Bonham’s Are Not The Only Fruit

Lest we forget our Paice’s, Powell’s, Kirke’s & others…

Ian Paice recording 'Machine Head' in Montreaux
Tucked away around the corner of a hotel corridor in Montreaux, Ian Paice laid down some inspirational & fiery drum tracks that we often forget about. As much of a drumming pioneer as any of his contemporaries, Paice is often overlooked for his contribution to the history of British Rock drummers.

I love John Bonham – it’s clearly evident elsewhere on this BLOG what a major influence he has played in my development as a drummer for over 20 years. However, by focussing so much attention on the icon that is, John Bonham, it has made me equally guilty of not focussing my deserved attention to other classic British Rock drummers of the same period, who also played a major part in my early development – as well as the thousands of other drummers like me who grew up in the 1970s.

I’ve been neglectful and it’s time to redress the balance.

First of all, this is not about getting into a Bonham versus Paice et al argument; it’s about reminding ourselves that there were actually some other great British drummers who rose to the top of their respective games at the same time as John Bonham. Guilty as I am of falling under the spell of the cult of Bonhamality (and why wouldn’t you?), I hope this will serve as my recompense to the often-overlooked British Classic Rock drummers, equally deserving of the same accolades.

Celebrity Rock Band Death Match

In the superstar Rock band fan camp, there have always been two separate factions who either prefer Led Zeppelin to Deep Purple and vice-versa. Those who prefer Deep Purple always say that they had the keyboard player, whilst the Zeppelin camp extort the values of Jimmy Page and the great wall of supernatural mystery that engulfed the Led Zeppelin Behemoth. Not dismissing the genius of Ritchie Blackmore, it would seem that with a strong keyboard player like Jon Lord in his band, it was harder for him to earn the same attention as Page had in Zeppelin. Furthermore, Deep Purple suffered a lot of line-up changes and public displays of instability, whereas Zeppelin managed to successfully hide their turmoil behind the impenetrable fortress that was, Peter Grant’s management.

Throughout their careers, both bands had drug problems between various members, culminating with the post-Purple death of Tommy Bolin and of course, John Bonham 4 years later. In the 30+ years since Bonham left us, there has been an almost canonisation of the man, having been cut down at a time when he was clearly struggling with the demons of addiction. Ian Paice on the other hand, was part of the camp in his band who preferred a quiet drink as opposed to serious narcotics, subsequently surviving the excess of the 1970s.

Because Bonham died at a point in drumming history when we were on the cusp of an advance in both acoustic and electronic drum development, we can only speculate about how Bonham would have developed as a player. Thus, he is stuck at a point in history, frozen onto a timeline that stopped in 1980, at a particularly low psychological ebb in his life. I like to think that he would have gone on to beat his addictions, taken time out from the industry, coming back later to wow us all and take his place as a living legend next to his contemporaries.

But it wasn’t to be.

Fastest hands/feet – It doesn’t really matter, but…

Technique. It’s what we all strive to better ourselves at – whatever instrument we play. A handful have it in natural abundance, whilst the rest of us really have to work at it. John Bonham and Ian Paice were both naturally gifted players with many similarities, both primarily drawing from early American R&B music to develop their styles. Paice actually may have had a slight advantage over Bonham, having been the product of a musical father with a background in Jazz & Big Band. This is particularly evident in Paice’s Snare work, heavily borrowing from the fiery chops of Buddy Rich, which in my opinion certainly gave him an edge in speed over many of his contemporaries. I think it’s fair to say that in terms of technique displayed on a recording, Deep Purple’s ‘Burn’ pretty much tops anything on a Zeppelin, Rainbow, Free or Cream cut (even up against Bonham’s mammoth fill on ‘Achilles Last Stand’). Paice had an equally fast foot to Bonham, but took it a stage further with the occasional use of twin Bass drums when necessary (Bonham of course was banned from using a second kick early on!)

