Drummer Archetypes

Lately, for a history class, I've had to read a book called The American Political Tradition that has a lot of chapters with titles like "Woodrow Wilson: The Conservative as Liberal," or "Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Patrician as Opportunist," so I thought that I might apply a similar approach to some of my favorite drummers (and some not so favorite). What I mean is, there are certain drummers who represent things larger than themselves- archetypes, if you will. Some drummers have importance beyond their own individual body of work, and I think that's worth seeing.


John Bonham: The Innovator as Orthodox

This one is probably my favorite, and I'm sure a lot of people already know what I mean by this, but I want to explain it. John Bonham's style with Led Zeppelin has become arguably the most commonly imitated style in modern rock music. In some ways, he is the stereotypical drummer in the American conscious (although he was British): he was loud, not overly subtle, and might be even more memorable for his attitude than for his formidable skills. Bonham took the pitter-pattering style of previous rock and roll (i.e., the Beatles and the Hollies), added blues influence, and blew it up. He created a heavy, block busting style of play that depended more on the bass drum than anything else, an aesthetic that has been stolen and distorted by the double bass drum heavy metal guys. But he also inspired most of the pure rock and rollers of the 80s and 90s. His style is still evident, especially in such musicians as Dave Grohl. But what's ultimately important in this case is not his individual style of play (although it is my favorite), but the fact that he was the founder of a new style that has since become mainstream. His sound has more life and intensity in it than his imitators because at that time he was not imitating anyone. He was wholly himself, and the people who followed after were very often part themselves, part Bonham. That's the key: he was innovative, many who play like him are imitating.

Sports equivalent: Bob Cousy, who created the archetype of the point guard as a sleight-of-hand wizard who was always looking for more creative ways to dribble and pass.

Honorable mentions: Carmine Appice, Buddy Rich



Mitch Mitchell: The Role-player in the Spotlight

This seems to most generally apply to drummers with a jazz background who play in blues rock bands. Mitch Mitchell was an amazing drummer: he was creative, had beautiful tone on the toms, and was generally just an interesting player. He had the good luck and the bad luck to play with Jimi Hendrix. It's basically inevitable that any musicians backing Hendrix are going to end up as role players, but, to their credit, Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding managed to display their own talents with enough frequency to make them individually deserving of recognition, especially Mitchell. Mitchell's playing stands out between the Hendrix's epic, spaced-out licks. As the last note of the guitar lead died out, Mitchell's fills assumed the place of prominence, and they were truly incredible. Mitchell was no Keith Moon, who would be "Role-player as Attention Seeker," and he remained in his proper place within the power trio paradigm, but he was just so good at using what time he was given to take center stage that he became more than just a prop for Hendrix's virtuosity.

Sports equivalent: Bill Russell, who somehow made being a defensively-minded center into the coolest thing to be, even when he was playing against Wilt.

Honorable mention: Ginger Baker, John Densmore



Larry Mullen, Jr.: The Workman Who Can Surprise You

Larry Mullen is probably the dullest of my favorite musicians. Most of his work is nothing special. He plays almost no fills and generally just provides a backdrop for the weird effects of The Edge and the showmanship of Bono. He even found himself forced into playing electronic drum kits after returning to the band after having back surgery in the early 90s. But he shows periodic flashes of insightful brilliance that can be shocking. "Sunday Bloody Sunday" remains, in my opinion, one of the crowning achievements of rock drumming. There's nothing exceptionally technical here (although the two handed groove on the hi hat can be hard to transition out of), and, again, almost no fills, but the beat itself is simply awesome. It's sparse and cold, and it enhances the overall experience of that song and its commentary on militarism and violence. It's an army marching band playing to keep everyone in lockstep plus a post-punk attitude. Similar is the beat to "Bullet the Blue Sky," which combines syncopated bass drum with a punk-style hi hat pulse and adds in two truly awesome flams (for those not in the know, that's a beat in which the left hand closely follows after the right on the snare drum, or vice versa). Mullen is rarely worth listening to at the price of losing focus on the whole band, but on occasion there's hardly a point in listening to anything else.

Sports equivalent: there's tons of options for this one, but I think I might go with Heath Miller, the Steelers tight end. He's a decent blocker, almost excessively non-vocal, and capable of intermittently eviscerating an opponent.

