I was listening to Paul McCartney being interviewed on the Stern show the other day and McCartney described Ringo as “great” and a “powerhouse.”
That got me to wondering what makes someone a great drummer. Obviously, timing is the most important skill. The closer the drummer gets to being a human metronome, the better.
But beyond that, what else can a drummer do to deserve being called great and a powerhouse?
Wow, I can’t believe nobody responded to this. Okay, I’m no expert, but I’ll take a shot:
Keith Moon comes immediately to mind, of course. He played the drums as more than just a way of accenting the music and keeping time. He used his entire trap set as an instrument and created his own “wall of sound.” I think whoever wrote Wikipedia’s entry on him put it best: “Moon was known for innovative, dramatic drumming, often eschewing basic back beats for a fluid, busy technique focused on fast, cascading rolls across the toms and cymbal crashes.” Moon’s style really comes through in the later work like “Who Are You?” and, of course, the inimicable “Tommy”.
I think Phil Collins has to be mentioned, too. “In The Air Tonight” is one of the greatest all-time drummer’s songs, and apparently Collins used some creative technology to create the signature sound.
I know I’m overlooking some real greats, but I’ll readily admit that my ignorance of pop music is vast and unexplored.
I have to disagree with McCartney’s assessment of Starr as a “powerhouse” in the annals of drumming history. Most music critics of the time agreed Ringo was doing well to keep the beat and throw in an occasional cymbal crash.
Looking over my post I realized I still didn’t offer an answer to the OP.
What makes a powerhouse drummer is creativity. Both of the drummers I mentioned were known for their creative use of the skins. Moon was full of nervous energy and had a mind that ran twice the speed of sound. He poured that energy into his drums and the result was musical genius. Collins constantly fiddled with the sound, as evidenced by his innovative use of the talk-back button on “In The Air Tonight.” And Mick Fleetwood once said in an interview that drumming was almost a sexual thing for him. Watch him in the videos of “Tusk” – if that’s not an “Oh!” face, I don’t know what one looks like.
I don’t know either, but there may be one at either :59 or 3:24 here.
This is just IMHO, but I think what makes a great drummer is one that can play amazing things, but also one that knows when not to play more than a simple beat. Every song does not require a full-length drum solo. Sometimes light playing equals good playing.
Brendon Small
In my opinion, this assessment is grossly unfair, and I know many agree with me. Ringo always knew what was right for the song. Listen to Strawbery Fields, Don’t Pass Me By, Rain, and of course, A Day in the Life, and you’ll hear a drummer who has a great expressive range. The drumming contributes a lot to the music in those tracks. Even the earlier songs each show creative beats and fills that never distract from the whole of the piece.
I think this is what makes a drummer great: being able to make a creative contribution to the piece as a whole. Technical chops are important only in that lack of skill can hinder your creative contribution.
By the way, here are some examples:
Brilliant virtuosic drumming.
The same song, covered by a not-so-great drummer.
Great understated drumming.
The same song, with terribly uninspired understated drumming.
Eh, I wouldn’t say that. An even, underlying pulse is important, but a metronomic tempo isn’t necessarily the goal. The ability to dictate tempo in a musical manner (speeding up, slowing down where appropriate) or just naturally following the tempo of the song is perhaps more important.
It’s hard for me to succinctly describe what makes a good drummer. I was thinking about it for the last hour on my drive home, and the best I could come up with is someone who has the basic timekeeping technique down, but colors the drums with his (or her, of course) distinctive “vocabulary,” one whose absence from their respective band would be conspicuous. For these reasons, I think Ringo is a great drummer. Keith Moon (though not one of my personal favorites) is a great drummer. Bonham. Copeland. Peart. Krupa. Etc.
Now, that aside, what I like to hear in drummers is musicality. I like to hear drummers that react to what’s going on in a song and color the rhythms with unexpected accents, who use the entire expressive range of their kits. You know, drummers that actually sound like they’re listening to the song they’re drumming to. I know it sounds a bit stupid, but so many rock drummers play the most fucking boring and predictable drum parts. This is where Ringo, for example, shines. I was listening to Sleater-Kinney on the way home and Janet Weiss fits in here, too. Each drum part carefully crafted to the song. That’s what I want to hear…not just your lazy eighth note hi-hats, snare on two-and-four, switch to ride in the chorus, etc. (which is sometimes appropriate, of course.)
Practice?
I consider myself an accomplished musician having taken lessons and performing percussion since I was 6.
