Drummers Who Shaped Rock History (Ringo Starr, John Bonham, Charlie Watts, Dave Grohl & More) [Episode 340]

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The stories behind rock and rolls, history making drummers and
what makes them so great, including Ringo star Charlie Watts,
John Bonham, Dave Grohl and Moore. Coming up next on
Booked on Rock.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Who We're totally booked rock and roll. I mean, I'll
leave you. You're reading. Little Hands says it's time to
rock and roll.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Roll up, I totally booked. Welcome back to Booked on Rock,
the podcast for those about to read and rock. John
Lingen is our guest his brand new book titled Backbeats,
A History of Rock and Roll in fifteen Drummers. John,
Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
How you doing, Thanks so much for having me Eric,
I'm doing great.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Five star reviews across the board on Amazon, and among
the compliments is that it's written for musicians while also
connecting with those who are not musicians but music fans.
And there's a great comment from one reader who said,
quote as a steering wheel drummer with no musical and
little sense for the history of drumming, this was a compelling, entertaining, informative,

(01:04):
utterly delightful read. Gotta love reading those reviews.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, that kind of message in particular is really great.
Because that was certainly like a like a secondary goal
of the book really was, you know, and this I
was sort of talking to a friend, another writer in
the course of writing it, who brought this idea to
my attention. So it wasn't like an original thing, but

(01:30):
just like the idea that a book like this, there
aren't that many general interest books about drums, period, regardless
of whatever the topic is or whatever, and so like,
I wanted this book to not only be like a
history of rock and roll, like it says on the cover,
but also if it's a person's like first introduction to

(01:51):
like thinking about drums for two hundred and fifty pages
or whatever, I want it to be approachable like that.
So yeah, I think it's a wonderful compliment. That's why
there's a glossary in the front. That's why I commissioned
a wonderful illustration of a drum set that's in the
book as well, because yeah, I thought, like it's a

(02:11):
good story. But for many people, this will probably be
the first time they ever think at this length about
something they've listened to their whole lives.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
Fifteen drummers covered to the book, So what goes into
your choice of fifteen drummers.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Well, once I decided, you know, that the organizing principle
was going to be a history of rock and roll,
so you know, as opposed to a list of the
fifteen greatest drummers or something like that, then that sort
of helped me build out what that list was. And

(02:47):
I didn't have at the time when I decided, Okay,
it's going to be this particular history, I did not
have a number in mind. So then it became an
idea of like, okay, well, how many different life like
branches on the tree of rock and roll do you
sort of need to explore for this to be a

(03:07):
halfway you know, sort of you know, just like comprehensive
history of this genre, which you know started in the
forties or the fifties, you know, depending on who you
talk to, and continues to this day. So like, how
many different sort of roads do you have to travel down?
And I, you know, I thought ten was too little,

(03:28):
twenty was sort of like becoming too many, fifteen was
ultimately you know, you know, just picked for no reason
on this the kind of arbitrary, but it just it
did cover enough ground, and so then I became like, okay, well, now,
now I want there to be like not necessarily the best,

(03:49):
although I think these are all fantastic players and I
love their playing, But it's not a list of the best.
It's more a list of, like, Okay, if we're going
to talk about this particularler subgenre or this particular development
in rock and roll, who is the sort of like
the best stand in for that. Who is the drummer

(04:11):
that best exemplifies that particular thing?

Speaker 1 (04:14):
And so there.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
Then it became like, Okay, how many of these different
steps do I want to go along? And then who's
going to be the exemplary player for each of these
sort of subgenres?

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah, and I want to ask you about some of
those drummers. But this is the list of fifteen. Sam Lay,
Hal Blaine, Al Jackson, Junior Ringo Star, Charlie Watts, Kenny Butchery, Motucker,
Clyde Stubblefield, John Bonham, Bernard Pretty Perty, Earl Hudson, Tony Thompson,
Dave Lombardo, Dave Grohl, and Questlove.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
There you go, Yeah, that's the list.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
The hell of a list. Let's start with Sam Lay.
He performed the best blues musicians ever, Muddy Waters, Little Walker,
Hollod Wolf, Paul Butterfield, John Lee Hooker, Bo Didley. You're right.
Quote Lay wanted to be an athlete, a sprinter like Jesse. Oh,
but he loved music and seems to have been born
for the drums, even if he never touched a pair
of sticks as a kid. Talk about Sam's background, how

(05:08):
he ended up becoming a drummer.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
Yeah, he's a great example of a person who sort
of comes comes to the instrument from a sideways perspective,
which is, like I say, as you read right there,
not a musician growing up, although he was in a
church in Birmingham, Alabama, you know, a sort of gospel

(05:31):
style Black church, very musical and very percussive, lots of
like you know, handclapping and even even a certain like
rudimentary drum set in the congregation, so very rhythmically inclined,
but did not think of himself in those terms as
a maker of music whatsoever. Then he goes, like a

(05:52):
lot of black people, millions of Southern Black people as
part of the Great Migration, he moves up to Cleveland
and then Chicago, and it's in Cleveland and he arrives
like right around the time that Alan Freed is a
rock and roll DJ, sort of using that term famously.
For the first time, Lay wasn't interested in that. He

(06:14):
watched jazz music in clubs there, and then he and
then he listened to blues music, which was becoming, you know,
the sort of urban black music of the time as
opposed to it being the sort of the country blues
tradition of a generation earlier. So he gets into that
and then you know, plays for the first time in Chicago,
just because he sort of moved I'm sorry, in Cleveland,

(06:37):
because he sort of moved to then moves to Chicago,
and that's the epicenter of electric blues, you know, especially
at that time Chess Records was up and swinging absolutely,
and so yeah, he plays with Little Walter, doesn't record
with Little Walter, but then moves on and works and

