So, everyone's gone through a period where they really wished they could drum in a rock band; where they've been sitting in a pub and started air drumming along to a great song on the jukebox / radio? No? Just me?
While a few genres of music can maybe get away with the tinny sound of programmed beats, or perhaps even no beats at all - many genres need a drummer at their heart. Drummers are the engine room to any rock / indie / punk / metal / blues band; they, along with the bass players, set the direction of a songs feel, they provide the groove and framework, that everything else hangs from.
Imagine Paradise City without Stephen Adler's booming thunderclap intro, or Rock n Roll without John Bonham trying to thrash his cymbals to within an inch of their lives.
It is fair to say that drummers do often come with a reputation - perhaps sometimes unkindly called the missing link, paid to hit things hard rather than form conversation or deep intellectual thought (generally speaking, very untrue, but don't let that get in the way of an amusing dig). They are often perceived as the ones with the worst behaviour and undertaking the most dramatic excesses (this reputation probably derives almost exclusively from Bonham and Moon). But, they are integral to a band and are often overlooked, while the singer or the lead guitarist gets all the glory.
Much has been written about players like Keith Moon, John Bonham, Ringo Starr, Charlie Watts or Ginger Baker - all great drummers - but here are five of my favourites. As will become clear, while I love listening to drums and drummers, I don't know much about them technically (just what I like), so describing why they are good is not easy. If in doubt, as ever, just listen to the music!
Special mention:
Actually, before we get into this, I will make special mention of a couple of other drummers who didn't quite make this five, but who are important to me musically.
Paul Hester provided a lot of soul to Crowded House across four albums and three and a half tours. He may not be regarded as one of the greats, but his warmth and humour added so much to the records and the live experience. I will also give a shout out to Mel Gaynor. Mel was the drummer with Simple Minds for well over a decade, and was the main man when I started listening to them in the mid-80s. He is known as a very muscular drummer, lots of big hitting and power fills; but prior to the Minds, he had worked for a diverse range of bands including funk and metal, so he was able to bring subtlety at times too.
Stewart Copeland:
I was very fortunate that as I was coming of age, musically, the UK charts (and thus every young persons tv show of choice, Top Of The Pops) was awash with post-punk and new wave gems. There was a seemingly never ending diet of Blondie, The Jam, The Specials, Madness, Adam Ant and so many more. And nestled among all of that was - The Police.
The Police had everything - great tunes, a bit of cheek and arrogance, a large dose of tension and edginess - and of course, three supremely talented musicians. The driving force was Stewart Copeland, a brash, middle-class half-American, half-Scottish drummer of exquisite grooves and fills, who cites Mitch Mitchell (Jimi Hendrix Experience) and Ginger Baker (Cream) as his youthful inspiration, but who has also taken a lot from Middle Eastern, reggae and other sounds too.
As well as a decade with The Police, he spent a year with prog rockers, had a solo persona called Klark Kent and produced multiple movie soundtracks, including for Wall Street, Highlander II and She's Having A Baby. He has collaborated with likes of Peter Gabriel, Ray Manzarek and Robby Kreiger of The Doors, and even Adam Ant.
Interestingly, he is a left-hander who plays a right handed drumkit. It has been oft noted that because he thinks like a composer, he brought a different sound to the Police. As Chris Castellitto says in RecordDrumsOnline, "although his unique style of playing can seem quite eccentric, he always managed to give the right amount of space to the rest of the band. He never overpowered Sting or Andy Summers just for the sake of it. You can definitely hear that his drums are very prominent on most Police’s tracks, but everything he plays is orchestrated accordingly to what the rest of the band is doing."
The Police: Message In A Bottle - https://youtu.be/0e2CuyIG7x8?si=mrbwtjrHcV7aZ_5C
(Live in Tokyo, 2008 - a great song and a trio shouldn't be this good. Copeland is simply
breathtaking)
Chris Sharrock:
Chris Sharrock went on to do lots of stuff with much bigger bands - like The La's, Oasis, The Lightning Seeds, Robbie Williams and The High Flying Birds - but it was as the young, ebullient drummer with Liverpool should-have-been legends, The Icicle Works, that he came into my world.
Someone at college got me hooked on The Icicle Works, a band that should have garnered so much more attention, in late 91, by which point sadly, the band had fragmented and Sharrock had already played on The La's monster hit There She Goes and an album by The Wild Swans (a vehicle for Paul Simpson after the Teardrop Explodes fell apart). He would go on to play with Robbie Williams and tour with Oasis (where he replaced Zak Starkey), and subsequently featured in both Gallagher brothers' follow up groups - Liam's Beady Eye, and Noel's High Flying Birds.
While all of that later stuff is all well and good, it is his work with the criminally underrated Icicle Works that cemented his legend for me. He somehow seemed to play the drums at a hundred miles an hour, yet never have it feel like they had taken over a song. To watch him play in live footage from that era is to feel exhausted - how did a man of that stature play so ferociously for so long? He always seemed to hit every part of his kit several times a second like some kind of whirling dervish.
