I've been an obsessed music fan for more decades than I like to consider, and one thing that has hit me over and over is just how wrong so many great artists can be about their own art.
“There are some things I would have done a little different now,” said Copeland. “There are too many drum overdubs. It’s such a great song, and then it comes to the end, and [if I hear the song on the radio] I’ll switch over to another station because I screwed up.”
However, Copeland isn’t taking all of the blame for the over-the-top drumming in the hit’s last few seconds.
“Where was Andy [Summers, Police guitarist] at that moment?” he mused. “Andy was a really good filter, because we all overdid it, but then usually Andy would say, ‘No. Too much. Too much. Less is more.’ And he was usually right. Where was he when I needed him at the end of ‘Message in a Bottle’?”
It's a fascinating insight...until one listens to the recording in question, at which point Copeland's POV is unambiguously revealed to be completely and totally wrong.
(Sidenote: how silly does a drummer look air-drumming? Even the great Stew-Cope can't make that look cool. Fortunately, the World's Coolest Man—and at that point he really was a serious contender—is next to him in a bowtie to take quite a bit of the heat.)
I mean, seriously, just listen to this guy! He could have gone on like, unaccompanied, for another twenty minutes and it still wouldn't have been enough.
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."
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.]
One of the giants of drumming died today. Apparently Rush drummer Neil Peart had been fighting brain cancer for years and told next to no one. Which is about as Neil Peart a thing as I can imagine.
There have been few big-name drummers who cared more or thought more deeply about drums and drumming than Peart. He may not have had the ability to make odd time signatures swing as effortlessly as Phil Collins, nor Bill Bruford's restless desire to never, ever repeat himself—to name two of the three other major prog rock drummers of the 70s—but no one ever strove for perfection like Peart. He'd spend months writing and rewriting and tweaking and honing and finally recording his parts, wondering if a flam here would be more effective or perhaps a ruff would work better or maybe it should simply be played as clean straight notes. And, of course, once the final part was settled, he'd meticulously recreate it night after night in concert, live, with tens of thousands of adoring eyes on him, and tens of thousands of adoring ears listening to every ghost note, every hi-hat bark, every perfect 32nd note paradiddlediddle.
And Peart, notorious perfectionist owner of staggering technical abilities, every one of which he worked relentlessly at, was open about how often he made mistakes. And, sure, he was almost certainly the only one who ever noticed them, but that's not entirely the point: the point is, he did notice them. And whereas a Collins would think, well, that sucks, but the show must go on, and push it out of his mind, and a Bruford would think, well, that didn't work but was really quite interesting, I wonder if there's anything to be learned from that, Peart would obsess over it, determined to do better next time. And the time after. And the time after.
And few professional musicians have ever dedicated themselves to reinventing their technique as late in their career as he did in the 90s, studying with master instructor Freddie Gruber, and changing up his approach to the drums—an idea which would have have been, was, beyond absurd to the generations of drummers would have given their left splash cymbal to have had half Peart's original technique.
But when I think of Neil Peart's drumming, I don't think of the title track to 2112, or the beloved instrumentals like "YYZ" or "La Villa Strangiato," I think about "Spirit of Radio," both because it's one of his finest lyrics, and most of all, because of the sense of humor and obvious love for music that comes through in every measure.
There are places where he seems to almost anticipate the gospel chops of the next century in his (perhaps Steve Gadd-inspired) linear fills, and it changes time signatures more often than most drummers change their socks, but it's the places where for measures on end he plays...the bass drum. Just unadorned quarter notes on the kick drum. The kind of thing he could have played after one lesson as a kid. Hell, the kind of thing he could have played before taking a single lesson. But it was right for the music, so monster drummer Neil Peart—who wrote the part—played the simplest thing possible. What's more, besotted (as the rest of the band was, along with pretty much everyone in the world was) at the time by the Police (and in Peart's case specifically the playing of the band's utterly dissimilar Stewart Copeland), he goes into...reggae. About as un-prog-like a musical style as is imaginable. But it felt right, it fit the song, so into reggae they went, by god.
Sure, there are those other parts where it goes into 7/4, 'cuz hey, that too fit. (And most amusing of all, when the song leaves 7/4 and goes back into 4/4, that's actually the measure which feels wonkiest, as the beat is displaced, ala "Sunshine of Your Love" or "Bell Bottom Blues." A tricksy bagginses, that Peart.)
The world has moved on. And we're unlikely to see the likes of a prog god like Neil Peart ever achieve mass popularity again. So pour one out for the reclusive percussionist, even though he'd probably hate it.
There are some experiences that cannot be fully understood unless one has actually engaged in or partaken of them. Having children is perhaps the most obvious. Being on a sports team that was completely in synch. Being part of the cast of a play. Being in a band that clicks. There is an indefinable yet undeniable mystery to the existence of chemistry in some groups of people devoted to a common goal which are inexplicable and yet absolutely indisputable to anyone who's actually experienced them.
I have only seen maybe one example better than this clip. Here's Sting and Stewart Copeland, famous bandmates and antagonists in The Police, playing together for the first time in 24 years. And Copeland is trying to explain that there's this one place in this one song that it's absolutely imperative they play a certain way. And Sting has no idea what he's talking about, and Copeland can't nail it down specifically—the drummer knows precisely what he's talking about, he just can't remember where it is exactly, or even, really, what it is.
And then they play the song. And when that indefinable bit comes up Sting knows instantly. And possibly even more incredible: Copeland knows that Sting knows the very moment Sting knows.
You can see it in the video—Copeland is already smiling, pointing at the singer, knowing that Sting has recognized the bit as soon as they started playing it, before Sting even says anything.
I've watched this exchange a dozen times over the past decade and the level of musical understanding between these two guys who haven't played together in 24 years never ceases to blow my damn mind.
