“Absolutely crucial”: Dave Grohl on the drum break that changed the world
There are lots of limited options for drummers when it comes to songwriting. Arrangements might make the song come alive, but most people who are known just to bang the life out of the skins are never going to get the same respect as someone standing behind the fretboard or sitting down to perform their keyboard masterpieces. While Dave Grohl is already an exception to that rule, he thought that the world was shaped once John Bonham hit the skins on this Led Zeppelin classic.
Prior to Zeppelin, though, many virtuoso drummers were normally reserved for jazz music. Although Charlie Watts and Ringo Starr certainly had their signature sense of swing and could serve the song like no one else, they were more inclined to work their magic in the background while the rest of the group filled out the space around them.
Before Jimmy Page even left the Yardbirds, things started moving towards more skilful drumming. Ginger Baker was already a lunatic behind the kit, Keith Moon was slowly gaining traction as a bonafide lunatic with The Who, and despite all the attention going on Jimi Hendrix, the guitar icon would never have been as big a star without Mitch Mitchell giving him the perfect backbeat.
When Page started putting together Led Zeppelin, this wasn’t supposed to be yet another blues rock act. He wanted to think outside the parameters of rock and roll altogether, and in Bonham, he had the right kind of drumming animal to do it. Once the needle hit the vinyl on the first album, ‘Good Times Bad Times’ introduced Bonzo to the world in grand fashion.
Though the track is one of the more compact Zeppelin tunes, Bonham is already flying up and down the drumkit in some of the drumming breaks. Before anything even kicks in, his hi-hat sounds like a ticking time bomb, and every time Page hits a power chord, it gets more intense before Bonham leads in a musical stampede behind him when Robert Plant comes soaring in.
While Grohl was an avid fan of The Beatles before he even knew proper rock and roll, this drum groove ranked among the all-time best for him, saying, “’Good Times Bad Times’ has the kick drum break that changed the world. If you have any aspirations to be a drummer, songs like these are absolutely crucial to you. Even if you can’t play them, you need to know about them.”
Granted, it’s not so much about the drum fill itself that makes it memorable. It was all about what happened afterwards, and considering the number of bands that wanted to have someone that hit hard, Bonham had created the standard that most people would measure their drum sounds against, whether that was the slow groove of ‘Kashmir’ or the drum solo to end all drum solos on ‘Moby Dick’.
But this kind of fury doesn’t come from someone who honed their craft every single day of their lives. It comes from a player with a demon inside them and has a duty to let it out through whatever instrument is around them.
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