Charlie Watts vs John Bonham

xxp
some of his drumming on the individualism of gil evans sounds like what watts does, although I don't really fuck with the stones tbh so I'm probably not best qualified to comment!

My opinion on this poll is a matter of record but tbh I don't see how the simplicity of the snare rolls on "Get Off of My Cloud" hobbles the simplicity of everything else. I always liked those as a primitive garage/punky sort of hook.

From a purely technical standpoint, Elvin had the facility to play what Watts played. I don’t believe he would have been able to make the last-second scattershot snare rolls in “Rip This Joint” as frightening as Watts did. I don’t believe he would have been able to elevate “Tumbling Dice” the way Watts did (with or without Jimmy Miller playing alongside). And why should he? That wasn’t Elvin’s approach, just as what Elvin did wasn’t Charlie’s approach.

Tony Williams came up loving rock ‘n’ roll, and was a stone Beatles fanatic (to the consternation of some of his collaborators/contemporaries in the ‘60s and ‘70s). Elvin appreciated certain rock ‘n’ roll from a distance as a listener, but was never as immersed in it as Tony.

I don't get technical about drumming I'm just a simpleton that knows what I like and I could listen to EJ's drumming on Flute Song/Hotel Me on a loop for hours.

xxxxxxxxxxp
if your mom were cindy blackman maybe.

It's an academic exercise, but what Watts is doing at its most difficult is sooooooo much simpler and easier than what Elvin is typically up to, which of course says more about Elvin than it does about Charlie, or why Charlie is still the best fit for the Stones, etc. Different animals.

Still, reminds me of an interview with Omar Hakim about recording "Brothers in Arms" for Dire Straits. They were struggling with Terry Williams in the studio, and after weeks (months?) of work they replaced him with Omar Hakim, who (predictably) nailed all his parts in two days. Talk about "Money for Nothing." Or hell, Darryl Jones in the Stones, who supposedly played everything with one finger on his audition to keep it simple. Rock is rock and jazz is jazz.

I like Charlie's playing a lot, and I'm all for drummer challops (I have argued that Ralph Molina is one of the greatest rock drummers of all time), but there is just zero case to be made whatsoever for Charlie Watts as a better drummer than John Bonham. Zero. I will die on this hill.

Also, Elvin couldn’t do what Watts did and Watts couldn’t do what Elvin did.

The generation afterward — Tony Williams, but particularly Billy Cobham, Lenny White and Jack DeJohnette — are the guys who could really do it all. A great jazz drummer is a great jazz drummer but will utterly flail when asked to play a caveman rock beat. A guy who can do both (and I'd add Ronald Shannon Jackson to that list) is something else again.

BTW, Bill Ward should be part of this discussion. One of the most swinging rock drummers ever.

This isn't like comparing Ringo to Mike Portnoy or something, it's not chops vs feel. Bonham is one of the greatest groove/feel drummers of all time and also had incredible chops that (mostly) were not overused, except in overlong live bullshit. They're both serve the song drummers, and Bonham is just the far superior drummer. Would I rather see Bonham with the Stones than Watts? No, but, I don't want stubbs bbq sauce on my pastrami either, that doesn't mean mustard is better than stubbs bbq sauce.

It doesn't matter if one drummer is superior to the other. If Bonham couldn't drum on a Stones song, then the question's meaningless.

The only time I wish a band had dumped a major member was The Who with Daltrey after 1980.

John Bonham's greatness doesn't take anything away from Charlie Watts, who was a great drummer for his band. But Bonham is a once-in-a-generation talent.

I like to think about Bonham without all the hype and baggage, as just another drummer among his contemporaries. His sound alone is so special, and it's not just the recording and drum selection/tuning (those are important but relatively minor factors imo), it's in his hands and his relationship to the drums. To get that kind of perfect, huge, consistent, in-the-pocket sound your whole body needs to work in harmony with physics. Like Tony Williams, he just had that thing. I don't even think he hit "hard", in the sense that most people think of it, he always looks relaxed and that's how you get the most sound out of the drums (although I have heard stories about him going around sitting in and basically destroying people's drums in the early days, I think that was from Bill Ward, but I've also heard stories about him playing a child's kit and getting his sound out of it).