Sting is a great writer, a great singer, and a great bass player who has created some great material as a solo artist. But The Police had a 5-year recording career, during which they released five albums. He's had a 34 year—and counting—career as a solo artist, during which he's released at least 13 studio albums. So the Police account for a mere 8% of his recording career, and he's released nearly three times as many solo albums as he did when he was with the Police. And yet to this day, Police songs make up between 33% and 50% of pretty much any of his setlists this century—and that's even including tours when he's got a new album to push, when there'll be an unusually heavy emphasis on new material.
Statistically, that's clearly out of whack. And yet obviously it makes all the sense in the world. Because the Police songs aren't just the crowd faves—although they are—they're also (subjectively, of course) the best stuff. And that's because, as an unusually insightful critic once more or less wrote:
If a great artist like John Fogerty or Neil Young or Sting writes a song and brings it to ten different bands, it’s going to sound recognizably the same yet very different, depending upon whether the drummer is Al Jackson or Ringo Starr or Keith Moon or Steve Gadd or Bernard Purdie or Dave Grohl or Carter Beauford. And if that great artist has been writing songs for that same drummer for ten years, well, that drummer is going to be part of the song the artist hears in his head as he’s first writing, before he ever brings it to the studio. John Lennon may not—couldn’t possibly—have known what Ringo was going to play on “Come Together,” but the sound of Ringo’s drums, the feel he was going to bring, if not the exact pattern, was already in John’s mind, already ingrained in his DNA.
Sting cannot have known what Stewart Copeland or Andy Summers was going to play on any given song he brought in—they were too unpredictable, in the very best sense, as musicians, with such individualistic voices, that there was simply no way to imagine ahead of time what parts they might come up with, other than to know they'd be great and characteristic and different from anything they or anyone else had quite done before.
(Seriously, there's no other guitarist in the world who would have listened to "Every Breath You Take," which has the same chord progression as "Stand by Me," and thought, "Right, you know what would go well here? A bunch of arpeggiated add9 chords, voiced in a way that's somewhat reminiscent of Bartok's string quartets." And yet Summers did and it's his guitar part that's very nearly every bit as memorable as Sting's wonderfully disturbing lyric.)
But Sting did know, down in his bones, that whatever they were, Copeland's drum parts would be great and characteristic and different from anything they or anyone else had quite done before. And because they were in a band together, and Copeland was not "merely" a [crazy talented] hired gun, he could and would then fight for those drums parts. And unlike the absolutely brilliant drummers Sting would later work with—titans such as Omar Hakim, Manu Katché, Andy Newmark, Vinnie Colaiuta and Josh Freese, among others—Sting couldn't simply fire Copeland. Because in the context of the band, they were equals, more or less. So Copeland got to have a say in how the song ultimately sounded. [And you can see how this pains Sting, when he has to negotiate on the existence of flams. Flams, of all things!] So it's not a coincidence that such a high percentage of the songs that they worked on together went on to make up the shortlist of his all-time classics. Because that's how chemistry works. Sometimes it explodes, and sometimes that's exactly the most optimal result.
The Crickets. The Beatles. Creedence Clearwater Revival. Led Zeppelin. The Ramones. P-Funk. The Smiths. R.E.M. Nirvana. Radiohead. There have been an awful lot of great bands.
This is not one of them. But only because it wasn't a real band—it was a solo artist with as good a backing band as has ever existed. If had been a real band? The core of Pete Townshend on vocals and rhythm guitar, Dave Gilmour on lead, Pino Palladino on bass and Simon Phillips on drums...well, the mind reels at what they could have created.
Incidentally, in case you were wondering, yes, this is maybe the most perfect drum performance ever, when it comes to the combination of staggering technique, brilliant inventiveness, off-the-chart energy and yet remarkable taste and restraint, including (at 3:44) the single greatest use of the double bass drums ever.
Terrible editing, of course. Hey, it was the 80s.
[ETA: ...huh. Turns out I wrote about this four years ago, and said pretty much the same thing, although I used a different version of what I think is the exact same performance.]
Restraint. Knowing when to lay out. Knowing what not to play. As Miles Davis famously advised John Coltrane, sometimes it’s best to just “take the horn out of your mouth.”
Which brings us to, incongruously, John Bonham.
Bonzo. Led Zeppelin’s monster drummer. The man who, more than any other, raised the bar on what it meant to be a rock and roll drummer. Of his peers and predecessors, only Keith Moon was as influential (although his stock has dropped precipitously since his death, while Bonham’s has, if anything, continued to rise) and only Ginger Baker as technically advanced. Bonham’s technique, his style, his sheer overwhelming volume and speed and most of all power, were mindblowing at the time and, perhaps because of his remarkable influence continuing to this day, don’t sound dated.
From the first very, he amazed. Literally: the first track off their first album has Bonham doing things with the bass drum never before heard in rock and roll. Check out the bass drum triplets he starts playing about five seconds in here—since you’re probably listening on little computer speakers it might be a bit hard to pick up, but for drummers at the time, what he was doing with the bass drum was astonishing.
"Good Times, Bad Times" outro
Later he, more than any other drummer, would go on to popularize that bane of 70s concert going experiences, the interminable drum solo. Sure, he was a star and a stud…but really? 30 minutes for a drum solo? That’s how long the entire Beatles concert at Shea Stadium was. Even the great Bonzo couldn’t make a solo of that length transcendent.
But when you have a drummer as powerful and inventive and plain musical as Bonham, you overlook such trivialities. (Also, you head for the beer stands.) I mean, you could go through any Led Zeppelin album and find who knows how many amazing Bonham moments. The way he takes songs like “Misty Mountain Hop” or “The Song Remains the Same” or “Trampled Under Foot” or “Kashmir” or “Achilles Last Stand” which are already moving forward like a crazed elephant and somehow manages to shove things up a few notches is just unsurpassed. But just check out these intros:
"Rock and Roll" intro
"The Crunge" intro
"D'yer Mak'er" intro
"When the Levee Breaks" intro
There's little there that's terribly difficult—but that's one of the points. Simplicity is often best and usually more difficult. And play any or all of those for any serious rock fan who grew up in the 70s or 80s and probably even later and they’ll be able to tell you the name of the song those come from, sing the riff that’s just about to kick in and likely even pinpoint where each song belongs on each album. How many other good drummers have that many signature moments in their careers? ‘cuz those four examples? Are just from two albums. Crazy.
