'I was floored by Dave Grohl’s playing with Nirvana, because it was straightforward, but he somehow played in a way that really delivered the message of the music.” When a quote like this comes from another player considered one of the top-25 drum gods in history, you know it’s saying something. And, yeah, Slayer’s Dave Lombardo really did hit Dave Grohl’s genius on the head. More than almost any other player in recorded history, Dave Grohl 1) consistently has a drumming statement to make, 2) frames that statement in absolute service to the musical scenario, and 3) makes that statement with complete clarity and unbridled passion.
As time has passed, the reasons for Nirvana’s brief but overwhelming popularity in the early ’90s have become even clearer. Beyond the perfectly timed, artfully realized message of teenage frustration that songwriter Kurt Cobain was able to communicate…more than the unique sonic balance of pure pop and skuzzy punk the band portrayed on their breakout album, Nevermind…the band simply ROCKED, and that largely came down to the indomitable heft and architecture of Dave Grohl’s drum performances.
Let’s face it: At the time, many drummers missed the point, focusing on Nirvana's relative musical simplicity and apparent auto-destruct approach. But after the ashes of Nirvana’s demise settled, and Grohl’s talented Foo Fighters band practically overtook MTV and rock radio, mainstreamers began to get it. Dave Grohl was simply a monster of thoughtful yet pummeling rock drum dynamism.
These days Grohl is often thought of first as the front man—on guitar and vocals—of the still relevant Foo Fighters. But Dave’s never far from the kit, and even when the focus seems to be away from his stickwork, he’s finding (or concocting) a cool platform for his famous skin assault. Whether guesting with established stars like Tom Petty (on a famous Saturday Night Live appearance), touring with musical buds like Queens Of The Stone Age, or recording some whole other thing like the metal-mayhem project known as Probot, Dave Grohl is doing some serious drumming—somewhere, somehow.
His Own Path In March of 1992, Dave Grohl let us in on a couple secrets: “I never studied drums,” he said, “and I don’t read. I actually play guitar better than I play drums. I just got more into the drums because I happened to be a better player than the drummers they had in the bands I was in.”
Influencing Thousands Nonetheless He might not have been a traditionally schooled player, but Grohl was clearly doing something right from the get-go: “Someone came up to me during the Scream reunion tour, and he gave me a CD of his band and said, ‘I’m an old Scream fan, and your drumming with them influenced this.’ That was the first time anyone ever said that, and I felt like I wanted to cry. Trophies are great, but having touched someone musically is a whole lot better.”
The Role Of His Drums Kurt writes basic 4/4 pop songs,” Dave explained once, back in the day. “And the drums have to propel everything. That’s an important element. Whether the drums stand out to people or not isn’t what’s really important. That it sounds like a big bomb going off is.”
Louder Is Better “A lot of people in rock drumming don’t really utilize the toms,” Grohl has said. “They’ll do rolls on them, but I don’t do too many single-stroke rolls. Most of it is two hands down at the same time. If you hit two things at the same time, it’s twice as loud as hitting one thing. I’ll do the same thing with my cymbal hits. You can play a lot harder when you do less. And when you have more space, you have a lot more time to get your arms up higher in the air. That gives you a lot more power.”
…But That Isn’t The Whole Story “You have to play with dynamics to make it sound good. That’s the beauty of what John Bonham would do. You could see that he wasn’t destroying his drums all the time. And when he did, it would jump out at you. It’s all about picking those moments. In doing that, you have to give yourself some room to go up and down.”
Put Some Weight Behind That Grohl’s bass drum technique is all about optimum transfer of power: “I don’t put my heel down when I play my kick drum, I kind of pounce on it with the ball of my foot. That way I can hit harder and put more weight into it. Also, by sitting very low—I sit as low as possible—I can put a lot more weight into it because I’m pushing forward.”
How To Self-Regulate Your Dynamics “If you’re recording drums at home by yourself with one microphone, you have to ‘equalize’ your playing. That’s the only way you can get a decent recording out of one mic. You have to make the drums sound like they’re mixed, but do it all by yourself. Lay off the cymbals a little bit, let the kick drum come through, and let the drums ring out.”
Even It Up “When I was young,” Dave remembered, “I tried to focus on consistency between the hands. When doing a single-stroke roll, if you’re going to make it powerful and you’re going to blast through the snare, some fills sound best when there are no accents and both hands are consistent, sounding like a machine gun. Honestly, the reason I do single-stroke rolls and flams is because of my learning to play the drums on pillows, with no resistance. Then it’s just a matter of creating [fills] that are interesting.”
The Ever-Popular Flam Grohl’s timely use of flams is well-documented. “I’m a big fan of the flam,” he once confirmed. “I would rather throw in a Tony Thompson flam fill than something off of [Rush’s] 2112. And flams aren’t as simple as they seem. They really have to sync with the track. Your two hands have to be the correct distance apart. And if you flam a drum and choke it, it doesn’t work. Dale Crover from the Melvins is my favorite flammer of all time. His are like fireworks.”
This article was excerpted from Modern Drummer’s recent publication, The Drum Gods, available at www.moderndrummer.com.
The greatest rock ’n’ roll drummer in history was a soul drummer.
Despite all the deserved attention paid to his brilliant soloing ideas, his rhythmic sophistication, or his bass drum prowess, John Bonham was, above all else, a groover.
Drummers inherently pick up this, even if at first they don’t realize what it is that draws them to Bonham. Like every British rock musician in the mid-’60s, the members of Led Zeppelin played in groups specializing in amped-up versions of black American music like the blues, R&B, jazz, and soul. To play that music convincingly, you had to swing, and few drummers in any genre have swung with as much swagger as John Bonham. As cool as his beats and fills were, Bonham’s delivery was what truly set him apart.
