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Seventeen top drummers

[Derek the drummer]by Derek K. Miller

When people hear that I'm a drummer—and one who makes a living at it, as long as I wear a wig (as in the photo)—they usually ask me who my favourite other drummers are, or which ones most influenced my playing.

Mine are all rock players, since that's what I do. Oddly enough (or not, given drumming's demographics), all are also men. This list of "greatest rock drummers" from Australia's Triple J radio might also interest you, although it lacks any commentary and inexplicably excludes both Gary Mallaber and "Jabo" Starks (see below).

  • Al Jackson Jr. was the session drummer for Stax/Volt Records, and one of Booker T and the MGs, who might be rock 'n' roll's greatest instrumental group. A music writer once called their "Green Onions," from 1962, a "steaming skillet of groove." Jackson's bare-bones playing is a big reason why. He was also the beat behind Sam and Dave, Albert King's "Born Under a Bad Sign," and dozens of other hip-shakin' hits. "I don't like to break up rhythm," he said. Right on.

  • Ringo Starr, Keith Moon, and John Bonham. No one who plays in a sixties cover band, as I do, can avoid the influence of the drummers for the Beatles, the Who, and Led Zeppelin—who also cover the stylistic map. (I should add Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones too, but he's almost too tasteful in this context.)

    Ringo was often dismissed as talentless—not least by jazz (and rudeness) legend Buddy Rich—but all you have to do is listen to "Saw Her Standing There" or "Come Together" (or the Beatles with Pete Best on drums before 1963) to know that's not true. Plus he sang (sort of) and was funny, not just the guy in the back nobody knew.

    Moon might have been clinically insane. He played like it. No one has duplicated his chaotic style, and even trying can be unsafe. (I speak from experience.) Grab the 1995 extended live CD re-release of the Who's Live at Leeds. Right off the top, Moon is flailing around, playing less with technique than with the pure force of his personality, yet somehow he's elevating the music too. Listen to the instrumental build in "Fortune Teller" on that disc, before the band speeds up the song. Moon is hitting his tom-toms as hard as he can, like a jackhammer. But you can still hear him screaming over top.

    Bonham was the most proficient of the trio, but bombast and a huge sound were not what made him great. (That's what so many of his imitators seem not to get.) Instead, Zeppelin singer Robert Plant often praises Bonham's "thrift," which was his genius. On songs like "Kashmir," he plays straight, boomp-thwack-boomp-thwack, and lets the song do its job. Even in strange time signatures, as in "The Ocean" or "Black Dog," he plays very tricky arrangements as if they were the easiest thing in the world. Most rock songs are in 4/4 or maybe 3/4 (waltz) time, but Bonham would play 7/4 or 15/8 time, droping a beat or doubling it up, as the bare minimum to make it seem normal, even powerful. And nobody tops the drum breakdown before the guitar solo on "Fool in the Rain."

I'm self-taught on the drums, so I guess those guys showed me how to play. There are, of course, many honourable mentions too, from Kenny Aronoff (of John Mellencamp, John Fogerty, and the Smashing Pumpkins) and Pistol Allen (of Motown's Funk Brothers) to Manu Katche (Peter Gabriel, Robbie Robertson) and Jim Keltner—just to mention some As and Ks. Meg White of the White Stripes is great, even though (or, more precisely, because) she has almost no technique at all. Some influence me more than others—I play a lot like Ringo (or Meg), but very little like Copeland (or Crash)—but I enjoy hearing them all.


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Page BBEdited on 21-Aug-03 (originally published February 2003)

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