Which brings us, in my meandering way, to “Ramble On.” Off their second album, the song’s notable for several things: it’s perhaps the earliest rock and roll song with Tolkien allusions—especially ironical, given that making Lord of the Ring references is shorthand for mocking geeky prog rock groups, while Led Zeppelin is generally the coolest of the cool when it comes to rock bands, and yet they’re by far the most prominent offenders. It’s good to be the king.
Then there’s lovely bass playing by Led Zeppelin’s secret weapon, John Paul Jones, contributing the most melodic, catchiest element of the music, as well as the odd percussive sound during the verses, Bonham tapping on something which has never been conclusively identified.
And finally we have the point of all this, which is Bonham’s playing. Check it:
"Ramble On"
Notice how tasteful and tasty his playing is? That five note drum riff he plays each time his drums enter? The way he plays half a measure, then pulls his snare out for the next half measure, filling the space with a quartet of syncopated bass drum kicks, and then comes back in on the snare double time for a measure. And then he does the whole pattern again. Chorus over, he again lays out for the verses.
When it comes to the brief instrumental solo section he plays it straight, with a nice smattering of syncopated semi-ghosted notes on the snare before a tiny fill leads into him dropping out for the final verse. Another few runs through the chorus and we’re out.
See what he did there? Or rather what he didn’t do? Four and a half minutes and the world’s greatest rock and roll drummer, the spiritual (if not literal) inspiration for the muppet drummer Animal, the most notorious wildman in the most notorious rock and roll band of wildmen, doesn’t even really play a single drum fill. Instead he simply sticks (no pun intended) to his pre-composed drum part. That is, to quote Luke Skywalker, improbable. And yet there 'tis.
It’s this side of Bonham which often gets overlooked in the justly deserved praise for his power. It’s the fact that Bonham wasn’t just an insanely powerful drummer—although he most certainly was that. But he was also a monster musician sharing an unlikely philosophy with the likes of Steve Cropper, Paul McCartney and Miles Davis: just because you can play something, it doesn’t mean you should.
Look at these jamokes. If you were drinking in your local dive, or maybe a guest at the wedding of a distant acquaintance, and these guys got up to play, what would you think? I mean, really. Just look at them.
Levon looks like the really good mechanic you're pleased to have finally found, even though you can't help but feel—accurately—that he's always looking down at you because you don't know as much about cars as he does. Rick looks like the guy who works the counter at the autoparts store. Richard looks like the guy who stocks the shelves at the autoparts store: there's something about his smile that freaks out the customers too much, even the most manly ones, so they don't let him work the register. Robbie looks like the guy who mixes paint at the hardware store and tries to chat up the housewives, most of whom see right through him, and don't so much enjoy the attention as feel a bit creeped out and like they need a shower. And then there's Garth—in the end, there's always Garth. He's the guy who works in the stacks at the local university library, the one you hope the librarian won't have to go to for help when you ask your question, even though they always do, 'cuz he always knows, and there's no reason you hope they won't, as he's never said or done anything weird to you or anyone you know: in fact, he never does anything weird, other than never doing anything but studying old, arcane tomes and feeding his fish. It's just that he always stares at your shoes as he mumbles the answer to even the most esoteric of queries.
And then they start playing.
Would you get it right away? Would Levon's jittery yet slinky beat immediately clue you in that you're in the presence of a master, of a man who got as much funk, as much soul in his DNA as guanine? I'm not sure you would. What about when Rick starts in with that bassline? I like to think so, but I'm still not sure; the goofy way he bops might distract you. Sure, you'd think, okay, this might not be totally embarrassing, but I don't think you'd quite realize yet what you're in for.
It's Richard's piano that prepares you. His chording is simple, sweet, tasteful...but quiet as it is, it's got that tang of the roadhouse about it—but a roadhouse down New Orleans way—that subtly shifts your thoughts and expectations and even though you haven't fully grokked it yet, you're already starting to think, well...huh. This might just
And then Robbie starts playing. And the slightly sad lounge lizard reveals himself to be the greatest guitarist you've ever actually seen in person, with just a few chords. They're not difficult chords; this isn't Jim Hall playing some bizarre inversed voicing. They're just your standard rock and roll chords...but they're rock and roll chords played with that distorted Strat tone that bypasses your aural canal and goes directly into your very being and makes it clear that the guy making those sounds knows rock and roll and he knows the guitar and suddenly the smugness seems entirely justified.
And then they start singing. And it hits you, first, that this sweaty funk workout is somehow Marvin Gaye's boppy classic. And, secondly, you realize, accurately, that if this isn't the best group vocals you've ever heard, well, you never heard better. Never. Not by the Beach Boys, not by the Beatles, not even by the Everlys. Never.
Robbie's guitar solo only confirms what you could tell by his opening chords, which is that this superior bastard is indeed superior—he's got the technical ability, but he's more than just flash: he's got the spirit. And behind him, supporting them all, is that intense research librarian who, it turns out, plays the church organ like Bach, if Bach had been raised as a tobacco farmer in Kentucky.
Turns out, and who knew? that looks can be deceptive. And that the rock, the funk, the soul, can take root in the most unlikely of places, whether a guy who looks like a smarmy bastard or a creepy stockboy. And that the proof is always in the sound. And god-a-mighty, what a sound.
So, as usual, my first thought upon hearing how beautifully the great Philly Joe Jones plays piano on this song he composed himself, is "well, that's not fair." I mean, how uncool is it that possibly the greatest hard-bop drummer ever is also a killer pianist? But, of course, that's probably not entirely a coincidence: he was arguably the greatest hard-bop drummer ever because he was a killer musician. I mean, duh, but it still felt worth pointing out. Or, really, an excuse to post this.
