Greatest Rock Drummers
Clem Burke may not be "the greatest"- nobody is, I think he’s unfortunately underrated by some. I was lucky enough to hear Art Blakey at a Hollywood jazz club a few years before he died- as was so often the case the group was all young guys except for Art. He drove those "kids." Damn! Neil Peart Si! Rush? Not so much. :) |
I’ll go with "favorite" rather than" best" and "pop" rather than "rock" and "rhythm section" rather than drummer. This band has my favorite rhythm section ever and is just one huge, organic rhythm machine: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jeCeoMCMn84 Ironically (per Shadorne’s issues re: one drop), the featured drummer is Winston Grennan, who is generally credited as the originator of one drop. |
A lot of older non-musicians think of John Bonham as the gold-standard in Rock drumming (younger ones Neil Peart ;-). For instance, this woman I’m seeing now; she has drug me out to see two Led Zeppelin tribute bands (tb are huge in the NW, for some reason) recently (the latest just last night), both not half-bad. But the drummer in neither could come close to replicating Bonham’s style. He is unquestionably the most influential, imitated Rock drummer of them all, for better or worse. |
I saw Jason Bonham recently and he does a really great job of replicating the feel of his father while also having his own style (slightly more modern feel being more on the beat). I agree that the feel of John Bonham is hard to replicate - he really does deliberately hit late (behind the beat) quite often and the feeling is like it is about to fall apart but always catching up -this gives the music a lot of movement - and, of course, the “1” is always where it is supposed to be (he knew what he was doing). https://youtu.be/jz0XbcaO4xk |
