The ten greatest drummers of all time

PolarityMan

juansolo said:

I may have skipped it, but I can't believe no one has mentioned the drumming machine that is Josh Freese and groove master Jean Paul from Clutch.

Also totally agree with Carey, Bonham, Copeland, Ward and Grohl. I'll also add Cozy Powell and Ian Paice. Both really distinctive

Josh Freese is another great "plays to the song" drummer. He's an even bigger drum whore than Dave Grohl though :d

Emp_Fab

scrumhalf said:

Ginger Baker, Mitch Mitchell, Keith Moon, Terry Williams.

I'm related to Terry.  He's married to my cousin Louise.

Does that make me famous ? :-)

bigjon

joneve said:

Clarky said:

koneguitarist said: but come on Phil Collins in top 10 of drummers in the world?

have you heard him playing fusion with Brand-X?

he's totally off the scale..

here's why I like him so much..

with Genesis you cannot be a shite drummer and make it stick.. the songs are to too big and tricky [early 70's especially]..

Collins made it all sound so simple.. but better than that, he plays drums the way a producer / songwriter would want them played..

he's a compositional player.. he knows when to hold back and when to get busy.. when to play light and when to get spanky..

he plays the song rather than plays along with it.. something most drummers [even good ones] fail to notice..

when he plays with Brand X it's 'gloves off'.. and he'll stand up there with Vinnie C, Dave Wekl etc

he also knows how to create a hook with drums / percussion.. which very few can do..

the opening to Dance of a Volcano, the high toms in The Eleventh Earl of Mar, the main groove in Wot Gorilla for example..

he's very smart with the time sigs too..

the song called ...In That Quiet Earth from the Wind and Wuthering album is in 3/4, what he does on occasion is to link two bars together.. this gives him effectively a single bar of 12/8 which he plays as 12/8 [compound - 4/4 with triplets] across the time.. fkn clever and sounds wonderful..

more than just being able to shred, he's clever, and most of all he's a songwriter.. 

and so he creates the drum parts from a songwriters perspective..

a seriously potent combination if you ask me..

This. Say what you will about his questionable song-writing (I actually like some of his stuff) - his drumming ability is world class. 

Maybe true for his proggy stuff, but the Phil Collins with the Buddy Rich big band stuff is pretty gash. On this one he's in time, obviously, but the overall feel is lumpen, and he misses about 20% of the slow-syncopated accents, plus he keeps putting heavy snare-drum backbeats in inappropriate places