Greatest Rock Drummers


Given the subject line many names come to mind such as  Ginger Baker, Keith Moon, Phil Collins and Carl Palmer but, is Neil Peart the greatest rock drummer of all time?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSToKcbWz1k
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Neil Peart must be the John Bonham of his generation, as he is mentioned so many times in polls, particularly by non-musicians. No offense intended! Peart has his strengths, but he wasn't aware of his glaring weakness when he organized the recording of a tribute album to Buddy Rich after Buddy's death. Rich played mostly Big Band-style jazz, which is largely played in the "Swing" feel. Swing is pretty much like the "Shuffle" feel in blues.

Early Rock 'n' Roll, as played by Little Richard, for instance, often had a very pronounced Swing/Shuffle feel, but that pretty much died out in the 60's (in R & R; it lived on in Blues). Bands like Rush didn't incorporate any of the roots influences in their music, and apparently Neil Peart wasn't interested in learning how to play the Swing/Shuffle feel. That became obvious during the recording of the BR tribute album, when Peart's inability to play Buddy's music with the required Swing feel became quite obvious. It was very embarrassing to him amongst the drumming fraternity.

There are plenty of great rock drummers out there.  But not Neil Peart or Carl Palmer.  Neil is the best Rush drummer ever, but as soon as he steps out of that context he's like a fish out of water.  Carl Palmer is unimaginative, boring and lacks any sense of time.  What he does have is squirrel muscles which give (or gave) him enormous speed.  I joked that with Emerson and Lake gone, there was no one left that thought he was a good drummer.

Truly great rock drummers, in my opinion, would be Barry Barlow, ex of Tull, and Simon Phillips, who does mostly jazz now.  Of course Clive Bunker gets an honorable mention too.  Outside of rock, Coliauta and Weckl lead the pack, but there are so many monsters out there nowadays.
The question remains: what makes a drummer a "Rock" one? Coliauta and Weckl are incredible drummers (maybe the two best, in terms of pure technical ability), but I consider them Jazz musicians, not Rock.