“Drums, eh,” says Kei­th Richards in answer to a fan ques­tion on the sub­ject. “With­out it you’re kin­da nowhere.” He’s got a point. An ace drum­mer can be the spine, mus­cle, and even soul of a great band. Pound­ing, swing­ing, and smash­ing away behind showy gui­tarists and flam­boy­ant front­men, drum­mers some­times have prob­lems being seen, but nev­er heard. But while John Bon­ham or Kei­th Moon nev­er got lost in the mix, it’s a rare thing to hear them out of it. The pro­lif­er­a­tion of rock band video games and iso­lat­ed tracks post­ed to Youtube allow us to lis­ten to the nuances of drum grooves we may feel we know by heart, such as Bonham’s dri­ving beat behind Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lot­ta Love.”

In a pre­vi­ous post, we brought you a rough mix of the song and Jim­my Page describ­ing its cre­ation. Page want­ed Bonham’s drum track to “real­ly stand out, so that every stick stroke sound­ed clear and you could real­ly feel them.” It cer­tain­ly does that. The drum track above is all about feel­ing. As a result of the record­ing tech­niques of the time, writes producer/engineer Bob­by Owin­s­ki, drum tracks tend­ed to sound “like a sin­gle instru­ment,” since they were record­ed with only two or three mics cap­tur­ing the space around the kit, rather than the sound of indi­vid­ual pieces. “Still,” Owin­s­ki writes of this track, “there’s plen­ty of pow­er in [Bonham’s] kick and snare, because he played them hard!” In addi­tion to his pow­er, Bon­ham is known for his laid-back groove, due to his ten­den­cy for play­ing slight­ly behind the beat, a qual­i­ty Youtube drum instruc­tor Ter­ry Keat­ing of Bon­zoleum ascribes to “tem­pera­ment.”

Bonham’s style con­sist­ed main­ly of cre­ative uses of triplets, so much so that McSweeny’s had a good laugh about his con­stant use a sim­i­lar pat­tern. One of my favorite drummers—crankiest man in rock Gin­ger Baker—also dis­par­ages Bonham’s play­ing, as well as that of anoth­er alco­holic drum star, Kei­th Moon. But Gin­ger Bak­er doesn’t tend to like any­one, and Moon’s play­ing, while maybe not vir­tu­osic or espe­cial­ly dis­ci­plined, was, like his per­sona, insane. Drum Mag­a­zine describes Moon’s style as “trib­al, prim­i­tive, and impul­sive, with him often stomp­ing the bass drums and pound­ing his wall of toms like a mad­man” (clear­ly Moon inspired the Mup­pets’ Ani­mal). Moon’s many kits often con­sist­ed of dou­ble bass drums and dou­ble rows of toms, and he played them as hard as pos­si­ble almost all the time. Hear him above thrash­ing with aban­don through “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

Seem­ing­ly miles away from the mad­ness of Kei­th Moon, Rush’s Neil Peart is a high­ly tech­ni­cal drum­mer with impec­ca­ble on-the-beat tim­ing and a drum set­up that has grown so exten­sive and com­pli­cat­ed over the years that he almost dis­ap­pears into its depths. Peart’s play­ing com­bines the pow­er and sta­mi­na of Bon­ham with com­plex pat­terns whose rhyth­mic dynam­ics shift sub­tly sev­er­al times through­out each song. Check out the iso­lat­ed drum track for “Tom Sawyer” above as a clas­sic exam­ple of Peart’s tech­nique and you may see why he’s classed as one of the all-time best rock drum­mers (though I wouldn’t class him as one of rock’s great­est lyri­cists).

Although I’m an admir­er of Neil Peart’s drum­ming, I can’t say I’m much of a Rush fan. Police drum­mer Stew­art Copeland feels the same. In an inter­view with Music Radar, he jokes about “pull[ing] Neil’s chain at every pos­si­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty” for the self-indul­gent excess of drum solos (though Copeland game­ly played one dur­ing David Letterman’s “Drum Solo Week” in 2011). Copeland talks about “a time when bands like Rush were the epit­o­me of what The Police were the­o­ret­i­cal­ly against, which was an overem­pha­sis on musi­cal­i­ty.” Nonethe­less, Copeland is one of the most musi­cal of drum­mers, mak­ing use of odd time sig­na­tures and polyrhyth­mic syn­co­pa­tion to cre­ate a thor­ough­ly unique and instant­ly rec­og­niz­able style (which has even inspired neu­ro­science stud­ies). The drum track above comes from “Next to You,” a song on the band’s debut album, dur­ing their decid­ed­ly anti-Rush phase. While the song itself is uptem­po punk rock, Copeland’s Gene Kru­pa-like drum­ming, heard in iso­la­tion, presages the unusu­al quirks to come as the band stretched out into jazz and reg­gae ter­ri­to­ry.