I can remember at least two LPs back in the day that had some variation on that theme. "This record was designed to be played loud. Turn it up!" That kind of thing.
Well, that actually does go for this. A lot of the nuances, the ghost notes and such, get lost if it's not loud enough. Of course, depending upon how much you turn it up, that does mean that the louder sections might be uncomfortably loud, but hey, that's life, no?
Phil Collins no longer seems to be the automatic punchline he was for a while, and good. A reappraisal has been due for some time—pretty much ever since his critical rating went down, in fact. But beyond the fact that I'm a fan, it was always a little baffling to me, since I've probably listened to this album of his more than any of his solo works and maybe more than any Genesis album. For whatever reason, I find it remarkably easy to write to. It's a groovy kind of love.
(The song is only a bit over six minutes long, incidentally—for some reason, the uploader put it on there twice. Hey, double the fusion, same low price!)
Nearly 75 years old. And still the coolest man in rock-n-roll. Bar none.
"I love it. It's always a thrill for me when I play with Paul. It's like good friends, people who know each other and have been through a lot together. And you know, the bass and the drummer usually are friends."
Those were some of his remarks following his much-deserved solo induction into the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame (televised last weekend).
And in typical Ringo fashion, his comments are equal parts incredibly poignant and so crazily understated. His acknowledgement of he and Paul having been through it all together is just so lovely in its simplicity, the only two remaining people on this earth who could have possibly known what it was like to be in The Beatles, the only band of its kind and import that's ever existed. And then he has to throw in the whole "the bass and the drummer usually are friends." Because, you know, ho hum. That's all we are. Just the bassist and the drummer in a little band. Hangin' out. Only Ringo could make a lifelong friendship with a fellow freaking Beatle sound as simple as two close friends in an after-work garage band.
And in terms of his, "It's always a thrill for me when I play with Paul?" I cannot speak on behalf of Sir Macca, of course, but my guess is his comment would be something like, "Right back atcha, mate."
After all, that's kinda what this picture right here is saying, all by itself.
I almost certainly listen to the pristine pop gem that is "Let My Love Open the Door" more, but "Give Blood" may just be my favorite solo Pete Townshend song.
"'Give Blood' was one of the tracks I didn't even play on. I brought in Simon Phillips, Pino Palladino and David Gilmour simply because I wanted to see my three favourite musicians of the time playing on something and, in fact, I didn't have a song for them to work on, and sat down very, very quickly and rifled through a box of stuff, said to Dave, 'Do one of those kind of ricky-ticky-ricky-ticky things, and I'll shout "give blood!" in the microphone every five minutes and let's see what happens.' And that's what happened. Then I constructed the song around what they did."
I guess that is the kind of thing that tends to happen when you have a pretty much perfect band—and it simply doesn't get better than Gilmour, Palladino and Phillips—and toss them a decent scrap of a song idea and start the tapes rolling. Of course, it does hurt to then have one of the world's great lyricists—who's also a fine singer—write over the resulting results.
Turned out pretty well, I'd say.
Gilmour's "Run Like Hell" guitar is so integral, as are Townshend's own acoustic flourishes, but (beyond the lyrics and melody, of course, and great as the horns are, and they are) the real star here is Simon Phillips' mad drumming.
Simon Phillips is what you'd get if you were to create a drummer in the laboratory using Steve Gadd's unsurpassed technique and Keith Moon's unshakable belief that the drummer should be the primary lead instrument in a rock band. Check out the sixteenth notes Phillips plays during the first few choruses, but notice just how he arranges them: his left hand is playing the hi-hat with the opening and closing disco beat so beloved by the aforementioned Gadd, while his right hand splits duties between the ride cymbal and the snare, with the occasional visit to a passing tom.
Or note the (for him) simple tension-building he does before the third verse, the back and forth on the double bass drums before two syncopated flams on the snare and a cymbal crash. There are an awful lot of drummers who could more or less pull that off. There are almost none who would have written it, and none who would have written it and played it so savagely yet crisply.
Remember in Trading Places, in the climactic scene at the end, when Winthorpe (Dan Aykroyd) and Valentine (Eddie Murphy) pull off the one of the greatest screw-you vendettas of all time by cornering the market on Frozen Orange Juice, making themselves rich while simultaneously bankrupting those evil Duke brothers?
Sure you do.
Well my favorite part comes between the :46 mark and the 1:00 mark of this clip, when Valentine nervously prods Winthorpe to make his move, only Winthorpe calmly and assuredly waits, waits, waits...and then POUNCES.
I love that. He knew exactly when the time was to make his move, not a moment sooner. He knew he'd be fine showing patience and biding his time; he knew the whole plan was safe and in place while he hung back and waited. And then when he did make his move...everything changed. For good.
I love that. Mayhap I've already said that, huh?
Anyway. Think about that, about the nearly uncommon patience to hold back for just the right moment, when you listen to this amazing little piece of rock-n-roll perfection. Particularly right around the 2:25 mark.
There is already so much to love about this surprisingly understated song up to that point. As Dave Marsh once said (I paraphrase) Pete Townshend pretty much puts on a clinic in what the right person can do with an acoustic guitar. Roger Daltrey's voice is commanding throughout, showing even a strain of sweetness on some of the verses. But Keith Moon...
...Keith Moon is only sorta there for the first two-thirds. I mean, he's definitely there. The woodblocks that set the jaunty pace for the song right from the beginning are all him, giving a slightly modified Bo Diddley foundation to it all. But what of the rest of it? The legendary fills? The crashing mayhem of constant cymbal abuse he brought to so many of their songs that became perhaps the defining characteristic of The Who's music? It's not really there. Moonie is hanging back, setting the pace but not really taking us on those majestic and terrifying Wonderland journeys he so often chose to do. Even when the music comes full flourish at the 2:05 mark, he's still missing out on a lot of the fun.