(06:58):
records prodigiously with Howl and Wolf and you know, and
then as you say, a sort of list of the
greatest ever and then eventually with the you know, even
in the sixties for a time with the Paul Butterfield
Blues Band, and that's how he ended up with with
Bob Dylan. Even so, yeah, it's just a tremendous legacy,

(07:19):
and to me, like you know, a guy that you
pick that you want to highlight in this history because
you know, he really shows this transition, this movement from
the blues as a sort of like regional black music
into the mainstream into the let's call it co option
or whatever you want, you know, like a culturation of

(07:41):
it by by younger white people, and then its movement
into you know, the ultimate mainstream with something like Bob
Dylan and his and his performance at the Newport Folk Festival.
So to me, a character like that who moves through
so many things and connects so many different kinds of
music is really Yeah, that's what I wanted to really

(08:02):
highlight in a book like this.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
There's a common from Quirky Siegel, a harmonica player, talks
about Sam playing the full dynamic range all the time.
Can you expand on that what made Sam Lay so unique?

Speaker 2 (08:15):
This is one of those things. I'm grateful that you
brought that particular quote up because this is one of
those things that we were saying earlier about people who
know music but maybe don't know drums. Is that, like
you know, I've talked to a lot of people in
writing this book, who think of drums and drumming as
just sort of like, oh, you're keeping, it's like timekeeping,

(08:37):
but dynamics and what we talk about is the sort
of like the variations in volume that players have that
drummers have are hugely important to drums and also to
the sort of historical development of drums. Throughout this book
you see examples of different people, different players who introduce

(08:57):
like a sort of wider dynamic range in different ways.
And Lay was the same way because it wasn't rather
than just like a boom clap boom clap, boom clap,
you know, sort of blues backbeat like that, he was
able to sort of add these little ghost notes of
like boom and so like that, that little variation, that

(09:18):
little change in there, just gives it a deeper feeling
that again, I think a lot of people don't necessarily
even pick up on, but musicians, people like Quirky Siegel
certainly do and certainly always have.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
So many people know about the Wrecking Crew, top notch
session musicians based in Los Angeles who played on many
studio recordings in the sixties and the seventies, including hundreds
of top forty hits, and among that crew drummer Hal Blaine.
Really interesting to read that the guy who's among the
greatest studio musicians ever was primarily a live nightclub drummer

(09:52):
into his late twenties. What led him to studio work.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
What led him to studio work was the creation of
rock and roll studio work. You know, like when a
guy like Hal Blaine, who I believe was born in
nineteen twenty nine, but you know, late twenties, early thirties,
so when he makes the decision or a person his
age makes the decision they want to become a professional musician,

(10:18):
it's the big band era. You know. It's like, that's
what being a professional musician is. It's like playing jazz music,
ideally playing with a famous singer and supper clubs, which
is exactly what Hal did. Suddenly, by the late fifties,
you've got this growing you know what people can thought
was just going to be a trend towards music for teenagers,

(10:40):
pop music, and you even have certain you know, record makers,
people like Phil Spector who are creating an entirely sort
of new way and approach and sound for this music.
And you know, so again it's like what led to
that opportunity was souddenly that opportunity existed, and then for him,

(11:02):
you know, everyone has lucky breaks. Of course, he met
one of the other earliest session musician like rock and
roll drummers and men in an incredibly important drummer in
this story, although he's not one of these fifteen that
get their own chapter, but this gentleman named Earl Palmer
who also went His transition was from playing New Orleans

(11:25):
rock and roll like little Richard. Then he went to
Los Angeles. So by the time the two of them met,
suddenly there's this big Los Angeles record making culture that's
turning their eye, and it's like, hey, we got to
capitalize on all these young people buying records. But none
of the old, none of the old jazz playing farts,
know how to play this stuff. So guys like Earl

(11:46):
Palmer and Hal Blaine knew how to play this new
fangled music. And that's why they sort of like built
such a grand, such grand careers in it for so long.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
You read the book quote, How's most famous and influential performance?
Whose ticket to immortality was? It beat so simple that
its signature element is an unplayed snare and you're referring
to the song be My Baby from nineteen sixty three
by the row Nets. If you could talk about that
opening where he leaves out the first snare and how
producer Phil Spector relied on how to propel the drama

(12:18):
throughout that track.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
So this is the famous boom boom boom bop boom
boom boom bop. So like there's there's different tellings of
like how this happened, whether it was like how made
this decision to leave it because because typically a beat
like that would be boom bah boom boom bom boom,
and that would have a very different, more upbeat kind

(12:41):
of and more typical, uh kind of pattern to it.
So by leaving out that first snare, it makes that
second one just like hit so hard, and it also
slows down the tempo of the entire song and creates
this sense of like tension even within within the rhythm part.

(13:01):
And of course that song is all about building up
and releasing tension, so you know, there are different quotes
you can find about whether that was Hal's decision or
someone told him in the studio to leave that part out,
but either way, you know, that's a great example of
one of those drum beats that everybody knows. I mean,

(13:22):
it's been repurposed dozens, if not hundreds of times in
all sorts of contexts, whether by the Beatles or the
Jesus and Mary Chain or just like you know, Bruce Springsteen.
He's like, it's just like there's so many examples of
that beat, it's almost its own sort of like genre

(13:43):
of rhythm. Like certain things are like, we have certain
certain beats that are just kind of canonical, like a
like a Cuban clave beat or a disco four on
the four beat four on the floor beat, something like that.
And that's absolutely what be my Baby is. It's like
it's its own feel unto itself at this point.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah, Another project I want to ask you about is
his work on the Beach Boys pet sounds. He's using
orange juice bottles, a water jug, a mallet. But it's
not just his ingenuity. You write about how his ability
to read other instruments and adjust on the fly that
made him the perfect guy to translate Brian's vision Brian
Wilson's vision. Brian wasn't a trained composer, right, so the

