The drummer Dave Grohl claimed as his drumming hero: “A fucking decathlete”
When Dave Grohl says you can drum, that is a true maestro’s seal of approval. You can say whatever you want about the man. That his work in the Foo Fighters can be hit or miss, that his songwriting is more workmanlike than inspired and his personal life. But, he is, above everything, a generational drummer.
He’s John Bonham reborn in how he can thread the needle between timing, force and feel. Pretty much the only reason to listen to that Them Crooked Vultures album is to hear how effortlessly he can power the record along despite its staggering technical demands. Fittingly for a man who can seemingly do it all on the skin, his inspiration for this came from a number of different areas.
In an interview with Pharrell, Grohl talked about how Chic and The Power Station’s sticksman Tony Thompson’s techniques are all over Nevermind. On more than a few occasions, Grohl has counted John Bonham, Ringo Starr or Stewart Copeland as one of his ultimate drumming heroes. But his drumming hero, for the longest time, was Slayer’s very own Dave Lombardo.
Now, Lombardo didn’t gain that honour for nothing. Anyone who has dipped a toe into metal drumming owes a debt to him. For one thing, he redefined what could be done using two bass drums, and a young Grohl was watching him intently for tips early in his career. However, 20 years later, someone else would come along and nick that crown with aplomb.
Talking to Kerrang! magazine in 2001, Grohl was asked what the most metal thing he’d done that year was. In true effusive Grohl-ness, he talks about going to a Slipknot show, paying special tribute to their diminutive demon of a drummer, Joey Jordison. “That drummer is a fucking decathlete. Dave Lombardo was my drumming hero for a long time, but little Joey comes along and turns the world of metal drumming upside down.”
Grohl is not wrong. Slipknot is one of the finest metal bands of the 21st century, and there are a number of factors at play in it. Corey Taylor is a wonderful frontman and Shawn ‘Clown’ Crahan is the one responsible for the band’s masked look, but Joey Jordison was their secret weapon. He could adapt to every aspect of the band’s omnivorous range of influences, covering metal, alt-rock, funk and hip-hop with ruthless, note-perfect precision every night.
Arguably, the best example of this comes from playing with an entirely different band! At Download Festival 2004, Metallica’s headline set was thrown into disarray due to Lars Ulrich suffering a medical emergency. Rather than cancel the set though, the band hunted through the drummers on site who idolized Metallica (which was most of them), and picked three of them to perform with.
Those were Ulrich’s drum tech, Flemming Larsen, Lombardo and Jordison. The former two filled in admirably, given the circumstances, and then Joey stepped up. What followed was one of the best live shows Metallica ever performed. Funny what happens when you replace one of metal’s most maligned drummers with one of its best right? Tragically, Jordison passed away in 2021, at the tender age of 46. It’s little comfort, but he at least went in the knowledge that his legacy was secured as arguably the greatest drummer in the history of heavy metal.
