the greatest drum fill in rock history

One of the things that I've learned over the past few weeks is that some people are apparently unaware of the single greatest drum fill in rock and roll history.

It's played by Doctor William Scott Bruford, aka Bill Bruford, formerly of Earthworks, formerly of King Crimson, fomerly of Bruford Levin Upper Extremities, formerly of Anderson Bruford Wakeman and Howe, formerly of Bruford, formerly of UK, formerly of Genesis (touring only), formerly of Yes.  And indeed this is a Yes song, a little-remembered ditty by them known as "Roundabout."

The fill in question occurs at 6:28 of the original recording, but here is it, semi-isolated for your listening pleasure. (I've chosen the version that's got Chris Squire's thunderous bass, and a little bit of Jon Anderson's vocals, for context, but there's also a version that's just Bill Bruford and, yes, entire days have gone by where I've just played his isolated tracks on repeat and so what if I do?)

The clip embedded should start seven measures before the fill, at 6:20. The fill itself lasts for one measure, so you can be prepared for the greatness, which begins at the 6:33 mark.

Here's what la partie de batterie inégalée sounds like without the bass (more or less):

There are at least two different transcriptions of this fill currently online. One looks like this:

while the other like this:

You'll note both agree on the first eight 16th notes, but then diverge as to what he does with the second half of the fill. While I find the first version more aesthetically appealing, the second version sound more correct to me, if still not quite accurate: I think it's correct in its number of bass drum notes, but I think Bruford used two different floor toms, where it only notates one. On the other hand, I've listened to the fill at half speed a dozen times and could never have even made a stab at notating this myself, so I'm probably wrong too and massive props to those devoted and erudite scholars.

Here's the thing that makes this fill so astonishing. First of all, it just is: it's technically difficult, it fits the music, it kicks the music into an even higher gear, and it sounds cool as fuck. But much or most or all of that could be said for so many other drum fills, so why this one? Because while technically difficult, it's far from the most difficult: there are oodles and boodles of fills by jazz and metal drummers which would make this seem rudimentary.

Two main reasons. The first is that it was improvised—unlike many other difficult fills which are planned, written, practiced ahead of time, this is jazz devotee Bill Bruford we're discussing, so this fill was, as with most of his fills, totally spur of the moment, played for that take and that take only, and never repeated. It just came to him as the measure approached, or maybe didn't even, maybe his limbs just took over and that's what happened.

The other thing is that this fill doesn't really sound like Bill Bruford, per se. I mean, it obviously does, and not just because he's playing it. But it's not as typical a fill as, say, the one he plays in the eighth measure of the song:

 

or the brief one shortly before the greatest ever:

I've always loved this other fill, incidentally. It's so short, it's almost like he refuses to do a typical rock fill, just tossing this unexpected bomb off casually, with the crash coming in on the 4 of the bar, rather than the 1 of the next measure, as is far more typical and would therefore be expected. As Bruford once said:

"Surprise, attack, understate, or overstate, but whatever you do, avoid the two cardinal sins of being either boring or predictable."

("And when in doubt, roll.")

But the main fill, the fill we're talking about, doesn't really sound like him. It's not like when Ringo swings a fill, as was his style, even during songs with a straight feel. It's not like a Bonham triplet, which are always awesome. It's not like when Collins plays double-speed at the end of a fill, as he so often did. It's not like when Tony Thompson would end a fill with an accented snare on the 4 at the end of a fill, before crashing on the subsequent 1. It's not like Steve Gadd's fill that kicks "Chuck E.'s in Love" out of the bridge and back into the song, which is so badass and so tasty but quite stylistically typical of Gadd in every way (including being badass and tasty). Those are all awesome and part and parcel of those awesome drummers' awesome styles.

But this ain't that. This fill is atypical of Bruford, it's a one-off, which sounds like nothing he'd ever do again, even as timbrally it sounds so clearly Bruford. Put all those factors together and you've got the single greatest fill in rock history, on a song which has been played to death for 50 years, and yet somehow it still skates by unnoticed.

[For the record, the greatest drum intro ever is, of course, on the Temptations classic "Ain't Too Proud to Beg," played by one of the Funk Brothers drummers—in this case, apparently, Uriel Jones (and not the also amazing Pistol Allen or Benny Benjamin). Unbelievably versatile, musical, tasteful and kickass, it easily beats out, in my mind, also phenomenal intros by the likes of Charles Connor, Ringo Starr, John Bonham, Stevie Wonder, Steve Gadd, Stewart Copeland, Phil Collins, Jeff Porcaro, Larry Mullen Jr, Dave Grohl and so many other brilliant drummers.]