One thing in Bonham's favour is that he operated at a time when producers were able to spend resources on the drum sound. I have the impression that the Rolling Stones' earlier recordings - and the Beatles', the Kinks' etc - had a microphone above the drums capturing the cymbals and another one pointed at the bass drum, recording to one track of the tape, balanced so that the bass was real quiet. So that it sounded good on a crappy mono radio or portable record player. But ultimately the producer just wanted a wash of cymbals because there was an attitude that the kids didn't care about drumming in the 1960s.

But by the time Led Zeppelin were a thing Bonham had multiple microphones and multiple channels. Off the top of my head Abbey Road was the only Beatles album where the drums were recorded on separate channels of the multi-track tape, and I imagine the Rolling Stones had the same limitation, whereas Led Zeppelin's albums were 8-track from the start, moving to 16-track when it became available. To my ears late-70s drums sound flat and dead, 1960s drums sound tinny, but Led Zeppelin's drum sound has aged really well.

e.g. "When the Levee Breaks" has a distant ancestor of the 1980s big drum sound (without the gating) and it was sampled on masses of records. So on a sonic, Steve Hoffman/Discogs.com level I'd have to go with John Bonham.

The jazz thing, eh. They both loved jazz, Bonham for sure loved Elvin Jones. Charlie Watts actually recorded multiple jazz albums as a leader, and guess what, he's a serviceable, definitely not great jazz drummer. He sounds like a rock drummer playing jazz.

John Bonham's greatness doesn't take anything away from Charlie Watts, who was a great drummer for his band. But Bonham is a once-in-a-generation talent.

otm

Plenty of other drummers recorded during the same years as Bonham though and don't sound like him, and I think the crappiest live recording will still show that he's got that sound. I love nerding out about the engineering but it's a lot easier when the sound coming out of the drums is already incredible & balanced.

I remember reading that he had to argue for letting everything ring early on, obviously he wouldn't sound the same if the drums were muted/taped or tea towel-ed up and close mic'ed.

It doesn't matter if one drummer is superior to the other. If Bonham couldn't drum on a Stones song, then the question's meaningless.

^^^ this

The only time I wish a band had dumped a major member was The Who with Daltrey after 1980.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, July 22, 2022 12:37 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ha! Empty Glass and the Townshend-sung Face Dances demos and outtakes make a strong case for this.

And tying it in with the drumming discussion, of Keith Moon Elvin said, "The man's a drummer. Everything they play, he contains it." Tony Williams said, "He's beautiful. Totally free." And during a drum clinic Billy Cobham was giving in London, he invited Keith up to play. As Keith was playing, Cobham said in his ear, "I don't know what you're doing, but keep doing it."

I don't know what (or if) any of those drummers thought of Watts or Bonham...it's likely that Williams and Cobham probably dug them both to some degree.

Plenty of other drummers recorded during the same years as Bonham though and don't sound like him, and I think the crappiest live recording will still show that he's got that sound. I love nerding out about the engineering but it's a lot easier when the sound coming out of the drums is already incredible & balanced.

I remember reading that he had to argue for letting everything ring early on, obviously he wouldn't sound the same if the drums were muted/taped or tea towel-ed up and close mic'ed.

― change display name (Jordan), Friday, July 22, 2022 12:54 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Supposedly after the first 1974 session for Physical Graffiti, Bonham took engineer Ron Nevison aside to instruct him on how to mic his kit. Nevison was doing the close-miking thing which Bonham (rightly) knew was the wrong approach.

I'm not the world's biggest Ringo fan, but I prefer Ringo to Charlie. And I prefer Mick Avory to both of them. And I agree Bill Ward is the most swinging of all of this thread's aforementioned. But I also agree that John Bonham was a once in a lifetime talent akin to Tony Williams.

I think a lot of jazz drummers, when listening or reacting to rock drummers, are kind of taken aback with the novelty. Like, I didn't know you could play that simply! I forget which Steely Dan guitarist it was, maybe Larry Carlton, who supposedly had never heard the Beatles before.

Haha check the title of Carlton's first solo album from the 60s.

It doesn't matter if one drummer is superior to the other. If Bonham couldn't drum on a Stones song, then the question's meaningless.

I think Bonham would sound pretty good on Can't You Hear Me Knockin'. I think Watts would have keeled over after 90 seconds of Achilles Last Stand.

Yeah, I'm no drummer but I don't really see why Bonham couldn't drum on "Beast of Burden".

