Not so much rock, but the best drummer I have ever seen live is Mitch Marine. I wonder what he is up to these days.
Ringo Starr fans: could you point me to some of his work that you consider great? I admit I haven’t listened to the Lads in ages, but his drumming never impressed me all that much.
When you speak of “swing” and “groove” and “back of the beat,” you are speaking to musical limitations. When we compare Bonham and Moon, we are talking about a tennis player who plays superbly with the net in place, and one who acts as if the net never existed. That’s what we’re talking about. I’ll take Moon.
Okay, I should have included Copeland in my top 10. Without him, The Police would’ve sounded like the pretentious pricks they all are.
Never ‘eard of ‘im, though I saw Soundgarden on Letterman a few years ago. The drummer didn’t grab me.
Every band wants a drummer that plays like Ringo, and still advertises for it, too, to this day. Good choice.
That wiggly little pony tail of his in the 1980’s always bothered me. What was Peart trying to prove? “I can look like a fag and not be a fag! See? I’m trendy!” I hated that. Reminded me too much of Marin and Sonoma County asswipes attempting to do the same.
Moon never would’ve done that, even if he had lived past 1978.
This said, Peart just took it too easy on too many Rush numbers to be taken seriously as a great drummer. He even took it easy on numbers he wrote himself. Prick. Moon never did that, and he wrote (and sang on) some of the shittiest numbers The Who ever played.
As for Moon, we just have a fundamental difference in what we perceive the role of drums to be in a band. I think Keith Moon only works well in the context of The Who, but works well enough and is original enough to put him at #6 on my list. Any other band, and it’s a train wreck. Then again, that’s part of the charm, ain’t it? And he embodied the spirit of rock and roll better than any drummer before or since.
I’d point to “Rain”, “She Said She Said”, “A Day In The Life”, “Ticket To Ride” and “Tomorrow Never Knows” to emphasize his particular style; while not technically brilliant (I don’t think even hardcore Ringo fans are going to put that forward as his strong point), they illustrate that he was playing drums for rock/pop music in a way that hadn’t been done before - listen to the drums on pre-Beatles rock and pop songs, and it’s easy to see what he contributed. Most of all, though, I think Ringo’s work served the songs better than almost any other drummer ever; compare him with Pete Best and you can see how integral a part of their songwriting he was. Sure, plenty of drummers could have done fills that would have sounded more flashy or technically impressive, but I can’t think of any that had such an intuitive understanding of exactly what was needed to make a song perfect and adding precisely that - no more and no less.
I’m a Soundgarden fan, so I’m not exactly objective - but I’d say he has two major things in his favor: stylistically, the band covered a pretty large amount of ground (they started off heavily grounded in punk and metal, and incorporated more psychedelic elements in their later years), and Cameron had to deal with some weird time signatures and things while still playing with authority.
Weird time signatures are overrated and less mysterious than they seem. Any decent musician should be able to feel them after taking the time to get used to them, especially a drummer. They really aren’t as difficult as people give them credit to being. I’m not a good drummer and I can play a 15/8 line without any effort on the traps. It’s about feeling the rhythm, not counting it. 'Course, can I play it with the authority and musicality of Matt? Of course not. But I think all decent drummers should be able to play outside of 4/4 if they need to. I mean, their instrument is all about rhythm and time.
However, I came to Matt Cameron via, believe it or not, the Matt Cam on those Pearl Jam DVDs. My brother is a big Pearl Jam fan and I wandered across the room one day when he was watching one of his DVDs. I stopped in my tracks and said, Whoa…who’s the drummer, he’s pretty damn good, only to find out it was Matt Cameron of Soundgarden. There was something about the musicality and lyrical quality of his drumming that made me pause and listen–the phrasing. That’s what it was. The phrasing of his drum lines is what grabbed. After that I paid much closer attention to his drumming and found out subsequently that he is, indeed, praised highly by his peers. If I were starting a rock band today, he’s the guy I’d want behind the kit.