Purchased by Starr around July 1960 from Hessay's music store in Liverpool, it was a custom combination of Premier's 58 and 54 drum kits. The four-piece kit consisted of:
- 20"x17" bass drum
- 12"x8" rack tom mounted on a non-standard Rogers Swiv-O-Matic tom-tom holder
- 16"x16" floor tom
- 14"x4" Royal Ace wood shell snare drum
- Premier Zyn hi-hat cymbal and stand
- Premier Zyn crash cymbal and stand
- Premier Zyn ride cymbal and stand
I'd seen one in this finish at a music show and told Ringo it looked magnificent.
Bernard Michaelson, manager of Hessay's Music Store, Liverpool, interviewed by Andy Babiuk 17 March 2002, in Beatles Gear: All the Fab Four's Instruments from Stage to Studio(p70)
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Ringo plays his Premier kit at ABC TV's Teddington Studios for Thank Your Lucky Stars on 17 February 1963. The Beatles "bug" logo features on the drum head. |
We played around with different ideas to find out which ones they liked. I did about five to ten drawings - which I've still got - and showed them to the group. They settled on one logo, which was put on a piece of linen and stretched across the front of the drum.Starr continued to use the Premier kit until April 1963, when he and Brian Epstein traded it in for a new Ludwig Downbeat kit at Drum City, 114 Shaftesbury Avenue, London.
Tex O'Hara, interviewed by Andy Babiuk, 19 August 1996, in Beatles Gear: All the Fab Four's Instruments from Stage to Studio(p82)
The Premier kit was used on the following Beatles recordings:
- Love Me Do (Single Version) (Past Masters)
- How Do You Do It (Anthology 1)
- P.S. I Love You (Please Please Me)
- Please Please Me (Please Please Me)
- Ask Me Why (Please Please Me)
- There's A Place (Please Please Me)
- I Saw Her Standing There (Please Please Me)
- A Taste of Honey (Please Please Me)
- Do You Want To Know A Secret (Please Please Me)
- Misery (Please Please Me)
- Anna (Go To Him) (Please Please Me)
- Boys (Please Please Me)
- Chains (Please Please Me)
- Baby It's You (Please Please Me)
- Twist and Shout (Please Please Me)
- From Me To You (Past Masters)
- Thank You Girl (Past Masters)
- One After 909 (Anthology 1)
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