The sheer num­ber of bands Foo Fight­ers front­man and for­mer Nir­vana drum­mer Dave Grohl has drummed for is impres­sive, and a tes­ta­ment to his machine-like speed and tim­ing. Drum­mer and Port­landia star Fred Armisen may be Grohl’s biggest fan. “Every drum part he does is a mas­ter­piece,” says Armisen, “He’s nev­er just heavy for heavy’s sake or rock for rock’s sake—it’s all so musi­cal, with an incred­i­ble sense of dynam­ics. Every gen­er­a­tion has their drum­ming guy, and Dave is ours.” Even Kurt Cobain, nev­er one to over­praise, once called Grohl “the best drum­mer in the world.” Maybe a bit of hyper­bole, but Grohl’s damned good, even at his most straight­for­ward, as above in his pound­ing drum­beat for “Smells Like Teen Spir­it.” Grohl’s pow­er­house play­ing isn’t the most ver­sa­tile. He had some trou­ble adjust­ing to qui­eter envi­rons, and Cobain near­ly banned him from the band’s leg­endary “Unplugged” per­for­mance for his too-aggres­sive play­ing in rehearsals. Nonethe­less, when it comes to punk, hard­core, and seri­ous rock, Grohl’s the man.

I can’t resist end­ing with the iso­lat­ed track of what maybe be my all-time favorite drum part, Ringo Starr’s wild­ly funky busi­ness at the end of “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er.” Some of the drums here are over­dubbed, with sev­er­al dif­fer­ent per­cus­sion parts blend­ed with Starr’s full-kit freak out. Starr has tak­en a lot of com­plete­ly unde­served flak for his sup­posed lim­i­ta­tions as a drum­mer, but as Samuel Belkin writes at The Exam­in­er, “his lat­ter day drum pat­terns are […] often sophis­ti­cat­ed, and always idio­syn­crat­ic […] nobody has ever been able to sound quite like Ringo.” Ulti­mate­ly, in my book, what dis­tin­guish­es a tru­ly great drum­mer from thou­sands of tech­ni­cal­ly pro­fi­cient play­ers is a qual­i­ty no one can teach or emu­late: Per­son­al­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

7 Female Bass Play­ers Who Helped Shape Mod­ern Music: Kim Gor­don, Tina Wey­mouth, Kim Deal & More

Lis­ten to The John Bon­ham Sto­ry, a Radio Show Host­ed by Dave Grohl

Kei­th Moon’s Final Per­for­mance with The Who (1978)

Hear the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Tracks for The Bea­t­les’ Cli­mac­tic 16-Minute Med­ley on Abbey Road

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

David Bowie and David Gilmour singing “Com­fort­ably Numb” togeth­er? Yes, thank you. Filmed at the Roy­al Albert Hall, the clip above shows the two per­form­ing at the end of Gilmour’s 2006 Euro­pean solo tour in sup­port of his solo album On an Island. Dur­ing two oth­er nights in the same venue, Gilmour was joined by David Cros­by, Gra­ham Nash, and Robert Wyatt, and the footage saw release as a DVD titled Remem­ber That Night: “It goes with­out say­ing,” writes All­mu­sic of the disc, “that it is stun­ning, both visu­al­ly and aural­ly; how could any Pink Floyd-relat­ed project fail to be? […] but it is Gilmour’s show, and no star can out­shine him.” Maybe, but Bowie’s pret­ty riv­et­ing singing what may be the most spell­bind­ing of Gilmour and Roger Waters’ col­lab­o­ra­tions on Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

Gilmour played sev­er­al Floyd clas­sics dur­ing the Roy­al Albert Hall stint. Gilmour and band play Pink Floyd’s “Breathe,” “Time,” and “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond” in addi­tion to songs from On an Island, “a most­ly laid-back, utter­ly ele­gant Eng­lish record,” writes Thom Jurek. Laid-back and ele­gant might also describe the stage show—its star and his guests some­what less ani­mat­ed than in their heyday—but Gilmour’s solos soar, and the light show, true to form, is a dra­mat­ic com­ple­ment to an equal­ly dra­mat­ic set in which clas­sic Floyd seems to mix seam­less­ly with the first col­lec­tion of orig­i­nal songs Gilmour had released in 22 years.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pink Floyd Plays With Their Brand New Singer & Gui­tarist David Gilmour on French TV (1968)

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live in the Ruins of Pom­peii (1972)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