Only no, he's not. He's just playing possum. Biding his time. Fooling us all into thinking he's not here. Because at the 2:25 mark, GLORY BE does he make an entrance!
With no warning of an impending storm, Moon rolls in, literally, like the Tasmanian Devil we always knew he was. His playing is so violent, so chaotic, so jolting that it changes the entire marrow of the song. Which exists for its final minute on a plain it was not remotely near until Moonie picked up the sticks and gave his drums the what-for he knew they deserved. And it's perfect. "Magic Bus" is a great song for the first 2:24. It's an even greater song after that. Thanks for that, mate.
Just like the cool and confident Winthorpe, Moon knew the time was coming. But only he knew exactly when that time was. And what to do when it got here.
I'd already liked Phil Collins—if you were a fan of mainstream rock in the early 80s, that was almost inevitable, to some extent, and if you were also a fan of pop, it was a foregone conclusion. Genesis was hip but not too popular or poppy yet; they had a handful of hits on both Top 40 and classic rock radio, although probably nothing that went back more than four or five years, so the overkill and backlash was still quite a ways off.
What's more, I was a drummer, so while I was sorta kinda offended by a drummer who left his post to prowl enemy territory (i.e., the front of the stage), and was not nearly as blown away as seemingly everyone else by "In the Air Tonight"—drum machine? heresy!—I loved his style and his chops. His voice was likeble, maybe a bit slight but with a bit of soul, and his self-deprecating humor delightful. Not to mention he had a way with melody, and I'm a sucker for melody. Boiled down, Collins wanted to be a funkier Beatles, like the Fabs + Stevie Wonder, with maybe just a hint of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and damn if that doesn't sound like one hell of a great recipe to me.
So I liked him. I liked his first solo album and I liked the Genesis albums Duke and Abacab. But what really pushed me over the edge into full-fledged fandom was this song.
First, the horns. I loved horns. I loved horns. I was already a huge fan of Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton and other guitar-oriented musics, but horns in a pop song? Guitars were the nouns, drums the verbs, bass the adjectives, but horns were the punctuation. Question marks, commas, exclamation points, m-dashes, ellipses, even the oh so often misunderstood semicolon. Necessary, sure, but even more than that, they made the sentence, the song, come alive.
But even more, in this case, was Collins' drumming. I already heard him play more complex stuff, songs in 7/8 and 9/8, and later I'd hear much more technically impressive stuff from his stint in the fusion band Brand X. But his use of syncopation here blew my little white suburban mind. So casual, so assured. His use of ghost notes and moving the expected 1st note on the snare forward from the 2 of the measure to the e of the 1 just thrilled me. I had no idea you could do that!
Now, if I'd listened to more funk, I'd already have known that, of course. And while cultural appropriation is something of a hot topic these days, I give props to Debussy for introducing the gamelan to a wider audience, rather than criticizing him for not inventing Balinese music. I applaud David Bowie's efforts to spread the gospel of the Velvet Underground, both through covers and from utilizing their advances in his own songs.
Either way, the drums blew me away, both the syncopation and the musical stings and stabs—the way his drums play with, in and around, the vocal and the horns is just delightful. The snare is the most obvious, but his hi-hat work is fantastic, subtle and ever changing, using different shades, opening it, sometimes only slightly, in unexpected places.
It was amusing to later find out that the Phenix Horns, the horn section of the mighty Earth, Wind & Fire, found Collins' music some of the most challenging they'd ever played, largely due to his unconventional use of horns and odd phrasing, as well as his inability to write or read notated music, but listening to him put them through their paces here it shouldn't have been a surprise.
So a while back I wrote this, about how vitally important the right rhythm section is, how it's like the foundation for a building—if it's doing its job, there's a good chance you'll never even notice it; but if it's not...
That piece has since gone on to become one of our dozen most read items. (At least in part due to people searching for proof that Neil Young was once in CCR. That's CSNY, people. Yes, they're both acronyms.)
[Creedence Clearwater Revival] stood apart from the San Francisco psychedelic bands, partly because of its blue-collar earthiness and partly because their drummer didn't suck. Fogerty's spit-and-growl voice was the purple-mountain majesty above the fruited plain of phenomenal rhythm section Doug Clifford and Stu Cook, California's answer to Wyman and Watts.
Yes. Yes. Exactly. The American answer to Wyman and Watts. DAYUMN. Maybe that's why he writes for Rolling Stone.
Mick Jagger. Keith Richards. John Fogerty. All have created solo albums, some of them many times. And not one has ever come within shouting distance of what they were able to create with their regular rhythm section, despite working with musicians who are, objectively, far, far more skilled. There are plenty of other factors, of course, but after a while, it becomes hard to deny it's no coincidence.
(Good Lord, what size are Clifford's hi-hat cymbals? Those damn things look like they're at least 16".)
My imaginary friend Chris is an interesting guy. When it comes to musical tastes, we have a lot of crossover, being huge fans of Elvis, the Beatles, R.E.M. and Übërsphïnctër, as well as various and sundry other artists. But we also diverge wildly in a lot of places, in no small part thanks to our earliest musical experiences. We both grew up listening to lots of Top 40 as little kids, but whereas I grew up thoroughly steeped in classic rock, thanks to the influence of my older siblings, my imaginary friend Chris shifted into punk at roughly the same time. So we can geek out over Revolver minutiae until the cows come home, or the glory that was the Captain & Tennille, but I can't really knowledgeably discuss, say, Minor Threat and he isn't really all that familiar with Lynyryd Skynyrd or Steve Miller or the J. Geils Band.
He's also an outstanding musician, playing all the major rock instruments, including being a great drummer, so when I found this, I thought, like me, he'd find it powerful interesting.
As usual, I was right. But to my semi-surprise and kind of delight...he'd never heard the song before. This song that I'm sure I've listened to at least 200 times was completely new to him. And his first exposure to was by listening to simply Keith Moon's incredible isolated drums.