In the liner notes to Led Zeppelin’s Box Set, Zep bassist John Paul Jones explained how, on the plane, he and Bonham would listen to James Brown tapes. “Bonzo had very broad listening tastes,” Jonesy shared. “When we weren’t listening to James Brown or Otis Redding, he might be listening to Joni Mitchell or Crosby Stills Nash & Young. Bonzo was a great lover of songs.”
No discussion of Bonham—or Led Zeppelin—would be complete without talking about sound. Zeppelin guitarist/producer Jimmy Page is one of rock’s great sonic architects; the inventiveness and taste he wielded while recording Led Zeppelin albums is unparalleled in rock history, and Bonham’s drum sound is an integral part of that legacy. Jack Irons of the group Eleven (and Pearl Jam and the Chili Peppers) gets understandably animated when talking about Bonzo’s awesome sonic presence: “Arguably he had the best drum sound in rock history,” Irons states. “So, the best player also had the best sound. And his sound was certainly big, but not big in the subsonic way associated with today’s recordings. It was really explosive and full of attack, and it didn’t avoid overtones. And that great tone complemented his playing. Bonham couldn’t be separated from his sound; it went with him.”
Songs, sound, and soul. Go ahead, call Led Zeppelin the first heavy metal band—and by extension, Bonham the first heavy metal drummer. But ignore the band’s advanced song craft, forget about the revolutionary tones, or miss the depth of their collective feel, and you fail to truly understand the nature of their greatness. Or the genius of John Bonham.
John Bonham was born in the north of England, outside the industrial city of Birmingham, far from the urbane London scene that Zeppelin mastermind Jimmy Page inhabited. He was a big guy—a bricklayer by trade—and his thunderous, adventurous playing gained him a reputation on the local music scene for playing far too loudly, getting him and whatever band he was in kicked off the gig before the night was up.
Jimmy Page had already logged hundreds of hours as a top session guitarist before joining a late version of The Yardbirds, one of London’s most popular neo-R&B bands, who had also featured two other future guitar gods, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Another studio heavy, bassist/keyboardist/arranger John Paul Jones, answered an add Page had run looking for musicians. Powerful north country singer Robert Plant, who was recommended to Page by hot British singer Terry Reid, brought along Bonzo.
The group, giddy with excitement at the magical sounds they were able to conjure from the very first time they jammed in a London rehearsal room, fulfilled some remaining Yardbirds obligations, renamed themselves (with a little help from Keith Moon) Led Zeppelin, and released one of the most exciting debuts in rock. Both the band’s awesome group sound and the individuals’ deep talents were obvious from the first song, “Good Times Bad Times.” There it all was: Page’s uniquely psychedelic take on blues guitar soloing, John Paul Jones’ evil low-end accompaniment, Plant’s soaring vocal prowess, and Bonham’s unexpected by hugely groovy beat, featuring intricate yet playful single bass drum multiple strokes. The depth and potential of this group of individuals, each part of equal importance, was immediately clear. In no time Led Zeppelin became known as the heaviest and most intriguing band on the scene.
Bonham’s style, a combination of the slickness of American R&B greats like Earl Palmer and Al Jackson Jr. and the bombastic “power drumming” of players like The Vanilla Fudge’s Carmine Appice, soon became the benchmark for inventive, powerful rock drumming the world over.
Bonzo’s universal appeal was possible because of his mastery of the art of balance: He had monumental technique but could wield it with unbelievable restraint…he played beats that were louder than bombs, but made them indelibly effective with his amazing control of whispering ghost notes. And, literally, the balance he could achieve by controlling the dynamics each his limbs played with…this kind of dexterity is the domain of true master musicians. It’s no small point that this enabled engineers to capture Bonham’s ultra-sophisticated performances with the barest of microphone setups and the least amount of electronic fiddling. Bonham brought it all to the studio; all an engineer had to do was stay out of the way, and drumming magic was captured every time.
12 Reasons John Bonham Rules Every drummer has his or her favorite Bonzo moments, and scattered across Zeppelin’s eight classic studio albums are hundreds of examples of his blistering technique, old-soul grooves, and remarkable intellectual depth. Here’s a dozen.
“How Many More Times” The last song from Zeppelin’s grand 1969 debut features lots of cool Bonham-isms—hand/foot combos galore, regal crash-riding, burning snare fills. But the kicker comes after the long spacey section, during the transition before the return to the song’s main riff. John’s swampy beat at 5:47 would make a New Orleans second-line drummer jump; it’s that greasy.
“Whole Lotta Love” Bonham’s gargantuan rock presence is on display in myriad forms on this track from Led Zeppelin II: the classic intro at 0:32, the completely unexpected “upside-down” beat, the hypnotic cymbal work during the space-out section, the ever-elongating triplet snare fills doubling up on themselves.
“Moby Dick” Bonzo’s most famous solo is bookended between two halves of a Jimi page instrumental riff workout. Among the highlights: John’s “hand drum” section, featuring his timeless snare/tom/bass drum figures, and the appearance of his famous hi-hat jingle ring.
“Out On The Tiles” Oh, those tricky turnarounds! And how about that James Brown–worthy beat, with those slithery snare/bass drum figures. Heavenly.
“Four Sticks” Yep, John indeed used four drumsticks on this rhythmic wonder from Zeppelin IV, which slides in and out of three and five feels. Nearly forty years after it was recorded, this is still an unbelievably cool bit of rhythmic logic. (Dig John’s use of rim clicks!)
“When The Levee Breaks” This is one of the most famous and sampled drum intros ever, both due to its huge, timeless room sound, and Bonham’s immense groove, which is made particularly slinky by his upbeat accenting.
