Keith Moon
DocMcCoy
"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
There's a whole bunch of these on YouTube. My guess is an assistant engineer did a bunch of sneaky dubs when these albums were getting the remastering treatment.
Comments
Ah, someone from the "Keith Moon was a sloppy drummer" school?
I read the Keith Moon bio and yes he was his own breed as a drummer. It fit for the Who but he could never sit in on other people's sessions. The older he got, the worse he became as a drummer too. You can see older footage where he wore headphones because he had to play to a click track. It's astonishing that he rarely used hihats.
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Also, John Bonham and Keith Moon had entirely different styles.
Yeah man, that Ray Manzarek can't hold a candle to Slash.
Ahh fusk, got ahead of myself. Ginger Baker.*tail goes between legs*
I always felt that Moon and Bonham rode the same wavelength in that behind-the-beat, half-swung tom fills kind of way. Bonham has always been the king of that in my mind though. It's been a while since I've revisited that era though.
I guess...I only listened to the "won't get fooled" clip and he played about 7 different tempos!
I'm a Mitch Mitchell acolyte...dude was the GOAT.
This makes for pretty interesting listening as well. Those strings sound brand new.
I'm a bass player as well and Keith Moon is all over the place. That doesn't mean I'm dissing him, but he was not good at holding a tempo. Even Mo Tucker blew him away in that regard.
Undoubtedly the Who's style developed as it did because of his approach to drumming, and he did a good job of making Townsend's more ambitious songs sound 'huge'.
Ox was one of the best rock bass players ever, IMO, and had his work cut out for him playing with Keith. He was obsessive about changing strings, and would sometimes change them between every take when recording, and every day otherwise.
I think Moon was an amazing player but in the way that others have pointed out. Townsend claimed that he never practiced and all of his fills are basically thw same thing. But what a fill played with such ferocity and soul.
If you ever want a good laugh listen to ginger baker's drum solo on the Fela and Ginger Live record (cd bonus track). Next to Tony Allen he sounds like a freshman high school band hack.
Although i get the physical resemblance, Mike Myers was already way too old three years ago. But going with the physical resemblance angle, maybe Rory Cochrane (Slater from Dazed and Confused) would be a better candidate?
This is a better video of the same song:
and Baba O'rilly:
Yeah, I think they had major problems, both playing along to the synths, and just getting the synths in time. Weren't they huge tape loops?
How could anyone claim Moon WASN'T a sloppy drummer?!
Doens't mean he wasn't one of the finest of his era, but he def propelled the big sloppy school of drumming. Bands like Alice Cooper and The Raspberries really used that style to great effect in the 70s.
I used to play in a band with a guy who had a similar style, as we were a sort of throwback to early Who/Pretty Things type of Rock band. He never practiced either, and his tempos were, shall we say, flexible. But even though we had drummers who were more competent timekeepers and more fluid technically, you can't factor in how much that unpredictable style matters, it just adds so much excitement it can't be underestimated. But you have to have bass players who anchor it for sure.
And for the record, I am a Viv Prince acolyte, I think he buries most of the competion on those early Pretty Things records.
I'm a big MM fan...and as far as rock drummers go there are some great ones like Carmine Appice, Bonzo, etc.
But for my money the GOAT rock drummer is Corky Laing.
I was watching the living legends interview with Corky on Youtube the other day, interesting dude.