Listening to it with my ears, ears that always know exactly where Moon is at any point, really emphasizes Roger Daltrey's assertion, of how Moon sounded chaotic but was actually playing along to the lyric. You can hear how weird some of his playing is, like when he kinda turns the beat around for eight bars, or how he'll occasionally abandon the cymbals entire (if briefly). You can marvel to just how tight his quick triplet rolls are, how often he syncopates his crashes, as well as how his spots of, let's be honest, slop are just on the right side of feel. It's lovely and something of a revelation. And as my imaginary friend Chris perceptively noted, Moon's like a Dixieland instrumentalist, where he's soloing 95% of the time and yet rather than it causing everything to fall apart, it somehow actually holds everything together.
And then Chris listened to the drums in context. And he was amazed, never having guessed from the sound of Moon's drums what the final product would sound like. And he said that if you pulled out Moonie's drums, "Going Mobile" might just sound like an early 70s singer-songwriter tune that lopes along merrily.
Well, thanks to the magic of YouTube we can check out that assertion.
...and yeah. Until the guitar freakout starting almost exactly halfway through the song, it actually wouldn't have been terribly out of place as the uptempo track on an early 70s singer-songwriter LP. (Also, that's some asskickery being doled out to Pete's poor acoustic, and we are all the better for it.)
“I was not impressed,” Henley said of “American Wedding” in this new interview. “He needs to come up with his own ideas and stop stealing stuff from already established works. [He] doesn’t seem to understand U.S. copyright law. Anyone who knows anything should know you cannot take a master track of a recording and write another song over the top of it. You just can’t do that. You can call it a tribute or whatever you want to call it, but it’s against the law. That’s a problem with some of the younger generation, they don’t understand the concept of intellectual property and copyright.
Aw...isn't that just adorbs? For Don Henley, of all famous rock stars, to get all hot and bothered about a smidge of borrowing?
Allow me to elucidate.
This? Is such a great song.
No wonder the Eagles stole it.
Sure, the Eagles made who knows how many millions off their cover. (Well, "cover.") But I'll bet, at least now and then, in the long dark teatime of his soul, Henley can't help but think about the drumming of the great Howard Grimes on the original and knows he's never once played drums even a quarter that sweet, no matter how much he wishes he had. And the private jets and multiple mansions and cheering throngs tamp down the pain of that knowledge...but not entirely.
So I recently took Don Henley to task for being a pedestrian drummer. DT astutely pointed out that a perfect illustration of Henley's flaws as a drummer can be found in "Victim of Love," off their Hotel California LP.
The song starts off well—very, very well, in fact—with some snaky, funky, dirty guitar, accentuated by Henley hitting the crash cymbal and bass and snare drums. It's good. It works. But then, at 0:21, Henley does a small roll to introduce the first verse and it's...it's okay. It's a bit tasteful, a bit restrained, where the guitar intro had been nasty. But it's okay.
And then we're into the verse and it all just plods. Where the song is supposed to stalk menacingly or stomp furiously, it lumbers lugubriously. And it's not just the guitar that the drums let down, it's the lyrics, which are (unfortunately) also nasty, even bitter. But the drums, meanwhile, are just...kinda bored. They're collecting a paycheck. Henley drops in fills here and there but they're all so sparse. They're clearly attempting to be funky...but they're not. No, they're not. They're going for Soulful. They achieve Empty.
Check out the guitar solo, starting at 2:40. Now, that's nasty while still being tasteful. And it spurs the drums to...just kinda trod down the stairs slowly, despondently, when the solo's over. "Hm? Solo's done? Time for the chorus again? Oh...oh...oh...okay."
It's not just easy but instructive to compare and contrast with some of the other drummers of the time were doing, and we don't even need to bring up John Bonham, despite the fact that Henley himself compared the Eagles to Led Zeppelin (and, indeed, in terms of commercial success, they were absolutely peers).
Take a look at Steely Dan, very much peers of the Eagles, in many ways, down to the fact that the bands mentioned each other in lyrics; after Steely Dan included the lyric, "Turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening," in their song "Everything You Did," the Eagles returned the favor with the slightly more obscure (but pointed) line, "they stab it with their steely knives, but they just can't kill the beast," in "Hotel California."
So check out the title track to their Aja album, released the year after Hotel California. Note how restrained and tasteful Steve Gadd's drums are at the beginning. Frankly, in a different context, they wouldn't be out of place for a Holiday Inn lounge out by the airport. After a bit the vocals enter, and then after two minutes, the vocals are more or less done. At the 3:10 mark, the guitar solo starts, and other than some nice cymbal accents, Gadd's still laying back, for the most part, commenting on the proceedings, but biding his time. Until 4:40, and the sax solo, when it's time to let loose, which he does with a series of fills so full of complex asskickery that professional drummers isolate them and burst into spontaneous applause as they listen to them over and over all by themselves.
If Henley had dropped just one fill anything like that into "Victim of Love," it would have elevated the song substantially. He's never possessed that kind of technique, of course—few have—but if even if he'd just gone for something in that 'hood, just made some sort of an effort, it'd have made all the difference.
Now, honestly, even though the bands were peers, it's a little unfair to compare Henley or, really, almost anyone to Steve Gadd, given that he may be the single greatest drummer of his generation, a master of rock, jazz and pop, inventive, tasteful and with the technique of a dozen great drummers. What's more, "Aja" is jazzy where "Victim of Love" is not even remotely. So something kickin' but more straightforward might have been called for.
So let's compare Don Henley, instead, to another drummer/vocalist, one who understands restraint (so much so that a few years later he'd begin to use drum machines more extensively than just about anyone outside of hip-hop) and who recorded a song with almost exactly the same tempo just a few months earlier. I speak, obviously, of none other than Phil Collins.