Honorable mentions: Topper Headon, Chad Smith



Patrick Carney: The Everyman as Artist

Carney is the drummer for the blues-rock duo The Black Keys. He is probably currently my third or fourth favorite drummer. The most appealing thing about Carney is that he is a self-taught player who shies away from fills but still finds a way to sound unbelievably cool and innovative. Carney's genius is in his ability to write beats. His sound is very good and he has a good internal metronome (he plays a lot of syncopated material), but it's his mental capabilities that are the best. He makes the best use of the snare drum that I've ever heard, especially on tracks like "Ten A.M. Automatic" (a high-energy classic rock sound-alike that got some minor radio play) and "The Flame" (a long, slow blues piece that got no radio play, ever). He's also a minimalist, but manages to sound like he packs as much heat as Neil Peart: he uses only the snare, bass, crash, and hi hat on "Ten A.M.," but it sounds like he's using at least three toms, as well. He only ever sets up two cymbals, maximum, with a sparsely used cowbell. He's a lot like Jack Black's character in the underrated movie "Envy," who is just a factory worker who suddenly invents a wildly successful product.

Sports equivalent: probably Rajon Rondo, who is fundamentally pretty unsound and is forced by his utter lack of a jumper to find intricate ways to score and dish.

Honorable mentions: Dave Grohl (for different reasons), Mullen


Now a couple of negatives...


Neil Peart: The Technician Without Heart

I don't like Rush, and I don't like Neil Peart. It's not that I think he's not a good drummer- he's about infinity times better than I will ever be. It's that I think he's good- but so what? Even his kit gives him away. He has about forty toms, as well as this whole range of cymbals that more or less engulfs his entire body. His kit is an accurate reflection of who he is: he is restless, unable to develop any sort of unique idiom. A friend of mine describes hims as "the ultimate generic drummer," and I agree in some ways. Obviously Rush has a lot of prog-ish elements, which can never be mistaken for generic in the same way that Nickelback is, but Peart never seems to really embrace the style that he's playing at the same time that he borrows from all of them. He sort of just samples some of the effects that each genre has without ever appearing to understand or even enjoy any of them. There's never any passion in Peart, or even the sense that he's satisfied with what he's doing.

Sports equivalent: I'd have to say Tracy McGrady here, or maybe Peyton Manning. Either one fits, really.

Honorable mention: Mike Portnoy. Actually, I really like Portnoy, but I see some of Peart's flaws in him, albeit less pronounced.



Travis Barker: The Ideologically Conflicted Punker

A female friend of mine sort of inadvertently proved my point on this one while trying to defend Blink-182. "How can you not like Blink?" she asked me, "They basically redefined punk rock." And therein lies the problem: if punk rock had a real strength, it was in its attitude. It produced some good bands, like The Clash, but in general, the lack of musicianship held it back, which left its strongest point to be its intensity and aggression. Blink didn't have that. Blink had Tom DeLonge singing whiny lyrics in that nasally voice of his, the underwhelming Mark Hoppus on bass, and Travis Barker, my least favorite drummer ever, providing the "rhythm." The biggest problem I have with Barker is his insistence on trying to be a modern day Keith Moon (more on which later) and play nothing but fills. Unlike Moon, though, he is not all that talented, plays for a band that is ostensibly purely pop-punk (unlike The Who, which was more protopunk and rock and roll), and has a bizarre obsession with crash cymbals. About eighty percent of what he plays could be described as this: Two crashes backed by bass drum, snare-snare-crash, snare-snare-crash, snare-snare-crash. That's it. That is Travis Barker's style. Sometimes he might vary it, and very occasionally improve upon it, but that's the essence of it. And that is, basically, the antithesis of the punk mentality. Punk rock was mostly about political and economic justice. It was about eliminating the showiness of previous rock music and letting righteous anger be the source of the music. In my opinion, it ended up making a heaping pile of bad music with a few bright spots, but the point remains the same. Barker is the very opposite of what he espouses to be: he's intent on being a capitalist in a Marxist environment.

Sports equivalent: I don't know if there really is one, but how about Stephon Marbury, who pretends to be a point guard but is really a highly trained saboteur instructed to bring down whatever team he ends up on by shadowy forces beyond our ken.

Honorable mention: Keith Moon. Like Portnoy, I actually like Moon a fair amount, but The Who were basically the first punk band, and he was a huge show off. The difference is that The Who were punk musically, not necessarily in ideology, and also that Moon was much more talented and made much better use of the whole range of his kit than Barker does.