Icicle Works: Birds Fly (Whisper To A Scream) -
(Live on Yes programme, 1983 - the rhythm he maintains in this is insane!)
Bill Berry:
Bill Berry, was a founder member of Athens, Georgia legends, REM, and is a drummer who I think has probably been quite underrated over the years.
REM are perhaps unusual, especially on those first half dozen or so albums, in that all four members seemed to be equal cogs in the machine. I couldn't imagine the songs being the same without all of their input - Mike Mills playing bass almost like a lead guitar, Peter Buck's whirling, thrashing arpeggios, Michael Stipe's mumbled lyrics that created interesting patterns and emotions (rather than any coherence of topic), and of course Berry's economical style that always fit so nicely in and around the other players.
To be a little different, and because I will struggle to explain this myself, I have turned to an online forum - with one contributor to Reddit (Sgarden91) providing a decent technical explanation as to why Berry's drumming is so good. "He has a very jumpy style..... My favourite microscopic aspect of his drumming is his hi-hat work. He does lots of triplets, open to close patterns, lots of 8th and 16th note rhythms. He paid a lot of attention to his hats, particularly in the early IRS years..... Some of his more intricate work he fits paradiddles and paradiddle variant patterns in there at spots. One of my favourite Bill Berry songs is Hyena. He singlehandedly makes the chorus. I love those sneaky toms and bombastic ride pattern that you don’t hear from him often. He didn’t lose a step in the WB [Warner Brothers] years at all, but he changed his style up to fit their music style changes for sure."
REM: Radio Free Europe / So. Central Rain / Talk About The Passion -
(Live on The Tube, Nov 1983 - all of the simplicity, yet filling out the songs)
Mark Brzezicki:
Mark Brzezicki formed a long-lasting, dynamic rhythm partnership with bass player Tony Butler very early on, that would eventually last over twenty years. They were already playing on records by both Pete and Simon Townsend, before the call to Big Country came along. His talents quickly became well known across the business, and before long he had also worked with the likes of The Cult (he drums on their classic Love album, including hit She Sells Sanctuary), Howard Jones, Nils Lofgren, Joan Armatrading and Roger Daltrey.
Mike Dolbear says that Brzezicki's "wealth of dynamic grooves propels songs but never detracts from them." He became known for his intricate patterns, often leading him to question himself: "I quite like playing fills over two bars. Nobody was doing that when I started. For me it’s about interesting rhythms. I was always torn between thinking 'was I overplaying?' or just being myself. I pride myself on being a song drummer. The song is what makes me play the way I do. I always try and play for the song."
He had cut his teeth in a good quality covers band that got corporate gigs, meaning he had to learn the latest big songs quickly (and quietly), and so he learnt very early on how to control the power and the volume of his playing. I was fortunate enough to see Mark play four times while Stuart Adamson was with us (and once since). Watching him live, in person and on video, is a mesmerising experience. With Big Country remaining perhaps the greatest live band I ever saw, Mark was and remains hugely important to me - going to back to my air drumming reference at the start, he was probably the drummer I most wanted to be (if I ever learned how to play).
Big Country: Fields Of Fire - https://youtu.be/9I6QTipR03Q?si=cNyO93nCf4xJUvxO
(Live at the Barrowlands, New Year's Eve, 1983 - those intricate patterns are sublime...)
Clem Burke:
Clem Burke was, and is, the epitome of coolness - so it is perhaps a tad unfortunate on that front, that he ended up in a band with one of the coolest of them all... Deborah Harry. Her contribution to Blondie's chart dominance for about five years in the late 70s and early 80s is obviously undeniable, as is that of band leader Chris Stein, but without Burke that success is unimaginable.
He was the one that allowed them to fuse together the riotous sound of punk, with the catchy melodies of new wave (and a healthy dollop of disco and funk), and become perhaps the most perfect pop group of them all.
He had all of the flair of Keith Moon, but somehow with more control. For the nerds amongst you - just listen to this isolated drum track of him playing on Atomic and you can really tell how much the drums elevated that song, if you then go and listen to the regular version.
Atomic (drums only: https://youtu.be/Yaxf0XgXv5A?si=Nrk7NU67jdyk_vIx
Atomic (official music video): https://youtu.be/O_WLw_0DFQQ?si=8nUXw4-KBcnYl5k0
I don't normally do this, but the main video I am sharing for this bit is a whole half hour of Blondie live. Here, they are at their 1979 peak and you will get to see, not just how phenomenal Burke's drumming is, but the pop perfection of the whole band. This is how uplifting and wonderful music can be at its best. Clem is majestic - and when the camera cuts to him, see how much effort is going in, and yet how effortless it is at the same time. If you don't fancy the whole 28 minutes (you're nuts), then just stick around for the explosion of Dreaming. I could watch him play drums all day!
Blondie: Live in Concert - https://youtu.be/Kymcob7Dw7c?si=9_aAczFQ6b3F2iiH
(Live at the Glasgow Apollo, 1979, Old Grey Whistle Test)
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