“The Crunge” Cop this mutated James Brown groove from Houses Of The Holy, and you’ll be the coolest drummer on your block. (While you’ve got Houses Of The Holy out, go to “The Ocean.” What wonders can be had when you leave out just one snare hit….)
“Kashmir” The most famous cut off Zep’s sprawling 1975 double album, Physical Graffiti. Robert Plant, in Cameron Crowe’s liner notes to the Zeppelin box, put Bonham’s essential contribution this way: “‘Kashmir’ was tremendous for the mood. A lot of that was down to Bonzo. Page and I couldn’t have done that without Bonzo’s thrift. It was what he didn’t do that made it work.”
“Black Country Woman” One note, that’s all we’re talking about here. This acoustic ditty from side four of Physical Graffiti features a jaunty, uncomplicated thud courtesy of Mr. Bonham, played with typical swarthy gusto—another one of those tunes where what John didn’t play is as important as what he did. That’s why, when a perfectly placed bass/crash accent comes in at 3:27, just a hair louder than every other accent during the entire song, it’s so damn effective.
“Achilles Last Stand” Listing individual examples of Bonham’s bass drum prowess is impossible, there’s just too many of them. But the way his foot control and speed make the beat to this classic from Presence is over the top. Really, who else could pull off this with such panache? Oh, and don’t miss that smooth snare fill at 1:17. It’ll make your hair stand.
“Fool In The Rain” The half-time shuffle on this hit from Led Zeppelin’s final studio album, 1979’s In Through The Out Door, is a favorite among drummers. Bernard “Pretty” Purdie, famous for introducing this feel into the drumming lexicon, was surely a huge inspiration on a young John Bonham, having played on countless seminal albums with soul legends like Aretha Franklin.
“Southbound Suarez” This track, also from In Through The Out Door, is further proof of Bonham’s restraint and uncanny sense of song structure. The first two times the “Makes me feel” vocal hook comes up, John accents it with a super simple snare/tom fill. Then a Jimmy Page guitar solo plays the form, and John accents the place where the vocal hook would normally come in with a longer, more complex fill featuring a classic hand/foot combo. When the sung hook comes around again after the third verse, Bonham goes back to the simple version. At this point, though, the song is on its way to wrapping up, and Zeppelin repeats the hook line three times here, a classic device to signal a pop song’s finale. Bonham adds his genius to the arrangement by repeating the simple fill the second time, then going to another, more complex variation for the third and final vocal hook. One last cool moment is coming up, though, before the fade: At 3:27, Bonzo gets to add a funky two-bar solo groove during that same spot where the vocal hook previously appeared, adding yet another level of fun and sophistication to the song.
The Quintessential Bonham Kit Bonham can be seen in photographs playing a number of different Ludwig kits at various points in his career, featuring wood shells, then clear Vistalite models, then steel. But his classic Ludwig setup—the one we think of most readily—consisted of a 14x26 bass drum, a 12x15 rack tom, 16x16 and 16x18 floor toms, and a 61/2x14 Supra-Phonic snare drum. His bass drum pedal was inevitably the famous Ludwig Speed King model, with either a hard felt or wood beater. His Paiste cymbals generally comprised a 24" medium ride mounted on the bass drum cymbal post, 18" and 20" crashes on his left and right (respectively), and 15" Sound Edge hi-hats. Often you’ll see one or two timpani and a 38" gong. At the beginning of his career Bonham would use Remo Ambassador heads (or a similar Ludwig model). Later he switched over to Remo Black Dots or Ludwig Silver Dots.
This article was excerpted from Modern Drummer’s recent publication, The Drum Gods, available at www.moderndrummer.com.
It’s a bit misleading including Keith Moon on a list of drummers who are most responsible for the way we play the instrument today. Moon’s drumming was such an utter reflection of his personality—one of the most unusual and tormented in rock—that in reality, few drummers could ever hope to successfully base their playing style on his.
Some names do come to mind—The Damned’s wild kit man Rat Scabies, Blondie’s Clem Burke (down to the drumkit and haircut), perhaps current Who drummer Zak Starkey. But even those players, as great as they are, never approached the level of unpredictability and invention that Keith exhibited between 1964 and 1978, when he manned the drumset behind the grandest, loudest, most sophisticated band of rock’s golden age, The Who.
The consummate goof-off, but also the most polite and warm person imaginable (it just depended on his mood and desires at the time), Keith played the drums like he was running from a fire: splattering offbeat crashes in surprising paces, injecting ruffs on the bass drum like a race horse in fast-forward, pounding out round-house tom fills—and in the early days, ending his assault by kicking the entire set into the front rows (or blowing it up with a cherry bomb). In The Who, Keith found possibly the only band able to withstand his boundless clubbing and caressing, and he took full advantage of the platform, freeing rock drums from their previous role of polite support. Keith was really a lead guitarist. He just happened to play the drums.
Everyone who crossed paths with Keith Moon seems to have a favorite story to tell. If one out of ten of these stories is accurate, Keith would still be the most colorful character Swinging London ever produced. We’re talking about a scene that included John Lennon, Pete Townshend, Syd Barrett, Keith Richards, David Bowie, Ray Davies, Rod Stewart, Jimi Hendrix, Marc Bolan, Steve Marriott—larger-than-life rock stars who knew their way around a bottle, a clever conversation, and a guitar & pen. (Drummers were still largely considered background players in 1966.) Perpetually in costume, crashing the party, playing practical jokes, and keeping everyone up well past closing time, Keith Moon lived the life of a star to its absolute fullest. In the end, his behavior wasn’t able to completely quell the insecurities and demons he fought daily; he died trying to battle the alcoholism that was one result of his extreme lifestyle. There’s no way around it: Keith Moon’s story is largely a sad one.
But the drumming and the music…there have never been sounds more life-affirming…more joyous…more bursting with feeling. Nor will there likely ever be.
