Charlie Watts vs John Bonham

Nevertheless

Charlie

John

RINGO

Bonham's not even the best drummer in Led Zeppelin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u7J4NpMkuI
Charlie Watts may have been an immaculate dresser but JOHN BONHAM HAD ONE OF THE BEST DRUM BEATS OF ALL TIME

could listen to this all day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG0fNoj6r-Y

i remember having this exact debate with my college roommate in 1977. i said bonham he said charlie. my position has since reversed. not sure about his.

Bonham never hobbled a Zeppelin song the way Watts does "Get Off My Cloud"; on the other hand, Watts never perpetrated "Moby Dick".

Watts' drums make "Get Off Of My Cloud." I never once thought he hobbled the track -- he's practically a third guitar.

Those snare rolls sound perfectly amateurish! And he does them every two bars!

He does the same fill in "Ruby Tuesday, where it gets on my nerves just as much.

Shambolic amateur hour

i have survived three john bonham drum solos. just sayin'.

haha never noticed those rolls, now I can't unhear it

Those snare rolls sound perfectly amateurish! And he does them every two bars!

― Halfway there but for you

"Amateurish" is description not criticism!

There are a bunch of Stones songs where it sounds like Charlie is hearing them for the first time.

Lol exactly

Bonham is the greatest rock drummer ever

I don’t think whatever it is that separates him from a mere ‘great’ rock drummer can be taught.

Rmde @ voting for Watts here

a case could be made that charlie is the greatest rock & roll drummer ever. and that the "& roll" piece can't be taught either. just listen to videos of the stones without him. and the new guy's no slouch.

Just for "Get Off Off My Cloud, "Paint It, Black," "Hand of Fate," and "Miss You," Watts deserves immortality.

Both drummers served the songwriters. I couldn't imagine swapping them out.

yup

I think “miss you” is prob Charlie’s finest performance, just excellent

neither of them were even fit to lug Elvin Jones gear onto stage for him. I suspect Watts would have probably admitted this, less said about the other one the better.

A case could be made that my Mom is the greatest rock & roll drummer ever. It just might not be a good one.

Calzino,what do you think of Sunny Murray?

if i could employ some meaningless drummer lingo i would say watts' feel is amazing and it's why i'm selecting him over bonham even though i like bonham a lot

watts doesn't hobble "get off of my cloud," he drives it

those "amateurish" rolls are one of the biggest hooks in the song

100%, watts' choices on that song take it from good to great.

theyre each the perfect drummers for their respective bands. but in the interest of science i am now imagining swapping them out. in an alternate universe i can imagine bonham holding it down in a mediocre, much-reduced version of the stones. its a lot harder for me to imagine watts keeping his head above water in LZ. so i guess thats a vote for bonzo.

xxxp

he was one of the greatest, and he finished his life scraping by on benefits and making pennies bootlegging his own music.

I saw him play a couple of times and he was incredible. As for Watts and Bonham, the poll is about who you like not who's "better", surely?

I saw Murray in Montreal in 02; among the best shows I ever saw. I didn't know what the end of his life was like; sad to hear it.

God those Bonham isolated tracks are insane. How does something so heavy have that much groove? He's just murdering that kit.

Love Watts too, obv.

I only saw Sunny Murray once, in 1998, in a duo with Sonny Simmons. It was incredible to hear that sound in person. Among those in the audience was Robert Plant (he and Page were playing the United Center the next night). It’s all a rich tapestry.

Not gonna vote in this. Bonham couldn’t have done “Monkey Man” or “Rip This Joint,” Watts couldn’t have done “Levee” or “Achilles.”

xps

it was mentioned in one of his obituaries, and as sad as it was to read that such a legend spent his last days in precarity and then a care home. Some of his contemporaries like Byard and Dolphy had much worse endings though.

"Shine a Light," "It's Only Rock n Roll," "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and "Happy" all don't feature Charlie, and none suffer for it, tbh. Or call attention to it, really. My favorite Charlie stuff might be the later stuff, when he goes into full wind up robo monkey mode. The last time I saw him play I was sort of shocked by how often he hit a crash on the third beat in the middle of a verse, which always throws me off a bit.

But Bonham was one of a kind and irreplaceable. I mean, first song, first album!!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjpOxfbZ1eA

neither of them were even fit to lug Elvin Jones gear onto stage for him.

Watts owned kits by some of his heroes. I don’t know if Elvin’s was among the sets, but he had gear used by Art Blakey, Sonny Greer, and Max Roach, among others. My understanding is that he communicated directly with their families to acquire these drums, as opposed to bidding on them at auctions.

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

"Shine a Light," "It's Only Rock n Roll," "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and "Happy" all don't feature Charlie, and none suffer for it, tbh.

Watts said of Kenney Jones on “Only Rock ‘n’ Roll,” “I don’t mind. Sounds like me, anyway.”

If Tony Williams could play "Rise" with PiL I'm pretty sure Elvin could do what Watts did.

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.

best Charlie performances on RS records for me are on Some Girls/ Emotional/ Tattoo. probably has a lot to do w engineering but that’s my shit

John Bonham vs. Keith Moon is a much harder call. A coin toss, really.

I spent years in my bedroom – literally fucking years – listening to Bonham's drums and trying to emulate his swing or his behind-the-beat swagger or his speed or power. Not just memorizing what he did on those albums but getting myself into a place where I would have the same instinctual direction as he had.

--Dave Grohl

eh, who cares

John Bonham vs. Keith Moon is a much harder call. A coin toss, really.

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.

I once saw Cindy Blackman completely lose the plot during a solo with Pharoah Sanders’ band in the mid 90s.

