Best Rock Drummers

Philo,

I saw the Ginger Baker documentary, too, and it's clear that there's just something wrong with the guy. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I actually laughed when Ginger hit the interviewer with his cane at the end. They'd just spent several months together and seemed to have bonded (a bit), when Baker hauls off and whacks him. The poor guy just stands there bleeding and staring. It was awful and really not funny, but it was also just too bizarre for words.

OTOH, while Ginger Baker may be a pretty ugly human being, he can sure play the drums.

BTW, another name for this thread is Anton Fier of The Feelies and, later, The Golden Palominos. He was always providing interest and unexpected rhythmic flourishes for both of those bands.

I am a fan of Cream and Ginger Baker since the beginning, but that said, he does not belong in the same rare and exalted place as Mitch Mitchell, Tony Williams and several others in my own personal hierarchy. Inventive and different he is and was. Top of the heap technically or artistically, I don't agree.

i must be the only person alive who doesn't like john bonham's drumming (no disrespect to the memory of the man himself)--he was always behind the beat and gave the songs a lumbering, rather than propulsive feel. i just saw a 2007 zep tv concert with bonham's son jason on drums and actually preferred it to the original edition (even though plant's vocal range was shot)--the songs had more swing and less bombast.
i do agree with charlie watts on ginger baker, tho--that maniac can play.

Loomis - I understand what you're saying about Bonham, but playing on the back of the beat without slowing down is the essence of the "heavy" sound. There's a distinction between playing on the back of the beat and dragging and it's hard to do the right way. Carmine Appice played that way on the Vanilla Fudge records, but not quite as extreme.

Bonham was the right drummer for Zep at that time. In another band, maybe it would have been different. I heard Mitch Mitchell in a band called Ramatam after Hendrix died and it sounded like shite.

Chayro,
I completely agree about Ramatam. I had the album because he was on it, but poor Mitch must have needed a paycheck pretty bad to join those scrubs.