Plan? What Plan?
Keith Moon told International Musician And Recording World (in his last interview), “You can’t work out things too much. We do certain build-ups and things, but you can run into a danger of becoming an automaton if you do everything exactly the same each night. You just stop thinking. Sometimes I’ll build up with a timpani; sometimes I’ll build up on a cymbal or with a roll around the kit. There are so many variations on each effect.
“While I’m playing, I’m thinking two bars ahead,” Keith clarified. “That gives me the chance, if I’m in the middle of a roll, to do something I’ve already thought out so that I can get out of the roll and into whatever I was already thinking about.”
The Jazz Influence
It’s convenient for some to put forth the idea that Keith was a fully formed, completely unique drummer with no influences when he came on the scene. And though it’s true that Keith was no muso, he paid attention to the legendary players—and how they got to be that way. “I think it’s great just thrashing away,” Keith said, “but a lot of drummers haven’t developed a definite style. That’s something that comes from years of playing. I’ve picked up bits from Elvin Jones, Gene Krupa, and Philly Joe Jones. They were the sort of people I listened to in drumming.”
Keith gave some insight into the time when his own style began to develop, in an interview with Melody Maker in 1972. “My whole style of drumming changed when I joined The Who,” he said. “Before, I had just been copying straight from the records, but with The Who I had to develop a style of my own. I took from Gene Krupa with all the stick twiddling and thought it was great. The sticks used to fly out of my hands because I was sweating like a pig. All these things had an effect on the audience.”
That’s Cool, But It’s Not Me
Moonie might have dug some old-school jazz drummers—Gene Krupa was an obvious fave—but he wasn’t interested in competing with his peers of the day in terms of precision and rhythmic complexity: “I’m not really into technical drumming. That [Billy] Cobham kind of control and discipline is incredible, beautiful, but it’s just not me. I’d be lousy playing like he does—then again, he’d be lousy playing what I do. I don’t really get off on being able to play so many paradiddles. I feel more at home being brash and spontaneous.”
“Absolute Top”
Keith was a drummer, obviously. But if the term “cymbaler” existed, you might readily call him that, too, such was his intensity and imagination on the flying discs. “If you hit the bass drum as well [as the cymbal], you bring in some bottom,” he was quoted as saying in International Musician. “The cymbal gives you top, and with both, you get something in between, which is neither fully cymbal nor fully bass drum. Sometimes I do a single-stroke roll on cymbals for a ‘whoosh’ effect. Again, we get back to color. You know, there are so many drummers that can go through the routine but they don’t add color anywhere. I like painting, adding color and effects—and shocking people.”
20/40 Hindsight
It’s often tough to identify which cymbals drummers from the early days of rock were playing, and it’s no exception in Keith Moon’s case. According to Erik Paiste, “In the late ’60s and early ’70s, scores of drummers switched to Paiste Giant Beat cymbals and then 2002s because the sound was right for what they did. We have Keith Moon on record as playing all Paiste 2002s, including a 15" heavy hi-hat, 16", 18", and 20" crashes, and 18" medium, and a 22" ride.” Ah, but Zildjian Cymbals has countered, “You’ve only got to watch certain concert footage and you’ll see the Zildjian logo on his cymbals.” It makes for interesting discussion, but in the end, what really mattered was how Keith played those Paistes…or those Zildjians. “Moon’s hi-hat was set permanently half-open,” recalls Colin Scofield of Premier, whose drums Keith destroyed…uh, played throughout his career. “He kept his left foot on the second bass drum the whole time and would ride on the half-open hats or any other of his many cymbals to get that ‘white noise’ sound.”
Choose Your Targets
One the many things Keith Moon is famous for is his predilection toward large drumkits, one classic setup involving a row of single-headed toms set up beyond—not above—his double headed drums. Though that image became the basis of a thousand cartoons depicting the “crazy” drummer splattering non-stop fills with no rhyme or reason, Keith in fact used specific combinations of sounds deliberately. “I’ve got sixteen drums in my kit,” he explained, “and on every song I use a different set of four or five. So eventually I use all sixteen drums. Sometimes I use the timpani, sometimes the timbale, sometimes I do runs that’ll go right around eight drums, and sometimes I’ll just use bass drum, snare drum, and hi-hat. I can cover from a roar with the timpani right up to the smallest timbale. That’s why I have so many drums onstage, because with The Who there’s Pete [Townshend], who plays a lot of chords, and John [Entwhistle], who plays very intricate bass figures that I work with.”
Replacing The Irreplaceable
After Keith Moon died, Kenney Jones, from long-time Who compatriots The Small Faces, toured with the band and recorded the studio albums Face Dances and It’s Hard. Despite Pete Townshend’s insistence that there was no reason to compare the two drummers, perhaps it was just never going to be an easy ride for Jones, given Keith’s uniqueness and the rare affinity Who fans had for their beloved jester of the drums. “Pete told me that we had a chance to do something completely different, which pleased me,” Jones told Modern Drummer. “I told Pete that I couldn’t be Keith Moon and that I had to play my own style. He understood completely. But there are certain things that Keith played that you’d want to play because they were magnificent. I did what I did but kept the best bits in. [Singer] Roger Daltrey, I think, could never get quite used to it, although the others did. I kept it straight in the verses, but everywhere you wanted to go nuts, I went nuts.”
This article was excerpted from Modern Drummer’s recent publication, The Drum Gods, available at www.moderndrummer.com.