Owner of a Lonely Heart

I am amazed by this video. Amazed that it took me nearly 40 years to witness its majestic awfulness. Amazed that this was made by the same band at roughly the same time as the other video they did for the same song—a video that would be (justifiably) played to death by MTV. Amazed that they decided to cut away from Trevor Rabin just as he's about to sing the echo to the title in the chorus. Amazed by the comments it's engendered:

That looks like something a junior-high school band did for their drummer's aunt's public access cable TV show.

"MOVE YOURSELF."
Hardly moves

The ratio of awesome music to awkward visuals is staggering

No parrot has been harmed in the making of this video, several stylists and visual artists died during production though.

The setting sucks. Was the whole budget spent on the parrots?

Mom! Dad's singing in the living room again.

The singer even looks like he rushed from his summer job at the Thrifty Drug ice cream counter and forgot to take his nametag off.

If you mute it, the singer appears to be a daytime kids TV presenter talking over educational concepts for the kids who were too ill to go to school.

When every contestant in the "world's least cool man" competition wins!

Holy shit this is bad. They must have felt amazing in the studio: "look Trevor Horn is making us sound like the future". And then they made this.

Good god that’s awful. I couldn’t get through the whole thing but assume the sand worm from Beetlejuice came along and ate all of them.

Now I know why so many serial killers like prog rock

I mean...just look at this thing. Are any of those comments wrong? Or even unfair?

(Okay, this one may be a little unfair. But funny!)

I feel sorry for their lonely hut. Someone should move in.

Owner of a Lonely Heart

Been listening to a lot of Yes since Chris Squire's passing which is how I got to this and, well, it's pretty revelatory. I'd read that Trevor Horn had heard this Trevor Rabin demo and convinced a skeptical Rabin to work on it, but I'd never actually heard the demo and holy god does Trevor Horn have golden ears. How the hell do you hear a #1 hit in this sporadically really interesting but generally really generic 80s AOR skeleton?

Going from that to this

is...unlikely. And yet.

Alan White's drum part is magnificently understated, while this may be the most underplayed bass part Squire ever played. Also, damn, Rabin's one hell of a rock guitarist.

RIP Chris Squire

Such a shame.

Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

This works way better than it has any right to. I wish it weren't quite so produced—I'd love it if it were just Jon Anderson and Steve Howe, one take, no overdubs—but maybe that'd be way too sparse for a song of this epic length. Still, lovely.

Roundabout

In case you ever wondered what classic rockers sound like when they're asleep.

If you made it all the way through all 27 minutes of that without falling asleep yourself, you're a far stronger (or more caffeinated) person than I.

Long Distance Runaround

It's easy to view Mark Kozelek's deconstructive covers as a clever schtick—take a poppy tune, slow it down to a dirge, maybe move it into a minor key—but one which quickly becomes predictable. And, really, I'm not sure I'd disagree. On the other hand, when the results sound like this, with Kozelek's mournful baritone managing to bring gravitas to lyrics as dippy as Jon Anderson's, I also don't care, because in addition to an interesting new—dare I say alternative?—take on a staple of classic rock radio, they kept the funky time signature and that's yeah.

Two Sides of Peter Banks

Oh, 1970s—I do love you so.

Reason #293788: please to consider Two Sides of Peter Banks, a 1973 solo album by the late Peter Banks, the original guitarist for Yes, before he was booted aside in favor of Steve Howe. It's a lovely instrumental collection, with contributions from the like of Phil Collins and Steve Hackett, then both of Genesis, and John Wetton, then of King Crimson. Check out this, "The White Horse Vale: On the Hill/Lord of the Dragon," the LP's second track: note the Ye Olde Englishe track name and subtitles. Check the lute-like guitaring. It's pretty and engaging...and then 0:49 rolls around.

Fonky! Even Merrie Olde Englande couldn't escape the inexorable pull of the wah-wah in the early 1970s. It rears its funked-out head, like a badass pastoral Putin in a gritty urban environment, then drops back, but its presence is never fully forgotten, its magnetism too damn strong.

But we're not done! Wait until 2:57! Why, if that ain't a powerfully familiar damn riff—a riff Banks always claimed he himself had written. And the accompanying guitar cries, the volume fading up and down—a hallmark of his successor—shows that he may have gotten passed over by the band he helped create, but he wasn't going quiet.