For all the praise deserved­ly heaped on Jim­my Page for his tech­nique as an inno­v­a­tive rock-blues shredder—with his vio­lin-bowed walls of noise and motor speed­way licks—one can lose sight of just how great he was as a dri­ving rhythm play­er. The rough mix of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lot­ta Love”—which chugs along with­out the stu­dio ver­sion’s sig­na­ture stock car-engine sound in the refrain—brings Page’s rhythms to the fore. The song’s pro­duc­tion also demon­strates Page’s skill in the stu­dio. The gui­tarist mas­ter­mind­ed the sound of “Whole Lot­ta Love” and the record­ing of AOR ground­break­er Led Zep­pelin II, and he tells the sto­ry of the song’s cre­ation, along with that unfor­get­table riff, in an inter­view with The Wall Street Jour­nal:

I came up with the gui­tar riff for “Whole Lot­ta Love” in the sum­mer of ’68, on my house­boat along the Thames in Pang­bourne, Eng­land. I sup­pose my ear­ly love for big intros by rock­a­bil­ly gui­tarists was an inspi­ra­tion, but as soon as I devel­oped the riff, I knew it was strong enough to dri­ve the entire song, not just open it. When I played the riff for the band in my liv­ing room sev­er­al weeks lat­er dur­ing rehearsals for our first album, the excite­ment was imme­di­ate and col­lec­tive. We felt the riff was addic­tive, like a for­bid­den thing.

The rough mix above trav­eled with the band as they toured the U.S. in May and June of 1969, over­dub­bing in stu­dios in Los Ange­les and New York. Page describes how he, engi­neer George Chkiantz, and mix­er Eddie Kramer cre­at­ed the song’s reverb-drenched son­ic enve­lope, design­ing each piece to work specif­i­cal­ly for stereo FM radio. “For the song to work as this panoram­ic audio expe­ri­ence,” he says, “I need­ed Bon­zo [drum­mer John Bon­ham] to real­ly stand out, so that every stick stroke sound­ed clear and you could real­ly feel them. If the drums were record­ed just right, we could lay in every­thing else.” He com­pares Robert Plant’s sear­ing vocal to his gui­tar work:

Robert’s vocal was just as extreme. He kept gain­ing con­fi­dence dur­ing the ses­sion and gave it every­thing he had. His vocals, like my solos, were about per­for­mance. He was push­ing to see what he could get out of his voice. We were per­form­ing for each oth­er, almost com­pet­i­tive­ly.

As for the pre-echo and mas­sive amounts of reverb on Plant’s vocals in the song’s breakdown—all of this came about by acci­dent. An alter­nate take of Plant’s voice bled through on the mas­ter tape. Page and Kramer decid­ed to leave it in and add the effects to make it seem inten­tion­al. More impro­vi­sa­tion­al stu­dio wiz­ardry between the two pro­duced the crazed out­ro. “Jim­my and I went nuts on the knobs,” recalls Kramer, “We had eight dials con­trol­ling the lev­els on eight indi­vid­ual tracks, so we rehearsed the chore­og­ra­phy of what we were going to do to cre­ate the far-out sounds.”

Like cur­rent claims against the band for musi­cal theft in “Stair­way to Heav­en,” “Whole Lot­ta Love” engen­dered a law­suit from Willie Dixon, who wrote Mud­dy Water’s “You Need Love.” Page and Plant both admit the debt, but Page defends his con­tri­bu­tion, say­ing “if you take Robert’s vocal out, there’s no musi­cal ref­er­ence.” In any case, they were even­tu­al­ly forced to give Dixon co-cred­it for the song. In a 1990 inter­view with Musi­cian, Plant waxed philo­soph­i­cal about the con­tro­ver­sy: “Page’s riff was Page’s riff. It was there before any­thing else. I just thought, ‘well, what am I going to sing?’ That was it, a nick. Now hap­pi­ly paid for. At the time, there was a lot of con­ver­sa­tion about what to do. It was decid­ed that it was so far away in time and influ­ence that… well, you only get caught when you’re suc­cess­ful. That’s the game.”

Of course, the essence of the blues is musi­cal quo­ta­tion, and the affair was more a mat­ter of mon­ey, not a case against the song’s cre­ative pow­er or the orig­i­nal­i­ty of that killer riff. Read more about the mak­ing of “Whole Lot­ta Love” from Page, Chkiantz, and Kramer at The Wall Street Jour­nal.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Whole Lot­ta Led Zep­pelin: Live at the Roy­al Albert Hall and The Song Remains the Same–the Full Shows

Jim­my Page Tells the Sto­ry of “Kash­mir”

Hear Led Zeppelin’s Mind-Blow­ing First Record­ed Con­cert Ever (1968)

Decon­struct­ing Led Zeppelin’s Clas­sic Song ‘Ram­ble On’ Track by Track: Gui­tars, Bass, Drums & Vocals

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.