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From The Vault
DAVE GROHL - CLEAN, CREATIVE, AND THUNDEROUS
WED SEPTEMBER 26 @ 02:57 PM 0 Comments | LOGIN TO POST A COMMENT
From: From The Vault
Posted: 7 months ago
'I was floored by Dave Grohl’s playing with Nirvana, because it was straightforward, but he somehow played in a way that really delivered the message of the music.” When a quote like this comes from another player considered one of the top-25 drum gods in history, you know it’s saying something. And, yeah, Slayer’s Dave Lombardo really did hit Dave Grohl’s genius on the head. More than almost any other player in recorded history, Dave Grohl 1) consistently has a drumming statement to make, 2) frames that statement in absolute service to the musical scenario, and 3) makes that statement with complete clarity and unbridled passion.
As time has passed, the reasons for Nirvana’s brief but overwhelming popularity in the early ’90s have become even clearer. Beyond the perfectly timed, artfully realized message of teenage frustration that songwriter Kurt Cobain was able to communicate…more than the unique sonic balance of pure pop and skuzzy punk the band portrayed on their breakout album, Nevermind…the band simply ROCKED, and that largely came down to the indomitable heft and architecture of Dave Grohl’s drum performances.
Let’s face it: At the time, many drummers missed the point, focusing on Nirvana's relative musical simplicity and apparent auto-destruct approach. But after the ashes of Nirvana’s demise settled, and Grohl’s talented Foo Fighters band practically overtook MTV and rock radio, mainstreamers began to get it. Dave Grohl was simply a monster of thoughtful yet pummeling rock drum dynamism.
These days Grohl is often thought of first as the front man—on guitar and vocals—of the still relevant Foo Fighters. But Dave’s never far from the kit, and even when the focus seems to be away from his stickwork, he’s finding (or concocting) a cool platform for his famous skin assault. Whether guesting with established stars like Tom Petty (on a famous Saturday Night Live appearance), touring with musical buds like Queens Of The Stone Age, or recording some whole other thing like the metal-mayhem project known as Probot, Dave Grohl is doing some serious drumming—somewhere, somehow.
His Own Path
In March of 1992, Dave Grohl let us in on a couple secrets: “I never studied drums,” he said, “and I don’t read. I actually play guitar better than I play drums. I just got more into the drums because I happened to be a better player than the drummers they had in the bands I was in.”
Influencing Thousands Nonetheless
He might not have been a traditionally schooled player, but Grohl was clearly doing something right from the get-go: “Someone came up to me during the Scream reunion tour, and he gave me a CD of his band and said, ‘I’m an old Scream fan, and your drumming with them influenced this.’ That was the first time anyone ever said that, and I felt like I wanted to cry. Trophies are great, but having touched someone musically is a whole lot better.”
The Role Of His Drums
Kurt writes basic 4/4 pop songs,” Dave explained once, back in the day. “And the drums have to propel everything. That’s an important element. Whether the drums stand out to people or not isn’t what’s really important. That it sounds like a big bomb going off is.”
Louder Is Better
“A lot of people in rock drumming don’t really utilize the toms,” Grohl has said. “They’ll do rolls on them, but I don’t do too many single-stroke rolls. Most of it is two hands down at the same time. If you hit two things at the same time, it’s twice as loud as hitting one thing. I’ll do the same thing with my cymbal hits. You can play a lot harder when you do less. And when you have more space, you have a lot more time to get your arms up higher in the air. That gives you a lot more power.”
…But That Isn’t The Whole Story
“You have to play with dynamics to make it sound good. That’s the beauty of what John Bonham would do. You could see that he wasn’t destroying his drums all the time. And when he did, it would jump out at you. It’s all about picking those moments. In doing that, you have to give yourself some room to go up and down.”
Put Some Weight Behind That
Grohl’s bass drum technique is all about optimum transfer of power: “I don’t put my heel down when I play my kick drum, I kind of pounce on it with the ball of my foot. That way I can hit harder and put more weight into it. Also, by sitting very low—I sit as low as possible—I can put a lot more weight into it because I’m pushing forward.”
How To Self-Regulate Your Dynamics
“If you’re recording drums at home by yourself with one microphone, you have to ‘equalize’ your playing. That’s the only way you can get a decent recording out of one mic. You have to make the drums sound like they’re mixed, but do it all by yourself. Lay off the cymbals a little bit, let the kick drum come through, and let the drums ring out.”
Even It Up
“When I was young,” Dave remembered, “I tried to focus on consistency between the hands. When doing a single-stroke roll, if you’re going to make it powerful and you’re going to blast through the snare, some fills sound best when there are no accents and both hands are consistent, sounding like a machine gun. Honestly, the reason I do single-stroke rolls and flams is because of my learning to play the drums on pillows, with no resistance. Then it’s just a matter of creating [fills] that are interesting.”
The Ever-Popular Flam
Grohl’s timely use of flams is well-documented. “I’m a big fan of the flam,” he once confirmed. “I would rather throw in a Tony Thompson flam fill than something off of [Rush’s] 2112. And flams aren’t as simple as they seem. They really have to sync with the track. Your two hands have to be the correct distance apart. And if you flam a drum and choke it, it doesn’t work. Dale Crover from the Melvins is my favorite flammer of all time. His are like fireworks.”
This article was excerpted from Modern Drummer’s recent publication, The Drum Gods, available at www.moderndrummer.com.
JOHN BONHAM - THE KING OF ROCK DRUMS
WED SEPTEMBER 12 @ 07:25 PM 3 Comments | LOGIN TO POST A COMMENT
From: From The Vault
Posted: 8 months ago
The greatest rock ’n’ roll drummer in history was a soul drummer.
Despite all the deserved attention paid to his brilliant soloing ideas, his rhythmic sophistication, or his bass drum prowess, John Bonham was, above all else, a groover.
Drummers inherently pick up this, even if at first they don’t realize what it is that draws them to Bonham. Like every British rock musician in the mid-’60s, the members of Led Zeppelin played in groups specializing in amped-up versions of black American music like the blues, R&B, jazz, and soul. To play that music convincingly, you had to swing, and few drummers in any genre have swung with as much swagger as John Bonham. As cool as his beats and fills were, Bonham’s delivery was what truly set him apart.