Despite Paice’s extra bit of Nitrous Oxide in his tank, this on the whole, is irrelevant compared to the musical contributions Paice and Bonham made to their respective band’s work. Certainly, musicality is the No.1 attribute I hear when I’m listening to cuts laid down by drummers like Paice, Bonham, Baker, Mitch Mitchell, Simon Kirke, Brian Downey, Bill Ward, Cozy Powell or Roger Taylor. These guys had a unique swing to their playing, which always, always came before their use of technique. Their combination of feel and technique certainly set the precedent for fledgling drummers like myself to aspire to – as I still do today. Even if we pragmatically establish that Paice had a technique that got him around a drum kit quicker than most of the other guys, it takes nothing away whatsoever, from the collective musicality on offer from these players.

About Drum Solos…

Rewind back to the late 70s when Rock bands were on the way out in terms of the current musical fashions, if you had to pick ‘The King’ of the modern drum solo, the crown would undoubtedly be handed to Neil Peart, or ‘the professor’ as he was referred to. At the time, although I thought Peart’s solo from ‘All The World’s a Stage’ was from another dimension, it just didn’t excite me as much as Paice’s showpiece on ‘The Mule’ from the ‘Made In Japan’ album. Even Bonham’s ‘Moby Dick’ lost my attention, simply due to its length and the extended vamps. Paice seemed to say everything that needed to be said in under 8 minutes with all guns blazing. It was like he detonated a cluster bomb of fireworks and then got out as rapidly as he came in!

Further drum solo disappointment came in 1982 when I saw Cozy Powell with Whitesnake on their ‘Saints & Sinners’ tour. Having been knocked out by Powell’s playing on Rainbow’s live album, I was expecting a drum solo of Paice like proportions. However, Powell’s use of lights, pyrotechnics and backing tracks (‘1812 Overture’ & ‘633 Squadron’) in favour of technical display, left my immature and juvenile thirst for a chop-fest, unquenched. Of course, the 99% of non-drummers in the audience totally got Powell’s sheer entertainment value, something I was too stupid to realise at the time! Still, his playing within the Whitesnake song framework was as spellbinding as his work with Rainbow, rendering any disappointment with drum solos worthless.

Nick Lauro and Cozy Powell, circa 1995
Birmingham, circa 1995/6, after a drum clinic by Pete Erskine; I spot what looks like Cozy Powell in the bar and in a state of shock & awe, dive over to see him, like I was a 13 year old fan again. The expression on my face says it all – wide-eyed and dumbstruck; within a couple of years of this picture being taken, Cozy would tragically die in a car accident.

Cozy Powell had actually played a blinding stroke in the name of not boring the masses. He knew everything possible in drum technique had already been done to death in the drum solos of his contemporaries, so Cozy went for theatricality and blew the audience away without losing their attention. It took me a few years to realise this, and I’m glad I finally got to meet Cozy to tell him how much he meant to young guns like myself back in the day, before he was tragically taken from us. Outside of the Rock genre, Cozy had a great contemporary loose 70s feel, making him a first call for pre-production with Micky Most’s RAK records pop acts.

Cozy was also known for using two Bass drums at a time before the need for 200+ BPM was ever considered. This meant that instead of the indecipherable math-metal Bass drum special effects we hear today, Cozy actually managed to use twin kicks in a purely musical manner. Speed was never the issue, complimenting the musical environment always being paramount. At the time I met him, the Bass drum technique of guys like Virgil Donati was at the cutting-edge of technical drumming and we were all sucked into it. The gentle Louis Bellson inspired musical double-Bass licks of Powell, Peart, Cobham, Van Halen & Baker were deemed as prehistoric, as we all pushed ourselves into speed oblivion against our metronomes.

At the time of writing this, I’ve had to revisit Powell’s work in the course of learning some Rainbow songs for a band set. By modern standards, there’s nothing challenging speed-wise; but trying to recreate the feel of two Bass drums played organically, without feeling quantized or too loose, is the real headache. It’s forced me to rethink my approach and has pushed me deeper into learning the styles of the players from the era of music I love the most; which brings me back to my original point…

Standing In The Shadows Of The Greats

'John Bonham 1975' by Dina Regine
Frozen in time and revered by me and thousands. One of a handful of British drummers from the golden age of music who equally changed drummers lives, forever. (Picture credit: ‘John Bonham 1975’ by Dina Regine – http://www.flickr.com/photos/divadivadina/3555264805/. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Bonham_1975.jpg#/media/File:John_Bonham_1975.jpg)