I honestly have no idea if Bonham could have played well with the Stones. That huge, Led Zeppelin Bonham sound would be too overpowering with the Stones, but I'm sure he could play lighter, be recorded differently etc. It doesn't seem like an entirely implausible pairing, much less so than Watts with Zeppelin

i'm not sure "fool in the rain" shows that bonham has the affinity for latin beats that's he'd have needed on knockin'.

lol, Charlie's "latin" stuff on the jam at the end of that one is the most rudimentary bullshit

it's really whether your intent is to make people dance or to nod meaningfully.

The new Spitz bio is as high on Bonham's skills as Bonham was, period.

Haha check the title of Carlton's first solo album from the 60s.

ha, yeah. It was one of those cats, though, I'll have to check ...

As a non-drummer, what strikes me about Bonham and Watts is predicting when they hit their cymbals. Bonham is especially hard to predict.

I was admiring what Charlie did on “fingerprint file” the other day

As a (former?) drummer, I can usually make sense of where Bonham places his hits, except on stuff like "Kashmir," where there really is no pattern (afaict). Watts, though, like I said earlier, sometimes crashes on random third beats, which is weird. I'll try to find an example.

Well, here's something similar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWphbRxtAgE

Listen to how he hits a China around the 25 second mark, it's just not where I expect it to be.

But that goes back to me joking that he plays like he's never heard the song before. Like in "Monkey Man," during the melodic bridge that starts around 2:34, he keeps switching between cymbals - riding a ride/crash to hi-hat and back to a ride/crash - like he has no idea where the song is going or how many times around it's supposed to go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zbnvh6I4k4

Of course, that off-kilter sensibility is part of what makes that song (and others) so killer.

It’s not impossible to imagine Charlie playing on “Good Times Bad Times” but the song immediately becomes kind of pedestrian. Bonham brought so much

I think Bonham had a more co-equal role in the music of Zeppelin with the other instruments, whereas Watts was more of a really good backing drummer who created a lot of vibe and feel. To keep with the jazz theme upthread, Bonham's role was more like that of Elvin Jones in the Coltrane Quartet, constantly adding to and conversing with the rest of the music, whereas Watts was more like Ed Thigpen in the Oscar Peterson Trio, creating a perfect backdrop for the more heavily featured elements of Mick/Keith. There aren't a lot of songs where I think of the Charlie drum part as a thing in itself, but there are a lot of songs I couldn't imagine without his parts.

Bonham got songwriting credit on many songs, yeah

This shouldn't even be a question. John Henry Bonham.

I love how Watts speeds up; “Honky Tonk Women” feels like it’s 1/3rd faster at the end than it was at the beginning. And of course there’s “Sway,” with a sense and degree of push-pull tension that no other musician could remotely replicate.

lol *feels like* it's 1/3rd faster? I think that's Miller playing cowbell at the start, to help Charlie along.

It definitely is. Charlie sometimes had trouble finding the one, which is why Miller assists on “Tumbling Dice.” And there’s a live recording of “Gimme Shelter” from 1973 where it takes him until the second verse to find the one (presumably due to confusion over Keith’s accents, rather than unfamiliarity, as they’d played it probably 100 times by then).

"Stairway to Heaven" would have been a too-long b-side without Bonham's timing.

Watts playing Stairway

I feel like this should be possible considering all the deep fake tech available

Sure, by making Watts sound like Bonham lol

will always take Stones over Zep (whom I love dearly, mind) but not entirely sure I’d be inclined listen to hours of just his drum tracks for the hell of it.

actually fuck that. maybe? lol

Bonham never hobbled a Zeppelin song the way Watts does "Get Off My Cloud"

(don’t love drums on Ruby tho)

i saw charlie leading a jazz band outdoors at lincoln center and there was one tune where he got turned around mid-song and never found his way back. i was a little embarrassed for him. i still pick him though.

Bonham did have the advantage of dying young.

Thanks for posting that, dow. Watts also mentioned digging Cecil (and Ornette) in an early '90s TV interview. And Roy Haynes is still out there playing. I saw him in 2018 and was completely blown away.

And thank you, Tarfumes,for making me think of that concert, and leading me to that piece, which I hadn't seen before---here's another one I just came across, haven't read the whole thing yet:

In a previously unpublished interview from 2013, Watts goes deep into his favorite drummers, what the Stones do better than the Beatles, and outlasting almost every band
By MIKAL GILMORE

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Hell yeah
The people have spoken

So many Watts apologists itt

Charlie Watts b.1941
John Bonham b.1948

I think this is the big difference.

Uh no

xp i don't really buy into that but if anything it's when they died