In the liner notes to Led Zeppelin’s Box Set, Zep bassist John Paul Jones explained how, on the plane, he and Bonham would listen to James Brown tapes. “Bonzo had very broad listening tastes,” Jonesy shared. “When we weren’t listening to James Brown or Otis Redding, he might be listening to Joni Mitchell or Crosby Stills Nash & Young. Bonzo was a great lover of songs.”
No discussion of Bonham—or Led Zeppelin—would be complete without talking about sound. Zeppelin guitarist/producer Jimmy Page is one of rock’s great sonic architects; the inventiveness and taste he wielded while recording Led Zeppelin albums is unparalleled in rock history, and Bonham’s drum sound is an integral part of that legacy. Jack Irons of the group Eleven (and Pearl Jam and the Chili Peppers) gets understandably animated when talking about Bonzo’s awesome sonic presence: “Arguably he had the best drum sound in rock history,” Irons states. “So, the best player also had the best sound. And his sound was certainly big, but not big in the subsonic way associated with today’s recordings. It was really explosive and full of attack, and it didn’t avoid overtones. And that great tone complemented his playing. Bonham couldn’t be separated from his sound; it went with him.”
Songs, sound, and soul. Go ahead, call Led Zeppelin the first heavy metal band—and by extension, Bonham the first heavy metal drummer. But ignore the band’s advanced song craft, forget about the revolutionary tones, or miss the depth of their collective feel, and you fail to truly understand the nature of their greatness. Or the genius of John Bonham.
John Bonham was born in the north of England, outside the industrial city of Birmingham, far from the urbane London scene that Zeppelin mastermind Jimmy Page inhabited. He was a big guy—a bricklayer by trade—and his thunderous, adventurous playing gained him a reputation on the local music scene for playing far too loudly, getting him and whatever band he was in kicked off the gig before the night was up.
Jimmy Page had already logged hundreds of hours as a top session guitarist before joining a late version of The Yardbirds, one of London’s most popular neo-R&B bands, who had also featured two other future guitar gods, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Another studio heavy, bassist/keyboardist/arranger John Paul Jones, answered an add Page had run looking for musicians. Powerful north country singer Robert Plant, who was recommended to Page by hot British singer Terry Reid, brought along Bonzo.
The group, giddy with excitement at the magical sounds they were able to conjure from the very first time they jammed in a London rehearsal room, fulfilled some remaining Yardbirds obligations, renamed themselves (with a little help from Keith Moon) Led Zeppelin, and released one of the most exciting debuts in rock. Both the band’s awesome group sound and the individuals’ deep talents were obvious from the first song, “Good Times Bad Times.” There it all was: Page’s uniquely psychedelic take on blues guitar soloing, John Paul Jones’ evil low-end accompaniment, Plant’s soaring vocal prowess, and Bonham’s unexpected by hugely groovy beat, featuring intricate yet playful single bass drum multiple strokes. The depth and potential of this group of individuals, each part of equal importance, was immediately clear. In no time Led Zeppelin became known as the heaviest and most intriguing band on the scene.
Bonham’s style, a combination of the slickness of American R&B greats like Earl Palmer and Al Jackson Jr. and the bombastic “power drumming” of players like The Vanilla Fudge’s Carmine Appice, soon became the benchmark for inventive, powerful rock drumming the world over.
Bonzo’s universal appeal was possible because of his mastery of the art of balance: He had monumental technique but could wield it with unbelievable restraint…he played beats that were louder than bombs, but made them indelibly effective with his amazing control of whispering ghost notes. And, literally, the balance he could achieve by controlling the dynamics each his limbs played with…this kind of dexterity is the domain of true master musicians. It’s no small point that this enabled engineers to capture Bonham’s ultra-sophisticated performances with the barest of microphone setups and the least amount of electronic fiddling. Bonham brought it all to the studio; all an engineer had to do was stay out of the way, and drumming magic was captured every time.
12 Reasons John Bonham Rules
Every drummer has his or her favorite Bonzo moments, and scattered across Zeppelin’s eight classic studio albums are hundreds of examples of his blistering technique, old-soul grooves, and remarkable intellectual depth. Here’s a dozen.
“How Many More Times”
The last song from Zeppelin’s grand 1969 debut features lots of cool Bonham-isms—hand/foot combos galore, regal crash-riding, burning snare fills. But the kicker comes after the long spacey section, during the transition before the return to the song’s main riff. John’s swampy beat at 5:47 would make a New Orleans second-line drummer jump; it’s that greasy.
“Whole Lotta Love”
Bonham’s gargantuan rock presence is on display in myriad forms on this track from Led Zeppelin II: the classic intro at 0:32, the completely unexpected “upside-down” beat, the hypnotic cymbal work during the space-out section, the ever-elongating triplet snare fills doubling up on themselves.
“Moby Dick”
Bonzo’s most famous solo is bookended between two halves of a Jimi page instrumental riff workout. Among the highlights: John’s “hand drum” section, featuring his timeless snare/tom/bass drum figures, and the appearance of his famous hi-hat jingle ring.
“Out On The Tiles”
Oh, those tricky turnarounds! And how about that James Brown–worthy beat, with those slithery snare/bass drum figures. Heavenly.
“Four Sticks”
Yep, John indeed used four drumsticks on this rhythmic wonder from Zeppelin IV, which slides in and out of three and five feels. Nearly forty years after it was recorded, this is still an unbelievably cool bit of rhythmic logic. (Dig John’s use of rim clicks!)
“When The Levee Breaks”
This is one of the most famous and sampled drum intros ever, both due to its huge, timeless room sound, and Bonham’s immense groove, which is made particularly slinky by his upbeat accenting.