(14:25):
average musician would have trouble with how he wrote the charts,
which wasn't, I guess technically the way they normally would
have been written.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
So again like to talk about how because again people
ten years younger than him, maybe even less mate might
come up in a different way as drummers and have
like a more rock and roll feel. He, as we say,
jazz trained, literally went to music school, So this guy
knew composition. But there's also a great quote that that's

(15:00):
that I did not get out of anybody, but I
found it somewhere describing him in the studio and how
like the people in the studio would laugh because his
drums sounded terrible in the room, and as you might expect,
playing orange juice bottles would also sound terrible, you know,
or doing all these other sort of almost sound effect

(15:20):
kitchy kind of things that he added to tons of tracks.
His genius and like the significance of him in the
story of rock and roll is that he was one
of the first drummers to conceive of their role as
like existing inside the studio his and like his job
was to play and get it to sound good through microphones.

(15:42):
It wasn't to get it to sound good live and
like in the room or live in a club, it
was to use whatever thing. He just like had a
way to understand not only how to translate, you know,
he was I should say, he was able to translate
both like you know, into the more complex like theoretical

(16:02):
compositional side, and was able to bridge that with this
just like totally free for all creative studio environment that
was only being invented at the time by guys like
Specter and Brian Wilson.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
So he had an idea of what it was going
to sound like coming out of the other side.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
Yeah, and he had no and he had no ego
about it. He was like, I want to add something
to this thing. I think we can get this sound
by Dnkin on water bottles or Dnking on orange juice bottles.
And like, you know, a person who takes themselves more
seriously thinks of their job as being more of an
artiste might not make those kinds of connections. But that's

(16:43):
a great kind of rock and roll spirit that this
guy born in the twenties was really able to embody
at the time terrific.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
And an aside, you know, a phenomenal drummer, but somebody
in the book was talking about the guy just had
great looks. He had.

Speaker 2 (17:02):
It was Aura Palmer. Yeah, who just like out of
nowhere because there's a he has an autobiography that's sort
of like built on uh interviews with him that's called
Backbeat actually uh and uh yeah. In that book he
just like sort of out of nowhere. It drops this
great book that like how Blaine had the prettiest.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
Eye, prettiest.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
Look him up, look him up like they he had
a he had a smolder. Wasn't wrong, Earl wasn't wrong.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
The Book Down Rock podcast is part of the Boneless
Podcasting Network. If you're a fan of classic rock and
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Boneless down Lovable dot app, or just go to book
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him right to the Boneless podcasting network. It is what

(17:54):
you want to be listen with confidence Ringo by Ringo's
influenced many of the greatest drummers, yet doesn't get the
notice musically that the other members get in my opinion,
because of course we're talking about John Lennon and Paul
McCartney and George Harrison. But you bring up a great
point in the book. His ability to adapt to the

(18:15):
unprecedented and unforeseen musical challenges throughout the Beatles recording career
is astonishing and people don't talk about that. I've never
heard anybody mention that, But think about that, how he
had to keep up with those massive changes and advancements
in what those guys were doing with the music. Talk
about Ringo, what makes him such a good drummer and

(18:38):
what other drummers mean by him having a great feel.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yeah, you mentioned that that thing about him being like
the sort of the lesser beetle to everybody and sort
of being musically taken for granted and it being this
you know, sort of joke for many years. You know
that Ringo like wasn't a good dry or something like that.
And I do feel like the record has been corrected there.

(19:03):
But there is there's this way that people talk about
him in terms of what he did not do, in
terms of like, oh, he he was so like patient
and like didn't mess up rehearsals or recordings. He didn't
play very much, or he had this very sort of
spare style and I wanted to really showcase like those
are true, but like he was a masterfully creative player.

(19:29):
And I think the way to understand that is to
really look at, like what this guy had to do
over the course of eight years early sixties. And it
wasn't like they plucked him from obscurity early sixties. He
joins the Beatles nineteen sixty two. He's a very well
known percussionist and a revered one in Liverpool and in Hamburg,

(19:52):
so they knew who he was and like, we're excited
to get him in the band. Then they become insanely popular,
and suddenly this guy who's used to playing in tiny,
little club settings is playing on TV sets and he's
playing at these massive concert halls and within you know,
before too long, he's playing at Shay Stadium, he's playing

(20:18):
he's playing at you know, a Candlestick park, and like,
these are not great environments to be a drummer. You
can't hear yourself sound equipment was at the same time,
so they they break it off, they stop and they
focus only on recording, and then so you think about
that he has to he starts as this great live

(20:39):
rock and roll drummer, completely loses the plot in terms
of like what he brings to the band as they
blow up, then they retreat to the studio in a
way and become super creative, and his role in the
group at that point completely changes, completely changes from you know,
they hire him in nineteen six to be this like

(21:01):
great energy boost and now he's the guy who's sitting
still as they work out things in the studio and
they record orchestral parts and all these other things. And
damned if Ringo didn't play some of the most creative
parts during that whole time period. It wasn't like he
just sort of like drifted into the background. He played

(21:21):
amazing parts in every single Beatles recording, and you can
look at like all these different examples of just like
wildly creative beat making and approaches to that instrument in
a musical way, but also just like in a fascinatingly
rhythmic way. So, yeah, that was a hard chapter because

(21:45):
it's hard to write anything new about Ringo at this point,
or anything new about the Beatles at this point. But yeah,
to find it at least try it, I had to
just sort of put myself in his shoes and think
about what that was like to be on that journey
for so long, and yeah, it's more even more incredible
than I considered it before.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Charlie Watts. So glad he's in this book. I love
Charlie Watts. Actually good to love him and his sound
more and more as the years went by. So essential
to the Rolling Stone sound. You're right quote no one
else has a backbeat like Charlie Watts. Explain why Charlie
was so unique in that sense.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, totally unique in the sense of that band, especially
as they went on and they entered that sort of
like mythic period, you know, Beggars Banquet and let it
bleed up through Exile on Main Street. I mean, I'm
not alone. That's my favorite of their music. And so
like the whole sort of what they achieved in that

