Amidst my (hopefully) mild hijack of the Live Aid/philly thread to bring up Phil Collins’ showboating Concorde flight during Live Aid so he could appear at both Wembley and Vets Stadium, I mentioned what I reckon is a well known opinion in music that a good drummer in a bad band is better than a a bad drummer in a good band. I believe in may have been Cream’s drummer Ginger Baker who put it more or less that way. I know Pat Metheny has said it’s almost impossible to sound good with a bad drummer no matter who you are.
While I reckon this is true - it would be something like if Toto sucked (they didn’t) it would still be worth seeing them just for Jeff Porcaro’s drumming (it very much would). When The Who played the Smothers Brothers show, Tommy Smothers said of Keith Moon “And over here’s the guy who plays the sloppy drums…” yet he was joking.
I definitely can’t think of any good/bad band examples of this. I’ve read that it was something of an effort to get Ringo away from a somewhat popular Liverpool band to join the Beatles. And this after the Beatles had dismissed Pete Best who probabably was not really good though he had some kind of post-Beatle career (perhaps based on having been a Beatle).
Billy Kreutzman had been playin’ in the band (Grateful Dead) since he was a teenager and they didn’t really really need to pair him up with Mickey Hart though that has worked out well. Butch Trucks and Jaimoe were founding members of the Allman Brothers.
Getting back to Jeff Porcaro, he’d been a session player since he was 16 and if he ever played in a bad band he made them good. And back to Phil Collins he had been a session musician of no particular reknown when he joined Genesis and I’m not even sure he was replacing anyone in particular (John Mayhew?)
Is this saying then mostly true in the case of bar bands? Or the kind of band a promoter or prospective manager might say, “Your singer is great, love the guitarist yet the drummer’s got to go?”
Does anyone have any opinions or examples that are exceptions to this statement?
It is a fake quote but it is a popular one that, when John Lennon was asked if Ringo Starr was the best drummer in the world Lennon quipped that he wasn’t even the best drummer in the Beatles.
Fake but funny.
To me, drums span a wide range in music. Some bands have simpler music but it is still catchy and they do well. Some have amazing drummers but aren’t your cup of tea.
Of course, if the person has no talent and is just banging on something (as I hear all too often with street drummers banging on buckets) then it is just crap.
Drums and bass are the backbone of any band. A good drummer and a good bassist can go a long way in covering up bad everything else.
I know this because I’ve played with bad drummers and it just throws everything else off. No amount of guitar or singing brilliance can cover up terrible drumming.
I think this would depend on what you mean by a “bad drummer.” I think you can have a good band with a competent drummer, as long as they can keep time and do the basics.
But it is true that drums have less tolerance for slop. If you can keep time and be sloppy, it can be okay. But that’s actually harder than keeping time and staying on the beat.
Definitely. “Bad drummer” has a different threshold if you’re in a Rush tribute band than a standard classic rock cover band. I’m in the latter, so I don’t at all mean that as an insult.
Again, with the exceptions of genres that require specific chops, this is mostly true. A great band, though, requires a really good drummer. Bass and drums are the backbone.
Those who have sought the true origins of this quip have commonly attributed it to a 1983 television appearance by British comedian Jasper Carrott. Although Carrott may have employed the gag (or something like it) back in 1983, a more recent discovery has traced the earliest known source to a joke used in a 1981 British radio comedy show
Exactly. As a sometimes musician who has recorded and toured, nothing, to me, is more important in a band than having a solid backbone of drums and bass. If the drummer is bad, you’re absolutely screwed. When you play with a good drummer, they make everybody sound better.
ETA: And by “good drummer” I don’t mean chops. Ain’t got nothin to do with chops. I’m talking keeping the pocket. Having that beat, that sense of time, that sense of DYNAMICS, musicality (listening to what other instruments are doing), and just an overall groove to their playing. They don’t have to be able to play anything faster than a sixteenth note if they got that down.
I seem to recall that Carl Palmer was generally considered a terrible drummer, in that he was all flash but couldn’t keep a beat. But the other two guys didn’t seem to mind enough to kick him out and get someone better.
I can think of 2 instances of this. The first was the only time I saw Led Zeppelin in concert. This was around 1972. Vanilla Fudge was the opening act. Carmine Appice’s drumming made the show for VF. Then Zeppelin came out and John Bonham took drumming to many levels higher.
The second time was when my wife and I went to see Mannheim Steamroller for one of their Christmas shows. The drummer, Tom Sharpe made the show. It is rare for the drummer to be center stage in a concert, we now know why he is front and center for MS shows.
As a professional musician who has played with lots of drummers, both good and bad, I’d say it is absolutely true that it is impossible for a band to sound good without a good drummer. Like noted above, they don’t have to a be a chops monster, but they very much have to keep good solid time.
Jeff Porcaro was mentioned above. In his amazing career, he never took, or had any interest in taking, a drum solo, despite having more than enough chops to do so if he had wanted to. He was famous (and very busy) because he could play a groove like no other, and always played for the song, not for himself. A good drummer doesn’t guarantee that a band will sound good, because everyone else has to have good time as well, but if you don’t have that foundation, the house is going to crumble. Or, at the very least, the other musicians are going to have a very long and frustrating night.
A band isn’t going to sound good without at least a competent drummer.
But even a great drummer can’t rescue a mediocre band.
As a bass player I’ve played with a few excellent drummers (Hi Stef!) and we sometimes had an almost telepathic rhythm section from understanding each others feel and emphases.
A touchstone for a drummer though, is if they can play with a click track.
Long Ago in a Band Far Away, we were trying to get a song recorded and the tempo kept shifting.
I insisted we should try a click track… and the drummer got so annoyed that he tried to strangle me and the other band members had to pull him off…
An interesting case is Keith Moon on “Won’t get fooled again”… he seems to hold it together!
Did Pete do a lot of studio trickery to pull those drums into shape?
A drummer should be able to play with a click track, but some music is best recorded without one, if the drummer is up to the task. Music isn’t always supposed to be perfect, tempo-wise. Much of the music recorded in the 1970s was done without a click and there were some great grooves put on record in that era. Jeff Porcaro, one of the grooviest drummers on the planet hated to play with a click and nobody ever complained that he didn’t use one. Of course, he also had an amazing internal sense of time.
You are absolutely correct that a great drummer can’t rescue a mediocre band, but if they play with that drummer a lot, it can often help them improve. It’s hell for the drummer though.
Heheh, yeah, this. If the drummer can keep a beat and keep their accents on the right beats, they’re not a bad drummer in my book. Frank Beard was just fine for ZZ Top.
Woah, that track with Pete Best is damn loose, though.
Heheh, and that’s why I generally don’t ever suggest a click track. Might as well ask if you can date the drummer’s mom.
I was once sitting around and being a go-fer at a friend’s studio while some other friends of mine were making a record. At the chorus, the drummer tended to race. My friend who was behind the board would stop them and tell them they were racing. I didn’t say anything, but they probably threw away a dozen really good takes of the song over that. The final product where they didn’t race in the chorus sounded kind of bland. I wish I had told him to let them finish one of takes he ended up interrupting.
And I dunno, lots of people hate Meg White’s drumming. I personally kind of like it. They were plenty successful.
As I recall drummer Danny Seraphine was fired from Chicago (after ~23 years) at least in part because he couldn’t adapt well to playing with a click track in the studio. A lot more of it was apparently personality clashes, but that was apparently the last straw and the formal excuse given.