“The Crunge”
Cop this mutated James Brown groove from Houses Of The Holy, and you’ll be the coolest drummer on your block. (While you’ve got Houses Of The Holy out, go to “The Ocean.” What wonders can be had when you leave out just one snare hit….)
“Kashmir”
The most famous cut off Zep’s sprawling 1975 double album, Physical Graffiti. Robert Plant, in Cameron Crowe’s liner notes to the Zeppelin box, put Bonham’s essential contribution this way: “‘Kashmir’ was tremendous for the mood. A lot of that was down to Bonzo. Page and I couldn’t have done that without Bonzo’s thrift. It was what he didn’t do that made it work.”
“Black Country Woman”
One note, that’s all we’re talking about here. This acoustic ditty from side four of Physical Graffiti features a jaunty, uncomplicated thud courtesy of Mr. Bonham, played with typical swarthy gusto—another one of those tunes where what John didn’t play is as important as what he did. That’s why, when a perfectly placed bass/crash accent comes in at 3:27, just a hair louder than every other accent during the entire song, it’s so damn effective.
“Achilles Last Stand”
Listing individual examples of Bonham’s bass drum prowess is impossible, there’s just too many of them. But the way his foot control and speed make the beat to this classic from Presence is over the top. Really, who else could pull off this with such panache? Oh, and don’t miss that smooth snare fill at 1:17. It’ll make your hair stand.
“Fool In The Rain”
The half-time shuffle on this hit from Led Zeppelin’s final studio album, 1979’s In Through The Out Door, is a favorite among drummers. Bernard “Pretty” Purdie, famous for introducing this feel into the drumming lexicon, was surely a huge inspiration on a young John Bonham, having played on countless seminal albums with soul legends like Aretha Franklin.
“Southbound Suarez”
This track, also from In Through The Out Door, is further proof of Bonham’s restraint and uncanny sense of song structure. The first two times the “Makes me feel” vocal hook comes up, John accents it with a super simple snare/tom fill. Then a Jimmy Page guitar solo plays the form, and John accents the place where the vocal hook would normally come in with a longer, more complex fill featuring a classic hand/foot combo. When the sung hook comes around again after the third verse, Bonham goes back to the simple version. At this point, though, the song is on its way to wrapping up, and Zeppelin repeats the hook line three times here, a classic device to signal a pop song’s finale. Bonham adds his genius to the arrangement by repeating the simple fill the second time, then going to another, more complex variation for the third and final vocal hook. One last cool moment is coming up, though, before the fade: At 3:27, Bonzo gets to add a funky two-bar solo groove during that same spot where the vocal hook previously appeared, adding yet another level of fun and sophistication to the song.
The Quintessential Bonham Kit
Bonham can be seen in photographs playing a number of different Ludwig kits at various points in his career, featuring wood shells, then clear Vistalite models, then steel. But his classic Ludwig setup—the one we think of most readily—consisted of a 14x26 bass drum, a 12x15 rack tom, 16x16 and 16x18 floor toms, and a 61/2x14 Supra-Phonic snare drum. His bass drum pedal was inevitably the famous Ludwig Speed King model, with either a hard felt or wood beater. His Paiste cymbals generally comprised a 24" medium ride mounted on the bass drum cymbal post, 18" and 20" crashes on his left and right (respectively), and 15" Sound Edge hi-hats. Often you’ll see one or two timpani and a 38" gong. At the beginning of his career Bonham would use Remo Ambassador heads (or a similar Ludwig model). Later he switched over to Remo Black Dots or Ludwig Silver Dots.
This article was excerpted from Modern Drummer’s recent publication, The Drum Gods, available at www.moderndrummer.com.
KEITH MOON - THE ONE AND ONLY.
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From: From The Vault
Posted: 8 months ago
Keith Moon
The One And Only
It’s a bit misleading including Keith Moon on a list of drummers who are most responsible for the way we play the instrument today. Moon’s drumming was such an utter reflection of his personality—one of the most unusual and tormented in rock—that in reality, few drummers could ever hope to successfully base their playing style on his.
Some names do come to mind—The Damned’s wild kit man Rat Scabies, Blondie’s Clem Burke (down to the drumkit and haircut), perhaps current Who drummer Zak Starkey. But even those players, as great as they are, never approached the level of unpredictability and invention that Keith exhibited between 1964 and 1978, when he manned the drumset behind the grandest, loudest, most sophisticated band of rock’s golden age, The Who.
The consummate goof-off, but also the most polite and warm person imaginable (it just depended on his mood and desires at the time), Keith played the drums like he was running from a fire: splattering offbeat crashes in surprising paces, injecting ruffs on the bass drum like a race horse in fast-forward, pounding out round-house tom fills—and in the early days, ending his assault by kicking the entire set into the front rows (or blowing it up with a cherry bomb). In The Who, Keith found possibly the only band able to withstand his boundless clubbing and caressing, and he took full advantage of the platform, freeing rock drums from their previous role of polite support. Keith was really a lead guitarist. He just happened to play the drums.
Everyone who crossed paths with Keith Moon seems to have a favorite story to tell. If one out of ten of these stories is accurate, Keith would still be the most colorful character Swinging London ever produced. We’re talking about a scene that included John Lennon, Pete Townshend, Syd Barrett, Keith Richards, David Bowie, Ray Davies, Rod Stewart, Jimi Hendrix, Marc Bolan, Steve Marriott—larger-than-life rock stars who knew their way around a bottle, a clever conversation, and a guitar & pen. (Drummers were still largely considered background players in 1966.) Perpetually in costume, crashing the party, playing practical jokes, and keeping everyone up well past closing time, Keith Moon lived the life of a star to its absolute fullest. In the end, his behavior wasn’t able to completely quell the insecurities and demons he fought daily; he died trying to battle the alcoholism that was one result of his extreme lifestyle. There’s no way around it: Keith Moon’s story is largely a sad one.
