The musician Rick Rubin called the best drummer in the world
The point behind any record by Rick Rubin normally doesn’t come back to the mind-bending solos by any stretch.
The production guru always prided himself on working with some of the best players that he had ever heard, but there are more than a few times when he’s going for getting the right atmosphere in the studio and creating music that he knows fans will want to hear more than anything else. And while any producer like that can focus on a guitar riff, Rubin knew the best way to get things going was to start out with the drums first.
Then again, would you expect anything less from the one responsible for some of the greatest early hip-hop beats? Rubin had helped found hip-hop on the basis of having a great backbeat behind everything, and whether he was working with Run-DMC or providing the backdrop for whatever new song the Beastie Boys were putting out, they were going to be lost in the woods if they didn’t have a rhythmic foundation.
That worked perfectly for hip-hop, but how the hell did Rubin manage to apply the same logic to the biggest names in rock and roll? Sure, there’s a certain connection between hip-hop and Red Hot Chilli Peppers, for example, but is there anyone who was really thinking that the same guy who worked magic for Public Enemy was going to do the same thing when working for Tom Petty and Johnny Cash? Those were two different worlds, but it all comes back to how Rubin looked at the song.
He knew that having great players applied across the board whenever he made new music, but there’s also a purist mentality that can rear its head during any session. Rubin had always tried to make things sound simple so that the audience got the full picture of whatever artist he was working with, but when it came time to get the right beat for whatever genre, he felt that even the greatest drummers in the world have gravitated back to the click track.
In some rock circles, those two words are enough to break any drummer’s heart, but Rubin felt that a drummer like Chris Dave works perfectly with a click track despite being a percussive god, saying, “Some drummers love click tracks. There’s a drummer I work with, Chris Dave, that I think may be the best drummer in the world, [and] he only likes to play with a click track. He plays great without it, but he likes to play with it, so I wouldn’t argue.”
There’s certainly credence to the idea that part of the drummer’s soul is lost on click tracks, but it’s not solely about having their own distinct heartbeat every single time. It’s about the muscle and the kind of sound you can bring to the drums every time you play, which is usually what separates someone like Ringo Starr from the rest of the drumming community. It’s about playing to what serves the song, and even the best drummers have to figure that out the hard way.
I mean, look at Dave Grohl. He’s still one of the best drummers of his generation and would have gladly taken his place alongside the likes of John Bonham without breaking a sweat, but getting him to play with a click track on ‘Lithium’ wasn’t about him not being a good drummer. It’s a tool in many ways, so being able to switch back and forth the way Chris Dave does is part of what makes any drummer more versatile.
Because in the music world, the last thing you want to do is be defined by only a few different attributes. The best artists know how to mix things up, and while some of them do need to swallow their pride and play along with clicks, it will always make for a much better song if they are able to lay everything down perfectly.
