Greatest Rock Drummers

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.

Reggae drumming is off-putting? That’s a new one 🥇

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.

bdp24
Your drumming insights are appreciated. Cheers.

audiolabyrinth, I agree, most of the posters have not heard Mike Portnoy. He can do more with his feet than most of the posted drummers can do with their hands. Neal is good but pretty basic. Listen to some older Dream Theater with Mike and then listen to some Rush songs: Rush songs are basic in nature. Dream Theater changes tempo all the time and the drum rifts are complex in nature. Ian with Deep Purple is also very good and Bohnam was excellent. For posters that indicate Ringo and Charlie are good drummers don’t know what a good drummer is. I could teach somebody to play a Beatles song or a Rolling Stones song in very little time. It is very hard to duplicate Mike Portnoy even with many years experience