(22:45):
time was this just sort of amazing looseness where the
guitars are kind of snaking between each other and the
reverb is forming part of the stew and like you know,
they got background singers and Mick Jaggers taking things and
it's just like this big and like what Charlie Watts
did was like keep that really steady, and not just

(23:09):
in a timekeeping way, because he was honestly not a
great time. I mean he was like he he sort
of shifted and moved the you know that it was
a loose band. They shifted and changed the tempo from
time to time, but as a sort of calm in
the storm and a just sort of like keeping a
kind of like jazz influence and just like steadiness in

(23:32):
the midst of that. Yeah, just like the equivalent of
an of just an absolutely flawless rhythm guitar player, just
like never made a song, always made a song better
when he when he played on it. Yep.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
I was fascinated at the part about Charlie snares sound
really being a mix of sounds. Can you explain how
he came up with that?

Speaker 2 (23:56):
So again, I love I love to be asked these
kinds of questions because these are things that I did
want to sort of highlight in the book. Is these
sort of like physical aspects of drumming. So the Charlie
watts backbead if you think of like a drumstick sort
of tapers to a to a sort of bead at
the end, And if you think of a drumstick hitting

(24:17):
a drum, you would think of like that bead making
contact with one area of the drum and then like
as it as it hits that drum and you lift
off from it, then the air in between those two
you know heads, as we say, reverberate and that's what
makes a drum a snare. Drum of course is two

(24:38):
super tight and it has these like snares on the bottom,
so it doesn't reverberate but as much, but it still
does reverberate a little. And one way that you can
get it to reverberate more is to sort of simultaneously
hit the bead on the head as well as the
sort of middle part of the stick on the on
the metal rim, and that's call rim shot. So you

(25:01):
get this sort of like that. It's like a tighter sound,
but it also makes the drum vibrate more. So he
was great at that, and he was great at like
and again talk about those dynamics that we were talking
about with sam Leigh, he was the master at like.
His backbeat was super steady, but each one would sound
different in certain ways because sometimes he'd hit us he

(25:24):
sometimes he hit it in a different part of the drums.
Sometimes he'd be a rim shot and it just gave
it this like as as I say, this depth, this
dynamism of the sound in a way that like Ringo,
for example, we think of his playing as being very like,
very like tight contained, and Charlie's much more reverberative and

(25:48):
even in his snare, which is just an amazing thing
to achieve. And he's like you can tell him from
the moment you hear.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
So he's utilizing every part of the stick, every part
of the kit.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
Yeah, he's he's hitting it so that it's not just
those it's not just the head of the drum reverberating
and the air going back and forth between the top
and bottom there. But it's also because you're hitting, you
get the click sound of that of that wood hitting

(26:18):
metal on the drum hoop, and then you've also got
this greater reverberation that you hear because the like the
wood of the or the metal in a snar's case
is it is reverberating more because you're slamming a bigger,
like more of the stick on it. And so again,

(26:40):
would you notice this, like, is this the kind of
thing that like a normal non obsessive listener is going
to necessarily notice. No, not really, But if you're the
kind of person. It's the equivalent of like how a
guitar player like what effects they use, or just what's
sort of like if you have reverb up a little echo.

(27:01):
It's just like it's how to get a little bit
more voice, a little bit more life into the sound
you're making. And yeah, he was, just, like I say,
was really one of the one of the masters of
that for sure.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
But now that you point this out, whenever we listen
to the Stones, now listen closely. See if you can
hear I loved you. I think you mentioned in the
book too. The Stones, the shows get bigger and bigger
the state, the stage gets bigger and bigger, and it's
these huge backdrops of they get throughout right up until
the end. Charlie had the same kit.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
And an old one, the old kids. Yeah, there's the
great quote from Gina Shock of the Go Gos, who
who I did talk to? And who did say this
to me? But she So they opened for the Stones
in their nineteen eighty one tour, which was the first
rock and roll tour to take place exclusively in athletics stadiums.

(27:56):
So this is They filmed it for a concert movie
called Let's spend the night together. And so they're they're
playing in like Tempe, they're playing in a giant, like
seventy thousand person football bowl. And she said the quote
was that she was talking to Charlie's roadies and they
were laughing at like the oriental rug underneath of his

(28:19):
kit was worth more than the drums itself.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
It's so great and it's terrific, by the way, the
best dressed drummer in rock and roll history.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
It's those those several seats and it's again big time
jazz guy like so many people of that era, and
he really those were the that was the sort of
standard that he set for himself in a lot of
different ways, including.

Speaker 1 (28:44):
John Ling and the author of Backbeats, A History of
Rock and Roll In fifteen Drummers, John Bonham Bonzo great
quote from Robert Plant including the book to describe Bonzo's
steadiness on the bass battle. Jimi Hendrix was blown away
by it, and Robert said to me after the show,
he's like a rabbit.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
He's like a rabbit. Yes, if I'm breaking any news
in this book, I do believe that that is an
original Jimmy Hendrix quote that Robert Plant shared with me
when I when I interviewed him.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Don't recall ever hearing that before.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, it was just it was such a fascinating It
was a fascinating anecdot because, of course Plant has amazing
insightful things to say about Bonzo's playing, But you know,
Jimmy Hendrix is like, he's not just a guitar player,
like he's the guitar playing genius. And so it's like

(29:37):
the idea of a guy with that level of sort
of instrumental command watching led Zeppelin early in London and
then immediately the first thing he wants to talk about
isn't Jimmy Page. He wants to talk about the drummer.
I think that really embodies kind of what Bonham brought
to that instrument. It was just like he was, you know,

(29:59):
kind of a Hendrix's equivalent, you know in many ways.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
Sure, sure he played ghost notes on the bass drum
without sacrificing intensity or energy. For those not familiar, what
is a ghost note and what made Bottom so good
at that?

