Keith Moon Was A Terrible Drummer

One of the guys in The Who was talking in an interview about Keith Moon and was asked about replacing him, and the response was basically “hah. no. There’s no replacement for Keith Moon, he was his own thing.” This vid (courtesy current Styx drummer Todd Sucherman, who’s quite the beast himself!) shows you why.

Of course the headline above is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Moon was an amazing player and a huge influence on me and millions of other drummers. But boy…you try playing like this for a drum teacher and they’ll probably run out of the room screaming, quite possibly with the thought that you should be legally proscribed from ever touching drumsticks again. This cat was so far off the map he often didn’t even use a hi-hat (see the notes here, for example – a breakdown of the kit he used from 1970-1973 with the note that the hi-hat was “not used onstage.” You can also find several photos of stage kits on stage at gigs with no hi-hat anywhere, at this link). You can see in the clip below that he’s using a ride where most of us keep our hats. If you watch closely for the right camera angle you’ll see there’s no hi-hat on the stage, not even an empty space for one. The band ribbed and rode him about this until they finally talked him into using a hi-hat for something other than decoration…and it ended up being “Who Are You?” which basically rewrote the book on hi-hats.

It’s not a Bonham thing where he’s “just that good,” either. The man was an entire approach to drumming unto himself. Ironically about the only drummer I can think of off-hand who’s work came close is some of the work done in Styx by their original drummer John Panozzo – I posted their “Come Sail Away” a few days ago putting him over, and a lot of the work in that is super reminiscent of Keith.

The dude just…he didn’t keep a beat, man. He kept time, but there’s just no bass-on-one-snare-on-three-quarters-on-the-hat groove in anything the Who recorded with Moon. EVERYTHING was a fill with him, and there is no question that had The Who been working with a different drummer during their “classic” years, they’d have been a completely different band. Even stuff that’s fairly straightforward like “I Can’t Explain,” if you listen closely, the drum parts aren’t like anything else you’ve ever heard.

Keith Moon is the women’s clothing of drums: no pocket. I saw someone on Todd’s post saying moon was “sloppy” and “all about Show,” but I disagree with this for the most part; Moon was “sloppy” in the same way Jimmy Page is a “sloppy” guitarist. It’s not so much “slop” as it is about letting the music take you where it wants to go, rather than you taking it. It’s the kind of sloppy that every emotive player hopes to achieve.

Somebody like Buddy Rich or even a really chaotic player like Ginger Baker – anyone with training, anyone who knows how to hold their sticks conventional style, anyone who studied the jazz and blues roots of the instrument – would lose whatever mind they had trying to duplicate this playing style. Rich probably could’ve done it – a lot of Moon’s work reminds me of watching a Buddy Rich solo – and Baker could’ve too, but in the end they’d both end up still centered around that traditional “trap” arrangement of snare-bass-hi-hat. Same with Bonham, Peart, Ringo, Portnoy, Cameron…any of ’em.

You couldn’t imitate this playing style if you had to, and frankly the more time you’ve spent in lessons and tapping out paradiddles on a practice pad the less likely it is you’ll ever be able to really get your brain in the space necessary to even try. I’ve been playing for 45 years as of the time this article was written, and I can’t do it. Not even close, I’d break my wrists and give myself a heart attack.

You could play the parts, like a “normal” drummer, but you can’t cop the style; that was 100% whatever madness was rattling around in this guy’s head. There’s no fancy stick tricks and subtle ghost notes here. Just pure, pedal-to-the-floor rhythm, without the slightest hint of any kind of training or practice or time spent watching other drummers to learn his craft. It’s like he just picked up some sticks (and dropped them! you can see it happen at least twice here) and said “welp, hit things is the trick then? Right!” and went to it. Dude probably never played a rudiment exercise in his life.

Covering Moon is almost like playing a bad actor in a film; in order to play a bad actor well, you have to get really good first, otherwise you don’t know enough to do the job effectively. Moon is like this; the more properly trained and well-practiced you are, the harder it’ll be to cover Keith until you get so good that you can start deliberately working outside the boxes of orthodoxy.

Moon’s not my “favorite” drummer, but he’s unquestionably the most *unique* drummer who ever existed, and easily among the most influential. You don’t imitate Keith Moon, you just do your best to figure out how to do his parts while playing like an ordinary, earth-bound creature.

Yep, Keith Moon was a terrible drummer…and that’s why he’s quite probably the single most influential player in modern music history. Everybody cops some of his style, often without even knowing it, and that includes plenty of folks who were already well-established when Keith came crashing out of the practice space like a one-man drum avalanche, and everyone since.

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