Good prog band, bad drummer

Considering he had virtually no practise of the songs and had just flown  to US after performing in London...he did pretty  good. And to judge all his drumming on that one performance is...pretty bad.

LOL, no , my childhood was glorious !  the RS were good circa Brian Jones period but frankly since his swimming pool death, the recorded results have been laughable at best. I sincerely believe that they represent corporate rock n roll as a business better than anyone else, actually conning fans into believing they are genuine musicians! Ha! 

 

They both had an interest in "Big band Jazz". That meant that either 1 of them could play a buzz roll or a cross roll on the snare drum and  if you listened closely to Beatles/Stones there was a definite indication that they knew how to play a "roundhouse" with style. "Roundhouse" was a term used by Jazz drummers I traveled with in the 70's. It's doing a fast clean roll starting with the snare, across 2 toms, and shifting your position to end the roll on 1 or 2 floor toms, ending with an accent and proceeding to continue the basic 4/4/ beat. Mick Avory from The Kinks also mastered this. It's all standard stuff, but it places them a step above many other drummers from the British Invasion period. Prior to double bass drum technique and accented triplets that developed in rock music from mid 60's to late, it was all we had. Some of Ringo's drum work in the early days contained some very fast/clean drum rolls on the snare. If you were able to completely mix out all the other instruments on early Beatles recordings and focus on his rolls , it might feel as if you are listening to a little bit of hidden Jazz technique. What made them both unique was how they created different sounds for what would be defined then as the "Rock song" . The sound of Charlie Watts' snare drum on "Jumping Jack Flash" or Ringo's oddball snare sound on "Revolution" were ideas to change the sound of the music and it's times. In that sense..they were odd drummers. Schooled well in only certain areas of "styles" and asked to create for Lennon/McCartney and Jagger/Richards.

 

And how about those nifty Brand X recordings!