Speaker 2 (30:15):
A ghost note is just sort of the technical term,
as we say, for those kind of those sort of
half hits in between the main backbeats. So instead of
that like boom bop boom bop doing the boom. It's
that like that sort of echo. It's just as they say,
they call it the ghost because it's just the sort
of like tail. So any kind of like as we say, like,

(30:37):
that's one of those ways to get that variance and
intensity and in uh and in volume really that drummers
can use. And so a lot of people can do
that on their hands or with one hand, and Bonham
was really one of the first people to do that
with his bass drum foot And you can hear that
right off the top side one track one, you know,

(31:00):
on the led Zeppelin self titled album Good Times, Bad Times.
You can hear like his entrance when he comes in
with the funny little high hat thing, and then he
does this like once Plant comes in. He does these
great little like triplet almost like kind of movements on
the bass drum. And similar to what people how people

(31:21):
reacted to Hendrix, that's just one of those like people
in the club are going to look at that and
just be like, oh my god, who the hell is
this guy. That's just like a real, a real pathbreaking,
new kind of way to blow people's minds with the
drum set in nineteen sixty eight.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
I remember reading about the song rock and Roll and
bottom intentionally messed with a little bit. So anybody that
was going to do any cover band that was going
to try to do it would have difficulty with it.
And that reminds me of the hal Blaine thing with
like where's he going with this at the start of
the song, right, you're not sure where when he's gonna
come in when hit the bass pedal?

Speaker 2 (32:02):
Totally, Yeah, so hard to It's so hard because I
believe what you're referring to is there's the great song
rock and Roll starts with a drum intro, and from
the way he plays it, you like find yourself going
like here comes the entrance of the whole band, and
you're always wrong. And I believe that's because he actually
starts the fill on beat two of a measure, so

(32:24):
it's like it's like an eight beat a two measure phrase,
but he starts in the two, so it only it's
a seven. It's like a seven beat fill instead of
what you would expect to be an eight beat film.
Just an example of that. Yeah, And I think he
was conscious from the start that like he had the
kind of style that people were going to be kind

(32:47):
of mesmerized by and not. I don't think he was
in any way like worried about people nicking his moves
or anything like that, but I can definitely imagine him
being like, oh, I'll make it harder in a playful
sort of way to to ape my style.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
Yeah, hey, guys, we'll get back to the show, but
first I want to tell you about an exclusive deal
for Booked on Rock. Listeners get fifteen percent off any
purchase at old glory dot com over three hundred thousand
officially licensed items covering music, sports, entertainment, and pop culture
merchandise featuring legendary music artists like Bob Marley, The Beatles,

(33:22):
Grateful Dead, Pink, Floyd led Zeppelin, and many many more.
Go to old Glory dot com make sure to use
the promo code. Booked on Rock. Also find a link
in this episode show notes, or just go to Booked
on Rock dot com and click on my deals. Tony
Thompson another legendary session guy who doesn't get the acclaim
deserved I don't think. Best known for his work with
The Chic and the Power Station On the power Station

(33:46):
that album sounds just massive. I mean that's like when
the Levy Breaks is Bonzo's famous one for the Monster Beat,
but the Power Station is one of those big beat albums.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
Absolutely, you know, and you know who agreed with you
was Robert Plant and Jimmy Page because when Zeppelin reunited
at Live Aid in nineteen eighty five, Thompson was the
guy they came to to replace John Bonham. And like
you would think thirty five year old black guy from

(34:21):
I think He's from the Bronx, plays with chic, he
plays the incredible drum intro on I'm Coming Out by
Diana Ross, so like massive killer drummer, but you wouldn't
think replaces John Bonham. This is not this new kind
of style, but it's a fascinating thing. And this is
what I loved about sort of putting this book together,

(34:42):
was sort of highlighting these types of when you look
at drums this way and you sort of follow where
influences go, you make these connections that you might not otherwise.
So like, for example, Tony Thompson, as I say, black
kid from the Bronx, born in the sixties, massive Zeppelin fan,
he like idolized Bonhom above anybody, but also idolized Ginger

(35:08):
Baker and these other incredible players from that time. So
this this great big snare drum, you know, and this
very classical eighties sound that you associate with something like
the power Station, you know. We think of that as
being this like, you know, mid eighties sort of synthpop sound,
but again came straight from led Zeppelin. Like so many things,

(35:30):
you know, you wouldn't you wouldn't. You wouldn't find those
connections if you were trying to find them through Jimmy
Page or Robert Plant, but through the drums, it comes
through loud and clear.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
Yeah, there was a quote he had you put in
the book where he talks about Bonhom's ability to listen
and be smart about when it's time to do a
drum fill. And that is really important because there could
be those gratuitously look at me, Look what I can
do drum fills. But to place it just where it
needs to be, I would imagine that's not that easy.