Whilst John Bonham is undoubtedly at the top of many a drummer poll list, it is unfair to allow his stature to completely overshadow the achievements and skills of his contemporaries. The likes of Paice, Bonham, Powell, Kirke, Ward, Downey, Baker and Taylor all knew each other on various different levels, all borrowing each others ideas. Then there’s the overspill from British Prog Rock players, like Phil Collins, Bill Bruford, Mel Pritchard, Barriemore Barlow etc, who all cross-pollenated the 1970s Rock drumming revolution, inspiring me to want to be as great as them.

If John Bonham was alive today, I’m sure he’d be overwhelmed by the love still shown for him, especially considering that on the eve of his death, he’d gloomily expressed to Robert Plant how he thought everyone else was a better drummer than him. But equally, I doubt he’d want to take all of the limelight for himself, happier sharing his place in the British Rock drummer’s hall of fame with his contemporaries; players who defined a style of drumming that combined individual technique, flair, feel and musicality, leaving us with a blueprint easily trounced by modern technique, yet impossible to better or replace, despite our advanced drumming evolution.

It seems that technical prowess fuelled by speed is the final frontier for the future generations of drummers. But when we’ve played the fastest note groupings possible, achieved warp speed and still keep trying to find ways to reinvent the drumming wheel, just remember; there’s no shame in travelling backwards to a time when an individuals musical contribution counted for more than clinical precision and note execution. Also take heed, that whilst John Bonham will always remain a constant as an icon, there are other remarkable fruits on the same tree, equally deserving to be tasted and extolled, some of them still alive to tell their tales.

4 thoughts on “Bonham’s Are Not The Only Fruit

  1. Hi Nick,

    I do know you and your article is spot on. I am not new to drumming and i literally spent my whole life studying these two great drummers. As far as I am concerned Ian Paice and John Bonham set the bench mark, so to speak, i should know as when i started playing in 1970, rock was so highly in vogue, unlike now. So at the age of fifty I have seen an awful lot of drummers and these two combined technical expressiveness and playing for the song skills in bucket loads. The problem now is drumming has become almost like a marathon technical display of “who can play the cleverest chops” and in many cases, miss the point, which is to serve the music. Oh and I studied with Red for years, was so sorry after hearing of his death a lovely guy and true master.

    1. Thanks for reading Jon, I think the other thing is that the guys we love also had great songs to work with and essentially, a bigger field of snow where people had yet to tread footprints. If you notice now, we are living in the age that has given birth to the concept known as, ‘The YouTube Drummer’. Maybe this is because drummers have no where to go these days, possibly because the music business today offers a minute portion of the opportunities available to those of us who worked within it during the 80s. Songwriting seems to be a forgotten skill which is at the core of giving us drummers something imaginative to work within. God knows what young guys have to do to find bands and gigs so maybe chops and YouTube is the alternative to going to your local music shop noticeboard and putting a handwritten ad up offering your services? My best education was playing with other musicians and being told by studio engineers during my first recording sessions to stop playing certain fills because they were getting in the way of the song. I learned more from having my ass kicked by studio engineers than a 3 hour Thomas Lang DVD could ever teach me. We couldn’t be edited on a Pro Tools grid or dropped in either; our takes were all full passes. Essentially, we had the same organic band experiences that our more famous peers had and learned how to communicate with our band members rather than concentrating at producing a perfect solo perfomance to upload to a YouTube channel. There are some incredible younger players out there on YouTube, it’s just a shame that they have to resort to such a solitary outlet to express their creativity. Maybe the dream of being in a creative band of your own like Paice and Bonham did has taken 2nd place to being a successful ‘YouTube drummer’?

  2. Hi Julian,

    so right about opportunities to play, there are less(if any) breaks and even less musical genre these days to apply ones talent. Jazz is virtually gone as has jazz funk, prog rock, hard rock, jazz rock all been conveniently done away with, theyve cut the heart out of everything and not just Cowell and co. Terrible shame, in a way I am lucky at this age to be gigging in a great band and still love every minute of it with my Ludwigs.

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