In one word, TACT. Knowing how to be musical and what to play how and when is THE most important thing to making a drummer great. Even note rammers like Portnoy play musically.
Not a drummer, but as a musician, there you have it. In this era, drummers are no longer “back in the rhythm section” and leading edge drummers are more known for playing around the time than keeping it.
But big names of the past- “powerhouses” ( Krupa being one of recent note on this board) didn’t get known strictly as drummers, but rather as members of musical units.
Say what you will about Ringo, but tact is certainly his hallmark.
Sorry I missed this when it first came out; it’s a fascinating question.
A drummer has to find how to fit in with the band’s overall sound. It’s not so much a matter of keeping time - if the band can’t keep time on their own, then the drummer can’t contribute as a musician.
Interesting assignment - listen to bands where the drummer changed and contrast the difference. Pete Best on bootlegs (or in his current life as a nostalgia musician) versus Ringo on the same songs is a good example. Yessongs, the live album, where Alan White had to play some pieces that had originally been done by Bill Bruford. Chester Thompson on the Genesis ‘Seconds Out’, where he had to play stuff that Phil Collins used to play.
Go through a longer lived band like Zappa / The Mothers of Invention or Weather Report and you’ll hear how the whole band changes with the change of drummer.
Sometimes, the drummer is an integral, stand-out part of a band. Can you imagine Rush with anyone other than Neil Peart, or imagine how frustrated Neil Peart would have been in, say, Abba?
Other times, the drummer is not a stand out; he doesn’t solo, he doesn’t try to dominate - think of Charlie Watts in the Rolling Stones, or Levon Helm in The Band. And yet, it’s hard to imagine either group with someone else on the drums.
In jazz, the drummer sets the swing and provides the drive. One of the things I love about Kenny Clarke or especially Art Blakey is the way they egg on the soloist. It’s almost as if when the solo starts to flag or drift, Blakey would come in with a riff as if to say “No, no, son; you’re not finished yet!”
Krupa has already been mentioned, so I won’t belabour that one, but listen for the work of Max Roach, Alvin Jones or Tony Williams, and then listen to the subtlety of Jimmy Cobb on Miles Davis’ ‘Kind of Blue’ - if there were a match for the piano style of Bill Evans, Jimmy Cobb would be it.
So, summing up my long winded opinion, the best drummers integrate themselves into the overall sound of the rest of the band, either stepping into the foreground or by slipping into the groove. It’s not so much about keeping time, it’s about shaping time. There’s a lot more lyricism to drumming than a lot of people give credit for. And lots more to be said on the subject.
A good drummer, though, helps a band keep better time. I’m very particular about drummers and rhythm sections in bands, and when I play with a good drummer (and bassist), I can hear the difference it makes in my playing and the playing of the overall band. For me, the drummer first and bassist second are 90% of what makes the band sound tight or not.
Pre- and post- Keith Moon Who would be an excellent reference for this assignment. They sound like a completely different band, to me, after Moon left. As I said above, Moon is not among my personal favorite drummers, but there’s no denying he was a major and irreplaceable part of the Who’s sound.
Yeah, that sounds pretty succinct, and I totally agree.
+1 - well summarized, Le Ministre
All artistic talent exists on an axis of style and technical ability. Some amazing artists are all style and no technical, while others are all technical and no style, while many are plotted somewhere in between. For example, Jon McEntire is very technically adept but also very stylized, while Zac Hill is basically all style, but they’re equally great drummers.
I don’t know that I’d call Ringo “a powerhouse” (when I think “powerhouse drummer,” I think, “John Bonham”), but I think he gets an undeserved bad rap.
Here’s one drummer’s defense of Ringo, in which I think he makes some good points: 13 Reasons to Give Ringo Some Respect
Plus, I think Ringo had the best on-screen personality of the four in both A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, so there’s that, too.
Being lucky enough to watch Jim White from the Dirty Three from only a few metres away on many occasions changed my way of thinking about the possibilities of drumming forever.
Thanks for that link, The Superhero. Very neat article.
Hmmm. Well, all right, ignorance successfully fought. Now I gotta’ haul out my Beatles catalog and listen to it. Drat, the hours I’ll waste in this research!
That’s because Keith drove the band. Pete and John had to keep up with him or get left in the dust. Kenney was a timekeeper–he didn’t really fit with the style they’d developed. When Townshend and Entwistle didn’t have Moonie to play off of, their performances suffered.
Nowadays, Zak is the sparkplug that The Who sorely needed. He was Moon-trained, and it shows–he pushes Pete up a notch or two in a way that Jones never could.