(36:03):
You have to be you have to have a certain feel.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
We mentioned that you have to have a real musical
sense beyond just a talent at the drums. This is
also something that people said about Dave Grohl decades later,
you know that that he had this just incredible ability
to not just come in and play loud and aggressively

(36:27):
and give Nirvana this newfound intensity. He also had this
great sense of like not only could he play amazing fils,
but he knew where to put them and like knew
like how to design a fill. So it wasn't just
an improvised thing, but it was a thought through, kind
of composed idea. And with him, it's kind of obvious

(36:51):
and it's a compliment. You know, he's chapter fourteen in
the book. I love him as a drummer, but you
can tell, like in Nirvana songs that these are these
you can drum along to them like he had their
real parts. Bonham was a little bit more loose like that,
but he absolutely had the same. I mean, he was
so alive to everything else that the other musicians were

(37:12):
doing and plant I mean, that was the main thing
he talked about. You know, he talked about him being
a great, impressive drummer, but he talked about just like
as a band, they were just so unbelievably powerful and
just like really mind melded in an amazing way.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
Going back to power Station, you had some comments from
John Taylor, who was in the Power Station with Tony Thompson.
That was a supergroup by the way, for those who
may not now Robert Palmer, Tony Thompson along with Andy
and John Taylor from Duran durand now John told you
it wasn't a comfortable experience recording with Tony. What what
does he mean by that? Did he not get along

(37:51):
or was it more of a musical.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
I think so. So that group came together, and yeah,
I spoke to John Taylor, and I have to say
I've told this to many people, just like personally, but
on the record, John Taylor is one of the greats.
Like this guy was really one of the coolest, most
insightful musicians I've ever spoken to in his way to
talk not only about music, but in his way to

(38:15):
talk about musicians and their personalities and so what he
was talking about there was that like by the time
Duran Duran and Chic met, they were both wildly popular.
But she but but Duran Duran was like influenced by Ic,
so they like revered those guys, and the Sheep guys

(38:36):
sort of respected the new sort of upstop, upstart pop
pomp guys. So they met, like when this supergroup started,
it was this total excitement about like meeting there. It
was kind of playing with a hero was the essential.
It was the nature of like playing and especially with
John who plays the bass based as a very you know,

(38:57):
direct close relationship with the drums. To be playing with
Tony Thompson was like this great, incredible moment. And it
wasn't anything to do with them not personally getting along.
It was more just sort of like when he got
close to that power, when he got close to that
drumming and he played alongside it, he realized that there

(39:17):
was a real sort of like like it's not just
that it feels intense, like it is intense. It was
almost like it was almost like physically uncomfortable to have
this guy just kind of like you know, beaten the
music forward against you. And also that he recognized that
this came from a really real place that it wasn't
like it wasn't like Thompson was a depressed or angry

(39:39):
guy at all. But he said about all the guys
in chic you know who were black men born in
the nineteen fifties, like they saw crazy stuff and they
overcame crazy stuff, and they came up in the middle
of the civil rights movement, and so it wasn't so
much that they were like, it wasn't that they disagreed.

(40:00):
It was just like fascinating for him to come and
see the guys from Chic, this great fun band and
realize that they're really not happy go lucky guys. It
wasn't like there were bad dudes at all, just not
happy go lucky. But his point was that, like that's
what makes that music so durable and lasting even now.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
And that intensity overwhelmed him at times.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
Yeah, he had this quote about it, it's like it's
harder to make something about like it's harder to make fun,
happy music than it is to make sad music in
the sense that like it's harder to make like lasting
happy music. And his point was that like that little
just like that in the same way that like a
little bit of vinegar in the soup, you know, just

(40:47):
sort of adds that little tang, that little it's just
like that little bit of intensity, that underlying intensity added
something really musically durable to these songs that are just
like pure joy. But that's why they still sound fresh
almost fifty years later.

Speaker 1 (41:03):
Yeah, yeah, well intensity and Slayer. I think those two
go together. Dave Lombardo from Slayer, You're right. Quote the
thing that defines Slayer's evilness as much as the guitars
was a bass drum technique beyond any herd and rock
to that point. Okay, so let's talk about double bass drumming.
What does that mean? And then what makes Lombardo so

(41:25):
good at that?

Speaker 2 (41:26):
So your typical bass drum, or your typical drum set
rather has one bass drum, which is the one on
the floor operated with a pedal, typically with your right foot,
and occasionally even pre rock and roll, in certain jazz
bands Duke Ellington's band and others, you would have two

(41:47):
bass drums, and that would usually be used like you know,
it's a flashy thing. It's a thing for drummers to
use it as like a kind of timekeeping in a
solo or to bring up a you know, a big
kind of crowd pleaser, showmanship kind of deal. Great drummers
who did that in jazz. In metal, of course, it

(42:08):
can be used, like so many things, just to sort of,
as you say, like dial up that intensity, and metal drummers,
like you know, really grabbed on and starting in like
the seventies and leading into the eighties, really grabbed onto
this idea, including you know, guys like Phil Taylor in
Motorhead and so Slayer, guys from San Francisco. They formed

(42:31):
their band in about nineteen eighty two, and like so
many metal bands, their whole thing is just like we're
out to crush the world. We're gonna be the fastest, loudest, heaviest,
every most evil blah blah blah, and so like the
double bass thing just sort of becomes this natural thing
that Lombard is doing it. He starts playing in Slayer
when he's like sixteen, He's so young, and just quickly

(42:54):
becomes like an absolute prodigy on this double bass technique
and also uses it not just to dial up intensity,
but as this band grows, means like a true real musician,
not just like a meathead basher. And so you know
you can hear even through the thudding and the volume

(43:15):
and everything, a great deal of control that he has,
and he's not always just playing loud, really musical stuff.
And he's a person I didn't have any knowledge of.
I mean, I'll be perfectly honest, like I'm not by
nature a metal guy, and this was one of those
genres where like, Okay, if I'm going to write a

(43:35):
history of rock and roll, it has to include certain things.
So I really had to learn about the blues, for example,
in a different way than I had before. And then
I had to figure out how to talk about metal
as a subgenre. And so again that's another one like
if I've been talking about if I've been talking about
a subgenre, you might have gone to Black Sabbath to

(43:56):
talk about like the most epical epocal metal band. But
if you're talking about drums, suddenly a group like Slayer
becomes a really fascinating sort of window to look at
that genre because that drummer, that particular player is just
so unique and frankly just impressive to me. I just

