with his left doing fills but his kit was setup normal like a right-handed drummer.