”The Best Five Drummers Since 1960” by Henry Southwick

The Best 5 Drummers since 1960

by Henry Southwick

Nobody is going to agree with me on this whatsoever, but please permit me to make a case as to why I believe these five drummers deserve extraordinary accolades for their musical achievements. In no particular order:

John Bonham might be the only drummer in history to be better than Beauford. You knew that already didn’t you?

I don’t know how anyone could possibly be a better drummer than Carter Beauford of Dave Matthews Band. Given a mini drum kit at the age of four, Carter practiced in the mirror with a left hand lead on a right handed kit. By the time he started performing professionally at age nine he had accidentally made himself ambidextrous. As such he has a style that is physically impossible to emulate. Dave Matthews has used Beauford’s talents to create really complex time signatures and without him that band would not be the same. I have a really complicated relationship with Rush (Geddy Lee’s voice skeeves me out), but it is impossible to argue with the talent of Neil Peart on the drums. A man of complicated time signatures and intense drum solos (seriously he even put out a DVD on the subject), Peart plays with his drum sticks in reverse, or butt end out for greater impact. There are a lot of ways in which the drum makes the band, and I think Peart is an example of that.

I give a two way tie to Tre Cool of Green Day and Travis Barker of Blink 182. Like Keith Moon, both of these drummers have the high energy gene where they are always doing something more with drums, even on slower pieces. Also, Tre Cool’s drum solo at the Green Day concert still haunts my dreams, it was so complicated and fast.

Keith Moon: Man, I wish this dude hadn’t died. In the golden age of rock, Keith Moon brought an energy to his drumming that surpassed all others in this already energetic profession. It was never good enough for Moon to just drop a simple beat for The Who. Why be simplistic when you can wail musically on the snare drum every half a second. Just listen to “Pin Ball Wizard,” for example. Each verse, everyone else in the band is casually going down a simple scale, and in the background Moon goes ham bone, every bar, with something different.