Best Rock Drummers

Loomis - I understand what you're saying about Bonham, but playing on the back of the beat without slowing down is the essence of the "heavy" sound. There's a distinction between playing on the back of the beat and dragging and it's hard to do the right way. Carmine Appice played that way on the Vanilla Fudge records, but not quite as extreme.

Bonham was the right drummer for Zep at that time. In another band, maybe it would have been different. I heard Mitch Mitchell in a band called Ramatam after Hendrix died and it sounded like shite.

Chayro,
I completely agree about Ramatam. I had the album because he was on it, but poor Mitch must have needed a paycheck pretty bad to join those scrubs.

chayro, you got to the essence of my point--playing on back of the beat without slowing down the heaviness is critical. charlie watts or al jackson (who did all the booker t/stax stuff) play behind the beat, but don't hold back the whole flow; bonham doesn't have the same touch to my ears, although i'm biased towards the hyper, driving drum sound like baker, keith moon, stewart copeland.

Loomis - now that I think of it, I remember a record called Lord Sutch and His Heavy Friends. I think Bonham and Page both played on it, but it was horrible and Bonham definitely came off as ponderous. So it's a matter of compatibility as we all know. That was one of the worst records ever made.

just listened to lord sutch on mog (i vaguely remember him being sort of the wild man fischer of england in the 60s). it's remarkably terrible--i think it was intended as a parody by all but the singer, who's apparently a genuine loon. thanks for sharing...