Book: BACKBEATS: A HISTORY OF ROCK AND ROLL IN FIFTEEN DRUMMERS
Author: John Lingan
Published by: Simon & Schuster
Price: Rs 999
In September 1962, The Beatles recorded “Love Me Do”, with “P.S. I Love You” on the flip side, alongside the producer, George Martin, at the Abbey Road Studios. When the songs were released a few weeks later, the singles proved to be a cool cat on the charts, reserving a place in the history books for John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.
However, at that point, everything was still up in the air. Martin did not have confidence in Ringo (“I didn’t rate Ringo highly”) and used the session musician, Andy White, on drums for certain versions. The “boys” were even touring as the opening act for a young singing sensation, Helen Shapiro. Little did they know that their new sound — featuring Ringo’s tom roll — would deliver a shot of adrenaline.
In Backbeats: A History of Rock and Roll in Fifteen Drummers, John Lingan celebrates a handful of musicians whose legends will live on forever as well as others who may not be household names but without whom music history would be incomplete.
Lingan does not delve into technical details. Instead, he uses the book’s 15 short chapters to offer honest reflections on drummers who have helped expand the language of rock and roll. It is one of those rare books that will make young listeners (re)discover the genre in a new light.
The list is diverse. John “Bonzo” Bonham, the drummer for Led Zeppelin, will always be remembered for his bass-drum triplets on “Good Times Bad Times” and the galloping beats on “Immigrant Song”. “Bonham and (Keith) Moon created a new role for rock drummers as surely as their respective bands reinvented the genre itself.”
Hal Blaine, on the other hand, is likely to pique the curiosity of younger music fans. His work with Elvis Presley in the 1960s, The Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra and Simon & Garfunkel is the stuff dreams are made of. The precision with which he delivered the ‘bum-ba-bum’ in the opening of The Ronettes’ 1963 hit, “Be My Baby” (“It’s more than a beat, really — it’s a unique feel”), or the ‘boom-boom chick’ on Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night”, is unforgettable.
At the other end of the pop-culture celebrity spectrum was Sam Lay, the virtuosic drummer who played with Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, and who also backed Bob Dylan when he went electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. His drumming was known for its distinctive double-shuffle groove.
Also finding a place in the book is the late, much-celebrated studio drummer, Kenny Buttrey, who played on albums by artistes including Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Elvis Presley.
The book’s timing is instructive. It arrives at a time when Artificial Intelligence is beginning to infiltrate music, following decades in which pop, hip-hop and Latin music have attempted to push rock to the margins. The Grammy Awards, if you have noticed, no longer hand out the Best Rock Album trophy during the prime-time broadcast.
Yet rock music continues to march to the beat of drummers. Lingan celebrates a set of thunder machines whose artful clobbering and swagger help songs defy age.
Death may claim the lives of drummers, but their beats roll on forever.