(44:17):
love the way this man plays. He's just absolutely amazing.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
Yeah, And in the way that Bill Ward was influenced
by jazz, you've got Lombardo influenced by Latin music. And
then now there's the example being Angel of Death. Right.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
This is another reason why you know I wanted to
include him was that you know, he brings another element
to talk to, which is the sort of Latin influence
on rock and roll. Surprised me as much as anybody
that Slayer would be the way to talk about that.
But yeah, Slayer, or rather Lombardo was born in Cuba,

(44:54):
came to America as a very young kid, what was
raised by immigrants in a Cuban American community, and so
heard a lot of Latin music live and on the
stereo when he was growing up. And uh, there was
this great anecdote again not one, but just one that
I found in a previous interview he had done where

(45:15):
he talked about this very famous like if you asked
a metal drummer, what is the most famous metal drumming
phil of all time? They would probably say this drum
this double bass break that he does on the Slayer
song Angel of Death from their album Rain and Blood.
So he does this great double bassed timekeeping and then

(45:39):
he plays this like tom pattern over it to kick
the band back in. And he said that when he
when he recorded this and then listened back to it,
and at this point he's in his early twenties, that
was when he first realized, like, oh, this is that
I just pulled a move right out of Tito Puente,
who is like, you know, they call him l Ray.

(46:01):
He's the king of Latin music. Anyone who he's the
first stop if you say, I want what's what's Latin music?
What can I get into? He's just he's an unbelievable
figure and so yeah, so Lombardo of all people and
who he himself has been incredibly influential to metal drummers
ever since. You know, even he subconsciously was bringing this

(46:25):
great you know, almost obvious to him Latin influence to
his playing, and you can really tell it, I think
in the in the subtlety of what he plays. He's
not the kind of guy who's got his hands up
as high as he can get them so he can
smack as hard as he can. You know, he's not
straining when he plays. He has a great sort of control, uh,

(46:48):
and just a wonderful musical guy to watch. He's like
an athlete that has to sort of master his approach.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
Hey, guys, thanks so much for checking out the booked
on Rock podcast. If you've just found the podcast, welcome.
If you've been listening, thank you so much for your support,
and make sure you tell a friend, a family member,
share on social media and let people know about booked
on Rock, and if you do like the podcast, make
sure you subscribe give a five star review. Wherever you
listen to the Booked on Rock podcast, We're on Amazon, Apple, iHeart, Spotify, Spreaker,

(47:25):
tune In, and on YouTube music. You can check out
the full episodes on video, along with video highlights from
episodes on the Booked on Rock YouTube channel. Find it
at Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back
to the show. We did talk about Dave Ryel a
little bit, but I wanted to ask you a little
bit more about him because it's interesting to find out that, hey,

(47:47):
maybe maybe he would have been part of Tom Betty's band,
right because there was that SNL appearance.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
He was given the opportunity to.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
How did he end up behind the kit that night? Know.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Tom Petty's album Wildflowers came out, I guess a little
bit after the suicide of Kurt Kobain in nineteen ninety four,
and there was a really great outpouring of support towards
Grole and Chris nova Selk in the aftermath of that,
because I you know, Nirvana was so revered by people,

(48:24):
and so one of those examples was that Petty, who
had just parted ways with his original Heartbreakers drummer Stan Lynch.
Stan Lynch great player, great player, great feel on those
Petty singles. Absolutely, But anyway, so they had they had
he had recently left the band, and so they didn't

(48:45):
officially have a drummer. And so they had a Saturday
Night live appearance and Tom Petty invite Scroll to come
in and just sit in on the drums for the
two songs they play, and as you can imagine, Dave
role playing Tom Petty is like the loudest that the
Tom Petty and the heart Breakers have ever sounded, like yeah,
oh my god. Yeah, but Campbell is literally like laughing

(49:07):
as they play, and I mean, role's great. He's really,
needless to say, he's a super funky drummer. And so
after that performance, I don't know exactly the timetable or
but yeah, Petty did say like, if you want to
be the Heartbreakers drummer, come aboard, and yeah, amazingly Grohl

(49:29):
said no. And I say amazingly because he was like,
I mean, he writes about this in his memoir. He
was like incredibly honored by it, needless to say, but
you know, just pretty fascinating that he obviously because that
was the start of the Foo Fighters from there. So
it was really kind of amazing that he turned down
this unbelievable opportunity. He'd been nearly homeless like a few

(49:53):
years earlier, and now he's a chance to join Tom
Petty and the Heartbreakers, and instead he has the wherewithal,
but also the desire to kind of step back, gather
and regather himself after the tragedy and start this whole
new chapter which is still ongoing thirty years later.

Speaker 1 (50:10):
I wonder how much of an effect the fact that
he is a drummer, how much that influences his songwriting,
because I've heard I've heard, like, for example, Eddie van Halen,
I think we talked about how he was trained to
play on the piano, so he played the guitar kind
of like a piano player.

Speaker 2 (50:29):
Sure, so you now thinking.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
Like a drummer, you're kind of writing music from that standpoint, maybe, I.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
Think if we were to compare the two, and it's
a fair comparison, I don't remember, but like the sort
of songwriter drummer component and guitar player component for Grohle
has always been like a little bit more intertwined than

(50:55):
his career makes it seem like in public he was
a drummer in the most famous rock band in the
world and then suddenly made this pivot to guitar playing
and singing and songwriting. And the truth is that, like
he was, he recorded like one man band albums when
he was a kid, like we do it, yeah, like
a literal child, And so he always had this kind

(51:19):
of songwriter's you know, compositional sense, even when he was
a drummer. I don't think he was ever at that
time thinking he would like make his living as a songwriter.
I think drumming was always the thing he was most
talented at, and that was certainly like the break that
he got was playing with a with a DC punk
band called Scream. But so yeah, I think he was

(51:43):
always drummer first. But it wasn't like Kurt Cobain died
and he was like, I better pick up a guitar.
They shared songwriting notes a lot like role had you know,
input in the composition of Nirvana songs and brought his
own songs to Kurt Cobain for songwriters advice.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
Like wasn't there one song that ended up on a
deluxe edition.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
Not you believe. Yeah, you're right. I forget the name
of it, but I think there is one song that
was officially released, uh, that was written and I think
sung by Grohl as a as a Nirvana song, But
it was like it was known, like he recorded stuff
during that time. Uh. I mean, I don't think he
was like sitting on a on a on a warehouse

(52:31):
of unused songs. It wasn't like the first Foo Fighters
song was like his all Things Must Pass or something
like that. I think it was that that was a
new sort of project in response to something, but always
a highly musical, compositionally minded person from the from the
get go, for sure.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
So to finish up, I'm curious, do you have a
favorite drummer or top three drummers?

