Respect the Drummer

A new history of rock, told through its overlooked heroes

- James Parker

Opposite page: Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters, one of the few drummers to become a real rock star. This page: Moe Tucker of the Velvet Underground, known for fusing steely minimalism with raw impact to produce her signature drone.

Full disclosure: I play the drums. I play them every chance I get. Although my drumming career has served mainly as a steady education in my own shining mediocrity as a drummer, a reminder that I was put on this Earth for other things, I love hitting the goddamn drums. Left foot on the hi-hat pedal, right foot on the kick-drum pedal, left hand on the snare, right hand on the ride cymbal. When it starts to flow, you're like da Vinci's Vitruvian Man: You're in a holy circle of equilibrium, blissfully distributed, with consciousness diffused to your extremities.

How do you get better as a drummer? Well, you practice: You do the same thing over and over, slowly building muscle fiber while also experiencing, in your brain, the painless, clueless ache of a synapse trying to form. You get better by being in a band, by entering music as part of a volatile, multi-person, multiaddiction organism. And you get better, lastly, via the drummer's version of the grace of God-which is the jolt, the volt, the heavenly bolt, the electromotive impulse that flashes out from the playing of another, much greater drummer, and claims you.

John Lingan's superb Backbeats: A History of Rock and Roll in Fifteen Drummers is full of such moments.