Its a Drummer thing Rlrr Lrll you wouldnt Understand Shirt
Show more sharing optionsClem Burke; Sheila E; Ginger Baker; Questlove; Al Jackson Jr; Ringo Starr; 18 DrumboRichard E. Aaron/Redferns/Getty, Lloyd Bishop/NBC/Getty, Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic/GettBruce Springsteen once said of Max Weinberg, his impossibly reliable drummer for over four decades, “I ask and he delivers for me night after night.” Leave it to Bruce to come up with the perfect tribute to music’s true working-stiff warriors — the guys way in the back, behind all that stuff, giving the music its spine and drive, its cohesion and contour and a huge chunk of its personality, often without getting the credit they deserve. Ever hear any dumb-guitarist jokes? Exactly.So this is our epic chance to give the drummer some. In coming up with our list of the 100 Greatest Drummers of All Time, we valued nuance and musicality over chops and flash, celebrating players who knew the value of aiding a great song more than hogging up a show with a silly solo. That means that along with master blasters such as John Bonham, Ginger Baker, Keith Moon and Neil Peart, and athletic soundpainters like Stewart Copeland and Bill Bruford, you’ll find no-frills-brilliant session guys you’ve been loving on the radio for years like Jim Keltner and Steve Gadd, early rock & roll beat definers like Jerry Allison and Fred Below, in-the-cut funk geniuses and brickhouse disco titans like Clyde Stubblefield and Earl Young, and unorthodox punk minimalists like Maureen Tucker and Tommy Ramone. Bill Berry of R.E.M. once told Modern Drummer magazine, “I guess I’m not really a Modern Drummer drummer.” But the unshowy contribution he made to the band he played in is worth more than a pile of dusty VHS drum-instruction tapes (not that we couldn’t watch that YouTube video where Jeff Porcaro explains how he came up with the “Rosanna” groove until our eyeballs turn to ash).
Its a Drummer thing Rlrr Lrll you wouldnt Understand Shirt
Guns N’ Roses’ landmark debut, Appetite for Destruction, gets much of its swagger from the tense yet swinging beats of Steven Adler, the band’s energetically goofy drummer. “To Steven’s credit, and unbeknownst to most, the feel and energy of Appetite was largely due to him,” Slash wrote in his autobiography. “He had an inimitable style of drumming that couldn’t really be replaced, an almost adolescent levity that gave the band its spark.” Bassist Duff McKagan agreed: “Without his groove, we wouldn’t have come up with a lot of those riffs,” he told The Onion A.V. Club in 2011. Adler, who was fired from the band in 1990, was replaced by technically advanced drummers like Matt Sorum and Frank Ferrer, but no one can properly capture his exuberant, whiskey-soaked, youth-gone-wild pulse.In 1993, Blackman altered the course of her career, shifting from a Tony Williams–style jazz ace to an arena-playing rock star as a member of Lenny Kravitz’s live band. After the singer-songwriter surprised her with an audition, she was suddenly catapulted into his sphere, appearing in the “Are You Gonna Go My Way” video and touring off and on with him ever since. “My job [with Lenny] is to play a beat for hours, and make it feel good, and add some exciting fills and exciting colors, when it fits tastefully,” she told The Villager, commenting on her dual skill set. “My job in my band or in a creative situation is a totally different thing. We may start with a groove that feels great — I may play that for hours too, but I’m going to explore and expand and change that, play around with the rhythm and interject with the soloists.” Blackman’s sharp improvisational instincts and formidable intergenre prowess, on display in projects such as the Williams-honoring Spectrum Road, should serve her well in Mega Nova, a new project featuring husband Carlos Santana and jazz greats Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter.