Speaker 2 (52:55):
Oh? Boy, so impossible to say. But you know, one
of the people we did not mention here because you know,
it's you know, even in a great long interview like this,
you can't talk about everybody. But I was really proud
and excited to include Motucker from the Velvet Underground in

(53:15):
this book. I think her legacy is not as well
understood as it could be, and I liked the idea
of positioning her among figures like Charlie Wattson, Ringo Starr
and other people who are a little bit better known,
because I think she really deserves to be known, like

(53:36):
for her innovations. In terms of again talk about just
sheer creativity behind. You know, she could be the loudest,
she could be the quietest, she could just anything that
served that band, and I think she's so influential for that,
you know, in terms of people that really don't get

(53:59):
mentioned book, you know, I would bring up a guy
named greg Sonnier from the indie rock band Deer Hoof,
who've been going since the late nineties. I just think
he's a phenomenal, phenomenal player and just like so much fun,
so creative and so interesting. And now I'm thinking like

(54:20):
there's a billion names flashing through. Oh sure, because you
asked for three, of course, But I'm just trying to
think of like I.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
Think about it in terms of if it's a well
I listened to the song, even if the song itself
isn't great, but I'll just listen for the drummer, and
what comes to mind? Who comes to mind? Stuart Copland, Huh,
he was a big one. Yeah, just to listen to
him play. I can listen to his isolated tracks.

Speaker 2 (54:42):
Totally, totally, and he had great you know, soundtrack work
and other thing. I'm not as big a fan of
of him as a lot of people are, just and
it's not like it's just personal preference, but like he
and Ginger Baker were absolutely the two people that the
most folks asked me about, like is this guy going

(55:03):
to be in the book? So like, yeah, Neil Pier.
It's interesting to see, like which of these players has
actually like registered in the popular consciousness, you know, among
that you know, I when I was a kid, I
loved Keith Moon a lot. Oh, of course he was amazing.
So I'll also say, uh, you know, I get into

(55:24):
him in the introduction of the book. But you know,
the guy who actually did end up replacing Stan Lynch
long term in The Heartbreakers was a wonderful British drummer,
black guy, uh, Steve Ferroni. And he's a guy that,
like not a household name, but boy he's played with

(55:44):
absolutely everybody. And a guy like Questlove, who's of course
like an amazing drummer, but just like a music nerd extraordinaire.
I believe Questlove has a snare drum that he refers
to as his Steve Ferroni's stare because he has it
like perfectly set up to like have the same backbeat.

(56:06):
So like that's who Steve Ferroni is. He's the kind
of player that, like other drummers just like listen and
like just get.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
Super tight, super tight. And I mean Tom Petty when
he I think the first song I think he may
have played on Steve Roni was you don't know how
it feels or one of the at least that was
the moment where Petty's like, this is my guy. And
it's real interesting to talk about how a change in
drummer can change the sound of an artist. The songs

(56:38):
that Tom Petty wrote with Ferroni the different from what
we heard you know, pre Ferroni. And you know that's
the impact that a drummer can make.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
He's a great example too of a guy who you know,
because of course he played the class. I mean, say
what you will about Ferroni. I don't think he played
on like the most popular He didn't play on the
classic Tom Petty and the heartbreaker songs. I guess he
played on Wallflowers, which people love, but for many decades,
you got to hear him play those songs and it's like, yeah,

(57:11):
I give all respect to Stan Lynch, who I thought
put an incredible flavor on those early petty tracks. And
now you get to hear a guy like Ferroni who
just is so different, and you can really feel the
difference in the way that band sounds with just that
slight that one replacement just makes all the difference, Like

(57:32):
you say.

Speaker 1 (57:34):
Find the Bookdown Rock website at bookdown rock dot com.
There you can find all the back episodes of the show,
the latest episode in video and audio, links to all
of the platforms where you can listen to the podcast,
plus all the social media platforms were on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok,
and x. Also check out the book down Rock blog.
Find your local independent bookstore, find out all the latest

(57:57):
hot rock book releases, and before you go, check out
the Booked on Rock online store. Pick up some booked
on Rock merch. It's all at booked on Rock dot com. Well,
this was fun to talk about all the great drummers.
John I really was looking forward to this. I love
the book that beats a History of rock and Roll
in fifteen drummers. It's out now you can find it.

(58:18):
Hriver books are sold. Look for at your nearest bookstore.
Go to booked on rock dot com to find your
nearest independent bookstore for one there and where can people
find you online?

Speaker 2 (58:29):
Probably the best place is just to go to my
website John Lingen dot com j O H N L
I N G A n H. And yeah, that's got
this is this is my third book, so you can
learn about the older ones too there about music as well.
All my articles and stuff are there, so yeah, that's
the place to go. But this was this was a

(58:49):
blast man, great talk, really fun to talk to go
through all this stuff. O. S.

Speaker 1 (58:53):
Dan. Yeah, John, thanks again and we'll hopefully have you
on again online.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
Can't wait. Thank you, Eric. That's it. It's in the box.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
H

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