The most powerful drummer Paul McCartney ever heard: “I was a great admirer”
Paul McCartney didn’t ever see music as a one-time love affair.
He lived and breathed every single song that he played, and while he wasn’t the same kind of tortured artist that John Lennon could be during some of his greatest solo records, he was always trying to make something that was going to stand the test of time, just like some of his favourite rock and roll tunes from the 1950s. But while you could put any instrument in Macca’s hands and he could get a tune out of it, the most important part of any great rock and roll production normally starts with the drums first.
And before anyone starts making jokes, Ringo Starr was one of the most important pieces in The Beatles’ story. He wasn’t the most ambitious musician in the world, and there were more than a few times where he seemed like the least talented person in the group, but when you listen to the way that he and McCartney interact with each other in Beatles recordings, they were one of the tightest rhythm sections in history.
You have to remember that the drummer and the bass player need to be best friends half the time that they hit on a groove, and while McCartney would usually be the one coming out with some of the greatest melodies in their songs, Starr was the one giving every one of their tunes a heartbeat. But while Starr could serve the song perfectly, sometimes the best drummers aren’t normally the ones that are looking to make the most tasteful decisions when they’re behind the kit.
Any kid who has ever thought about playing drums has always tried to emulate Animal from The Muppets to a certain degree, and while no disrespect is meant to the red fury behind the kit, Animal would have never existed without the true technicians. Keith Moon is probably the archetype for what the wild drummer was supposed to be in a rock and roll band, but even The Who probably couldn’t manage to have the same fury that John Bonham did when working in Led Zeppelin.
Compared to every other drummer out at the time, Bonzo was practically superhuman whenever he hit the drums. Half of what he did was about making his drums sound like rolling thunder whenever he locked in with Jimmy Page, and while he did know when to calm things down every now and again, his way of attacking the drums is the reason why so many people are in love with that opening drum fill that kicks off a song like ‘When the Levee Breaks’.
Starr was still one of the finest drummers to ever live, but Macca felt that Bonham had the most power of any drummer he worked with when he got him to drum on Wings’ ‘Rockestra Theme’, saying, “He was a good friend of mine, and I was a great admirer of his. I loved the power. I remember someone asking him once how he wanted his tom-toms to sound, and he said, ‘Like cannons’. That is true.”
“If you listen to something like ‘Kashmir’, there’s just a power. He was just a powerful guy.”
Paul McCartney
And while Bonzo wasn’t long for this world, the fact that Zeppelin didn’t bother to carry on says a lot about what he brought to the table. The band were already a supergroup in every sense of the word, but they were never going to find anyone that could remotely match what Bonham brought to the table, even if they scoured some of the greatest session players in the world.
There’s just a certain swing that Bonham had that no one was ever going to be able to top, and even though McCartney was more of an onlooker than anything else, that kind of magic wasn’t lost on him. That kind of power was what made Zeppelin almost competition with The Beatles as the greatest rock band of all time, and when you hear the opening of ‘Good Times Bad Times’, it’s not like anyone could argue that they weren’t one of the most unstoppable forces in rock and roll.
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