The fuck

Indeed

https://www.avclub.com/john-bonham-george-fludas-led-zeppelin-bonhamology-1849058797

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eef--qblm6A

Keith Moon vs. John Bonham POLL

Keith Moon vs. John Bonham POLL🕸

Good discussion in that thread.

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


^slander

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I loved reading this tribute to Charlie, especially Weinberg's:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/aug/26/stewart-copeland-max-weinberg-on-charlie-watts-rolling-stones

I prefer Keith over Bonham, but this is horseshit, I love all three and they all bring something unique to the table. I don't want Bonham playing behind the Stones just as I wouldn't want Watts playing behind Zeppelin - changing any of the drummers like that would have fucked up the alchemy behind those records and those songs.

that doesn't mean mustard is better than stubbs bbq sauce

Otm

Bonham, and it isn't even close

birdistheword otm

"Amateurish" is description not criticism!

Right, "hobbled" was criticism.

Underrated Watts performance: "Jigsaw Puzzle".
Underrated Bonham performance: "South Bound Saurez" or "Ozone Baby"

"Jigsaw Puzzle" may be my favorite Stones song, and Charlie is one of the main reasons why. Those little grace notes just before the 1 and the 3 are so perfect in how they sustain and advance the narrative.

That's another song where the tempo is all over the place. But I think if anything that's where Charlie's "swing" comes in: it can't be easy to keep things together in such a famously shambling band! (Oddly, the Who might be the opposite example; Keith Moon can't have been easy to play with.)

That's another song where the tempo is all over the place.

(Oddly, the Who might be the opposite example; Keith Moon can't have been easy to play with.)

He could sometimes be difficult to play with; Entwistle sometimes talked about pulling a cymbal aside in order to find the beat by looking at Moon's feet. But he and Townshend developed their approaches so that they would work with Moon's (also, his volume was such that it necessitated the invention of the Marshall Stack). While there are few instances of Keith playing outside of the Who, no one on Labelle's "Miss Otis Regrets" or Mike Heron's "Warm Heart Pastry" (which also has Townshend, Ronnie Lane, and John Cale) sounds flummoxed by Moon's playing.

Retrospectively, Townshend has said "I didn't think much of him as a drummer," largely because the role of strict timekeeping fell to Pete. He never had the opportunity with Keith to play single-note solos against a solid backbeat, and just about all of Pete's choices for drummers in his solo projects and for the Who were slightly-behind-the-beat backbeat specialists.

And to bring it back to Watts,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2Z_FO0uao8

Before I got to Tarfumes on Pete as timekeeper etc., was thinking about seeing Stones in Memphis, 1975----Robert Palmer's coverage incl. some excellent points:

Jim Dickinson, the Memphis musician who played piano on “Wild Horses,” burst into the press box from backstage, where he’d obviously been having a good time. “Listen to that rhythm section,” he crowed. “Now that they’ve got Ollie Brown to keep time, Charlie doesn’t have to, and he’s playing. Wyman too. I’ve heard ’em cook some fast jazz in the studio just warming up, and then they start playing Stones songs and it’s back to the gorilla music. But this is great.”
...Brown’s cowbell and timbales reproduced the special lift the overdubbed percussion tracks have always given key Stones songs. His solidity enabled Watts to vary his cymbal sound and introduce cross-rhythms... Richards, whose rhythm guitar parts are the backbone of every Stones rocker, had turned virtually all the lead work over to Wood. “Get Off My Cloud,” “Heartbreaker” and a few other tunes had taken on an 8/8 rhythm feel with salsa flavoring...
...Back at the hotel, Wyman commented that he liked the audience and Furry Lewis, then left with Memphis R&B bassist “Duck” Dunn. Charlie Watts sat down and, asked how he liked playing with Ollie Brown, replied, “Oh, he’s a great player. Great. We used a percussionist from Billy’s band before, on a European tour, but that was more spontaneous. This time we decided to do it right and rehearsed intensively.” Did Ollie free him to experiment more? “I don’t know, I just play.”
But Watts really wanted to talk about jazz. In New York he’d been impressed by avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor, swing-era musicians Roy Eldridge and Paul Quinichette and drummer Roy Haynes. “Every time people tell me I’m good,” he said, “I . . . like it at first — anybody does — but then I think about people like Roy [Haynes], who played with Charlie Parker and John Coltrane and is still playing in clubs. You know, when I started I played Dixieland, and then I went on to bands that were trying to re-create the Johnny Hodges and Duke Ellington small-band sound from the Thirties. I worked up to playing Fifties-period Thelonious Monk. All the time I thought that what I’d eventually be doing, what I wanted to be doing, was playing with a trio in a cellar for a few junkies.” A reporter who’d been looking for an opening blurted, “What do you think of American music?” Watts stared with his huge, liquid eyes and snorted softly, “I don’t know about anything but American music,” he said. “None of us do, really. And what I like about American music is basically black music. That’s not to say white people can’t play it, but to me, American music is black music.”

even as somebody who has a lot of time for rolling stones records, i feel like the effect of charlie watts' drumming is being oversold here. as it was following his death, when i constantly had to hear that watts was "actually a jazz drummer."

do we really need to bend over backyards to make it seem like he had this grand, mystical vision of impersonating a shitty drummer in order to serve the music? isn't it okay to just admit that he's a shitty drummer who was in the right place at the right time, and that it's a happy coincidence that it ended up working so well? seems a lot easier to me

xpost vary his cymbal sound and introduce cross-rhythms... To put it mildly! He was flying through the rest of the music at times, but/and it all worked that way--Billy Preston was a good listener, for instance.

A rock drummer who learned from jazz, I'd say. He talked elsewhere about working early on with "eccentric old men" who were really into Mingus, for instance.

for instance

I’m so happy my dumb ass question got so much discussion going

Prediction : Bonham

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