As with Henley, Collins goes, at least initially, for a minimalist approach, his fills being sparing (by his standards)—even his intro roll isn't dissimilar to Henley's verse intro.
But speaking of John Bonham, Collins has called this his Bonham song, his attempt at a Bonzo-like feel, ala (presumably) "Kashmir." He doesn't quite get there, both because stylistically, they were just too different, but also because the song's a light year away, harmonically and in terms of mood. Maybe most of all, the production doesn't give his drums anything like the heft Jimmy Page was able to give Bonham's—there's a reason the drums on "When the Levee Breaks" is one of the most sampled ever, as it's the perfect match of drummer and production. Still, you can see where Collins was coming from. And if it's not Bonzo—and it ain't—his playing's certainly quite a bit heavier than he was just a year earlier, on something like "Here Comes the Supernatural Anaesthetist."
But more to the point, listen to the way he allows the entire thing to build. His fills at 0:32 and 0:56 aren't far from something Henley might do. But at 1:16 and 1:27, his toms play off the vocals in a way Henley virtually never imagined, and at 1:30 he's got the kind of simple yet thunderous roll around the kit that the song calls for—and, unlike Henley, Collins hears the call and answers it. And from then on, he just keeps going, with fills that are by his standards (Collins was remarkably fluent in complex time signatures, and was able to imbue compound times with a swing that even some other perhaps more technically advanced drummers couldn't begin to approach) simple yet insistent. One thing they are not is "bored."
"Squonk" is far from the best drumming Phil Collins would ever do, but he's clearly not afraid to drive the band and the song. Don Henley on "Victim of Love," on the other hand, sits back and calmly watches the proceedings with a lofty reserve. Which is one of the main reasons the Eagles could never have been The Great American Rock Band they so dearly wished to be. To be truly great in rock and roll, you have to take chances. Always playing it safe just ain't gonna cut it.
Most of all, there has never been a great rock and roll band without a great drummer. Which means the Eagles were never, ever going to be that which they most desperately wanted to be. They were going to be popular and rich (the 3rd and 2nd things they most wanted), but great was always destined to remain just beyond their reach.
Ringo Starr once said he was the greatest rock and roll drummer in the world. There are two ways for rock fans and/or musicians to react to this statement.
One is to laugh/scoff/mock the absurdity of such an assertion. The other is to think about it for a moment or two and then nod and more or less agree. Those who fall into the second category are people like Tony Williams and Steve Gadd, serious contenders for the title of Greatest Drummer Ever, or Jim Keltner and Max Weinberg. Phil Collins and Steve Smith and Dave Grohl. John Lennon and Paul McCartney and George Harrison. In other words, people who know what they're talking about. Into the first category goes, well, people who don't so much know what they're talking about. (Note: very often they're the ones who think they know what they're talking about. Very, very often they themselves are drummers, but have probably been playing less than a half dozen years, have been in only one or two bands or none and are big fans of playing in compound time. Chances are they'll learn eventually. Chances also are that in the meantime they'll worship Neil Peart.)
Check out the isolated drum track to "Come Together":
Pretty elementary, right? Two quick crash cymbal hits, four on the hi-hat and then an ascending roll on the toms and do it again. The verses are even more basic, just bass and toms. It's the kind of thing a drummer who's been playing for a year—or maybe even a few months—can do.
Except. As was once said of Miles Davis on Kind of Blue: there were literally dozens of other musicians who could've played everything he played on that album, no problem...but not one other person in the entire world who could've written it.
You know who wrote a drum part like "Come Together" before Ringo?
No one.
No one.
No. One.
There was no drum part like this.
No one else thought outside the box the way he did, in an almost orchestral manner. Not his friends, fellow rock superstars Charlie Watts or Keith Moon, nor monster technicians Ginger Baker or John Bonham. Maybe it's because, for all the jokes about drummers in general and Ringo in particular (especially his voice), he was a hell of a musician. His timing, his feel, his personality, his understanding of what a song needed and his willingness to play just that, no matter how monotonous for the drummer it may have been, all added up to make him the one and only guy who could have been the drummer for the Beatles.
Dave Grohl, a guy who knows just about all there is to know about amazing rock drumming, had a comment that was right on the money: "No one needs to defend Ringo Starr—he's fucking Ringo Starr. He was in the Beatles. Without him the Beatles wouldn't have sounded like the Beatles. And if the Beatles didn't sound like the Beatles, there would be no Beatles."
Listen to the track. Even with only the smallest hint of the other instruments and the vocals, it sounds just like the Beatles. Because it is.
Okay. So everyone knows that Ringo Starr is the most underrated drummer ever.
All hail Caestarr!
Actually, not everyone knows that. But they should. In reality, Ringo is, bizarrely, the butt of many jokes. Folks will refer to the Beatles as Two Geniuses, a Really Talented Role Player…and the Luckiest Man in History.
Which is absurd. For one thing, the Beatles might never have made it in the United States in the first place if it weren’t for Ringo; the funny-lookin’ dude with the big nose and the goofy name got a seriously disproportionate amount of the press in the early days—far more than the conventionally handsome singers. He was an easy hook for the press to go with. And keep in mind that American success was far from a given—no other British rock act had ever really made it big here before.
Then there’s the chemistry factor. When you’ve got just four guys, if any one of them isn’t quite clicking for whatever reason, even if it’s just that his sense of humor is off, it can destroy a band, or at the very least keep it from reaching its full potential. Which isn’t to say that a band has to be best friends, of course—Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey famously feuded for years, even coming to blows onstage. In fact, nobody in the Who really liked anyone else in the Who. Which is fine. That worked for them, that was their successful chemistry. Love may be all the Beatles needed, but clearly hatred worked better for the Who. And the Who’s not the only band with those kinds of anger management issues, not by a long shot. Different strokes and all that.
So Ringo’s non-musical contributions shouldn’t be overlooked. The interaction of those four personalities was a major key to the band’s success. But let’s focus on Ringo’s actual musicality.
