When the best drummer isn't the drummer

Cafe Society
1

This question is inspired by the (false!) claim that John Lennon once quipped that Ringo “wasn’t even the best drummer in the Beatles.”

I’m looking for examples of bands where the drummer genuinely isn’t the best drummer in the band—or the bassist isn’t the best bass player, or the saxophonist isn’t the best sax player, or…

Usually, a band’s drummer is the member who is the best at playing the drums; their lead guitarist is the best at playing guitar; etc. But surely there must be exceptions to this rule? I can’t think of many. For the record, I don’t think Paul McCartney was the best drummer in the Beatles, nor the best guitarist (though he might well have been the best guitarist if he had focused on that instrument), but I suspect he was the best keyboard player in Wings.

Surely some of you know cases where the person in a band who is the best at playing instrument X isn’t the regular X-player (probably because that person was busy playing some other role)? (Is John Fogerty of CCR a possibility?)

2

The Monkees are an example, though it was because they were slotted into their roles in the band by the TV show’s producers.

3

Do you think Taylor Hawkins or Dave Grohl is (was) a better drummer?

4
5

Do the nominees have to be the sole person with that role in the band? Do they have to be instrumentalists? If answers to both questions are no, and staying near the Beatles references introduced in the OP:

  • Linda McCartney wasn’t the best vocalist in Wings.
  • Yoko Ono wasn’t the best vocalist in the Plastic Ono Band.
6

I’d say they have to be the main person with that role in the band.

It’d be trivial to find examples of people who occasionally did something but weren’t the best at that thing.

7

It’s arguable that Karen Carpenter was a better drummer than any of the backup drummers who played when the Carpenters performed live.

However, when she played bass on stage she was probably not the best bassist.

8

Not only was Karen Carpenter a drummer, original Foreigner singer Lou Gramm was too, although they hired another drummer because he couldn’t quite get the hang of “walking and chewing gum” at the same time. (Their original bassist, Ed Gagliardi [1952-2014] wasn’t left-handed, either, but he had been a huge Paul McCartney fan and wanted to learn the instrument that way as a tribute.)

Phil Collins is primarily a drummer, too.

BTW, that Foreigner drummer, Dennis Elliott, used his fortune to spend the remainder of his life doing what he REALLY wanted to do, which is making works of art from wood with a lathe. However, the website does not appear to have been updated since 2011.

9

Eric Bloom was the lead singer of Blue Oyster Cult, but all of their songs that made the Hot 100 had Buck Dharma singing lead.

10

Tom Scholz has a good chance of being the best at everything except singing in Boston over the years, depending on the lineup.