But the drumming and the music…there have never been sounds more life-affirming…more joyous…more bursting with feeling. Nor will there likely ever be.
Plan? What Plan?
Keith Moon told International Musician And Recording World (in his last interview), “You can’t work out things too much. We do certain build-ups and things, but you can run into a danger of becoming an automaton if you do everything exactly the same each night. You just stop thinking. Sometimes I’ll build up with a timpani; sometimes I’ll build up on a cymbal or with a roll around the kit. There are so many variations on each effect.
“While I’m playing, I’m thinking two bars ahead,” Keith clarified. “That gives me the chance, if I’m in the middle of a roll, to do something I’ve already thought out so that I can get out of the roll and into whatever I was already thinking about.”
The Jazz Influence
It’s convenient for some to put forth the idea that Keith was a fully formed, completely unique drummer with no influences when he came on the scene. And though it’s true that Keith was no muso, he paid attention to the legendary players—and how they got to be that way. “I think it’s great just thrashing away,” Keith said, “but a lot of drummers haven’t developed a definite style. That’s something that comes from years of playing. I’ve picked up bits from Elvin Jones, Gene Krupa, and Philly Joe Jones. They were the sort of people I listened to in drumming.”
Keith gave some insight into the time when his own style began to develop, in an interview with Melody Maker in 1972. “My whole style of drumming changed when I joined The Who,” he said. “Before, I had just been copying straight from the records, but with The Who I had to develop a style of my own. I took from Gene Krupa with all the stick twiddling and thought it was great. The sticks used to fly out of my hands because I was sweating like a pig. All these things had an effect on the audience.”
That’s Cool, But It’s Not Me
Moonie might have dug some old-school jazz drummers—Gene Krupa was an obvious fave—but he wasn’t interested in competing with his peers of the day in terms of precision and rhythmic complexity: “I’m not really into technical drumming. That [Billy] Cobham kind of control and discipline is incredible, beautiful, but it’s just not me. I’d be lousy playing like he does—then again, he’d be lousy playing what I do. I don’t really get off on being able to play so many paradiddles. I feel more at home being brash and spontaneous.”
“Absolute Top”
Keith was a drummer, obviously. But if the term “cymbaler” existed, you might readily call him that, too, such was his intensity and imagination on the flying discs. “If you hit the bass drum as well [as the cymbal], you bring in some bottom,” he was quoted as saying in International Musician. “The cymbal gives you top, and with both, you get something in between, which is neither fully cymbal nor fully bass drum. Sometimes I do a single-stroke roll on cymbals for a ‘whoosh’ effect. Again, we get back to color. You know, there are so many drummers that can go through the routine but they don’t add color anywhere. I like painting, adding color and effects—and shocking people.”
20/40 Hindsight
It’s often tough to identify which cymbals drummers from the early days of rock were playing, and it’s no exception in Keith Moon’s case. According to Erik Paiste, “In the late ’60s and early ’70s, scores of drummers switched to Paiste Giant Beat cymbals and then 2002s because the sound was right for what they did. We have Keith Moon on record as playing all Paiste 2002s, including a 15" heavy hi-hat, 16", 18", and 20" crashes, and 18" medium, and a 22" ride.” Ah, but Zildjian Cymbals has countered, “You’ve only got to watch certain concert footage and you’ll see the Zildjian logo on his cymbals.”
It makes for interesting discussion, but in the end, what really mattered was how Keith played those Paistes…or those Zildjians. “Moon’s hi-hat was set permanently half-open,” recalls Colin Scofield of Premier, whose drums Keith destroyed…uh, played throughout his career. “He kept his left foot on the second bass drum the whole time and would ride on the half-open hats or any other of his many cymbals to get that ‘white noise’ sound.”
Choose Your Targets
One the many things Keith Moon is famous for is his predilection toward large drumkits, one classic setup involving a row of single-headed toms set up beyond—not above—his double headed drums. Though that image became the basis of a thousand cartoons depicting the “crazy” drummer splattering non-stop fills with no rhyme or reason, Keith in fact used specific combinations of sounds deliberately. “I’ve got sixteen drums in my kit,” he explained, “and on every song I use a different set of four or five. So eventually I use all sixteen drums. Sometimes I use the timpani, sometimes the timbale, sometimes I do runs that’ll go right around eight drums, and sometimes I’ll just use bass drum, snare drum, and hi-hat. I can cover from a roar with the timpani right up to the smallest timbale. That’s why I have so many drums onstage, because with The Who there’s Pete [Townshend], who plays a lot of chords, and John [Entwhistle], who plays very intricate bass figures that I work with.”
Replacing The Irreplaceable
After Keith Moon died, Kenney Jones, from long-time Who compatriots The Small Faces, toured with the band and recorded the studio albums Face Dances and It’s Hard. Despite Pete Townshend’s insistence that there was no reason to compare the two drummers, perhaps it was just never going to be an easy ride for Jones, given Keith’s uniqueness and the rare affinity Who fans had for their beloved jester of the drums. “Pete told me that we had a chance to do something completely different, which pleased me,” Jones told Modern Drummer. “I told Pete that I couldn’t be Keith Moon and that I had to play my own style. He understood completely. But there are certain things that Keith played that you’d want to play because they were magnificent. I did what I did but kept the best bits in. [Singer] Roger Daltrey, I think, could never get quite used to it, although the others did. I kept it straight in the verses, but everywhere you wanted to go nuts, I went nuts.”
This article was excerpted from Modern Drummer’s recent publication, The Drum Gods, available at www.moderndrummer.com.
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