Over The Top: British Drumming, Virtuosity and Showmanship

This paper explores musical virtuosity and greatness through the work of 1960s British drummers alongside models of virtuosity suggested by Matt Brennan and Mandy Smith. In the myriad ‘greatest drummers’ lists that proliferate the drumosphere’s magazines and web content, a trio of British drummers hold sway in the top ten, and often the top three, but there are also British drummers occupying lower tiers of fame, or regard. The triumvirate of Cream’s Ginger Baker, The Who’s Keith Moon and Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham feature highly in these lists but are also accompanied by British drummers Cozy Powell, Ian Paice and Bill Ward alongside Charlie Watts, Ringo Starr and Mitch Mitchell. There is a peculiarity of these three British drummers in particular, when situated in these lists with their largely North American counterparts - Neil Peart of Rush and Terry Bozzio in particular, but followed by Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich, Hal Blaine etc.This peculiarity - the U.S./U.K. divide of greatness - can be explored through the work of Mandy Smith (2020) and Matt Brennan (2020). For Smith) it is the ‘primitive’ in opposition to the ‘virtuosic’, as ends of a continuum. For Brennan (2020: 238), it is the ‘showmanship that demand[s] they are] seen as well as heard’ (2020:224). The language of categorization of great rock drummers relies on naming what I call the technician drummer in opposition to personality drummer as ‘virtuoso’, creating a continuum from the primitive to the virtuosic. For example, Terry Bozzio as technician virtuoso and Ginger Baker as personality, or exhibitionist, virtuoso. Brennan (2020) develops aspects of drumming categorized as virtuosic through a number of tropes, which can be explored, through ‘technical rigour and mastery’, through ‘complexity’, and thirdly via the visual component of virtuosity, or ‘exhibitionism’. This paper explores these academic models to tease out notions of British drumming virtuosity.