I recall reading a Modern Drummer interview with him when I was about 13, where the pull quote was something like, “It took me years to accept the fact that I was the greatest rock drummer in the world.” And I remember thinking how absurd that was, and believing that, for pete’s sake, I was a better drummer than Ringo.
"We're gonna play soon, right, lads...?"
Which was half-right. I probably was able to play faster and more cleanly and more complicated time signatures. But to think for a moment that all that meant I was a better drummer is a sign, as if any were needed, of just how young and stupid I was. (Some things never change. Well, I’m no longer young.)
It’s my impression that most people think Ringo’s a great drummer, because he was the drummer in the Beatles, and therefore he must be a great drummer. Which seems like flawed logic, although it’s actually rock solid (so to speak).
Then there are the people who love music and are quite knowledgeable about it. This is the group of folks most likely to think Ringo sucks and to make disparaging comments about him. Another common comment from the semi-educated is “Ringo was the second-best drummer in the Beatles.” A little knowledge is a mighty dangerous thing. Paul McCartney is a brilliant musician and he’s recorded some really fine performances on drums over the years. But there’s a big difference between doing that and being a drummer. As master drummer Rick Marotta—who recorded with Paul—once said, Paul’s never played an entire gig as a drummer, and until that happens, he’s a musician who sometimes plays drums, not a drummer.
Phil Collins, now obviously first thought of as a pop singer, was one of the truly great rock drummers of the 70s, both with prog-rockers Genesis, and jazz fusion band Brand X, as well as for art rockers such as Brian Eno. He said, “Ringo is vastly underrated. The drum fills on the song "A Day in the Life" are very complex things. You could take a great drummer today and say, 'I want it like that.' He wouldn't know what to do.”
Master drummer Kenny Aronoff once said, “I consider him one of the greatest innovators of rock drumming and believe that he has been one of the greatest influences on rock drumming today... Ringo has influenced drummers more than they will ever realize or admit. Ringo laid down the fundamental rock beat that drummers are playing today and they probably don't even realize it.”
And then there's Dave Grohl, the greatest drummer of his generation, who said, “No one needs to defend Ringo Starr—he's fucking Ringo Starr. He was in the Beatles. Without him the Beatles wouldn't have sounded like the Beatles. And if the Beatles didn't sound like the Beatles, there would be no Beatles.”
"I can't hear a damn thing anyone's singing!"
Which brings us to the one group of people who virtually always give Ringo his props: drummers. Because drummers know just how damn hard it is to get exactly the right feel for any given song. They know how easy it is to play one of the same old patterns for a song, patterns which always work just fine, and how tough it can be to come up with something new, that’s not just new but also just right. They know how hard it is to practice restraint and not overplay.
And all that stuff is stuff at which Ringo excelled.
An example: the odd pattern he plays at the very beginning (and many other places in the song) of “Come Together.” There’s nothing particularly difficult about it. And yet nothing like it was ever put on record before. It’s interesting and strange and tasteful and fits beautifully—a rare and magical combination.
Another example: the odd and restrained pattern he plays on “In My Life,” where he doesn’t play quarter-notes or eighth-notes on the hi-hat, as would every other drummer in the world. Instead he merely plays whole notes, hitting the hi-hat once per measure, just before the 4. So unusual, so tasteful, so perfect. Not difficult, just rare beyond words, and yet absolutely ideal for the song.
“Rain,” “Tomorrow Never Knows,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Ticket to Ride,” “She Said She Said,” “Get Back,” “Two of Us”—these songs have nothing in common save exceptional Ringo performances, imaginatively conceived and absolutely flawlessly executed.
There are dozens, nay, scores of other examples, but just listen to one of the most-neglected masterpieces in the Fab Four’s canon, “Long Tall Sally.”
Ringo rocks so hard and so tight, it’s the drumming equivalent of a diamond’s atomic structure. Getting that half-straight/half-swing feel is an almost-forgotten art, and even back then it was incredibly hard to nail as immaculately as he did during this two minutes and three seconds (two minutes and three seconds!) of perfection. Possibly Paul McCartney’s greatest rock performance as a vocalist—if it weren’t for “Twist and Shout,” it might just be the greatest vocal performance on any Beatles recording—it’s not difficult to believe that Macca was spurred to such stratospheric heights by Ringo’s asskicking. This is one of those songs that is undeniable proof of their greatness—to cover a great song done extremely well by Elvis and brilliantly by Little Richard and somehow manage to top them both is practically inconceivable. And yet there ‘tis. An unsurpassed performance by the greatest cover band in history. The fact that the cover band was also the greatest collection of writers in rock history is merely proof that the Flying Spaghetti Monsters exists and that He loves us. Oh, and did I mention that was the first take? And that they didn't even bother with a second because how do you improve upon perfection?
I said up above that there was one group of people, drummers, who always gave Ringo his due. Actually, there was one other group. It was called the Beatles.
world's greatest garage band...even on a roof
It’s no coincidence that after the break-up John, Paul and George all continued to work with Ringo on a regular basis. Even after all three of them had worked with other drummers, including magnificent drummers like Jim Keltner and Jim Gordon and the incomparable Steve Gadd—easily a contender for the shortest of short lists of Most Versatile and Just Plain Best Drummers Ever—they all kept going back to Ringo. These are guys who, it’s safe to say, knew something about creating great music, guys who knew how vital a drummer is to great music, guys who could not only afford but also had easy access to absolutely any drummer on the entire planet. And yet they kept going back to Ringo again and again and again. As George Harrsion said, "Ringo's got the best back beat I've ever heard and he can play great 24-hours a day."
Maybe, just maybe, those guys were onto something. The Beatles was one seriously exclusive club. They didn’t let just anyone in—in fact, obviously, they let almost no one in. But they not only let Ringo in, they booted a long-time member to make room.
Ringo got in the old-fashioned way: he earned it, by being one of the greatest rock and roll drummers ever.
