Five Bands Built on Big, Dumb, Perfect Drums

I need to be very specific here.

Early Kings of Leon.

I’m talking about Youth & Young Manhood and Aha Shake Heartbreak. Before “Sex on Fire,” giant arenas and songs engineered to play behind CW television montages. Back when they looked like four guys who had been thrown out of a Southern gas station for making the cashier uncomfortable.

Nathan Followill’s drumming on those early records was loose, dry and perfectly connected to the rest of the band. It didn’t sound like someone sitting in a studio trying to create a massive rock record. It sounded like the whole band had been shoved into one room and told they had three minutes before somebody called the police.

“Molly’s Chambers” moves because of the drums. “Red Morning Light” sounds like a bar fight getting organized. “Four Kicks” stomps forward with almost no interest in being subtle, while “The Bucket” has just enough swing to keep the whole thing from falling apart.

That was the magic of early Kings of Leon. The music always felt one beer away from collapse, but the drums kept dragging it down the road.

They got cleaner later. They got bigger. They became a much more polished band.

Sadly, they just became less dangerous.

The Von Bondies sounded like Detroit.

Not the shiny version from a tourism commercial. The version with concrete floors, questionable wiring, a half-dead amplifier and somebody yelling from the apartment window telling you to shut the fuck up. The shitty version like in the beginning montage of Beverly Hills Cop.

Don Blum’s drumming had that perfect garage-rock snap. It was direct, uncomplicated and aggressive without turning every song into a demolition project. He didn’t need to dominate the track because the beat itself already sounded pissed off.

“C’mon C’mon” is the obvious example, and sometimes the obvious example is obvious because it’s right. The song doesn’t need an elaborate drum part. It needs momentum. Blum locks into that beat and keeps pushing until the whole thing feels like it’s about to drive through a wall.

Then there’s “It Came from Japan,” which has the same raw pulse without sounding like the band simply copied its own hit before it had even happened.

The Von Bondies never became as massive as some of the other bands from that early-2000s garage-rock explosion, but they had the sound. Those drums weren’t polished into submission. They had dirt and sweat on them.

The Black Keys complicate this list because Patrick Carney is busier and sloppier than Meg White, and I mean “sloppier” as a compliment.

Especially on those early records.

The Big Come Up, Thickfreakness and Rubber Factory didn’t sound like products created by a rock-industry planning committee. They sounded like Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney found a basement, plugged in whatever still worked and started recording before anyone could explain why it might not work.

Carney’s drums wobble, crash and occasionally feel like they might fall down a flight of stairs. That’s what makes them work. He isn’t playing over the song. He’s inside the mess with it.

“Thickfreakness” has that thick, ugly drum sound that makes the riff feel even dirtier. “Set You Free” moves like it has something chasing it. “10 A.M. Automatic” sounds like a machine built by two guys who threw away the instructions because reading them would’ve taken too long.

The Black Keys eventually expanded their sound and became a much bigger operation, but the foundation was always that guitar-and-drums conversation. Auerbach threw out the riff, Carney punched it in the ribs, and they kept doing that until they had a song.

It wasn’t perfect. It was better than that. It was alive.

The Hives are the cleanest band on this list, but that doesn’t make them any less vicious.

Chris Dangerous doesn’t have Meg White’s looseness. He has something closer to military precision after the entire military command drank six pots of coffee and decided today was the day it invaded the garage.

The brilliance of The Hives is that everything sounds controlled and completely out of control at the same time. The guitars stop exactly when they’re supposed to stop. The drums slam back in exactly when they’re supposed to slam back in. Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist screams like the building is being evacuated, but the rhythm section never got the message.

“Hate to Say I Told You So” is the perfect example. The beat isn’t complicated. It doesn’t need to be. It drives the riff, creates the swagger and leaves enough room for Pelle to behave like the world’s most confident maniac.

“Main Offender” hits even harder. “Walk Idiot Walk” is a full-band stomp. “Tick Tick Boom” sounds like The Hives figured out how to turn a countdown into a knife fight.

Chris Dangerous plays simple parts with absolute authority. There’s no hesitation and no wasted movement. Every hit arrives like it has a court mandate.

The Hives don’t sound like five musicians trying to impress you individually.

They sound like one weapon aimed directly at your ears.

There was never another choice.

Meg White is the reason this list and ones like it exist.

For years, people treated her simplicity like it was something she needed to apologize for. She didn’t play enough fills. She didn’t have perfect technique. She wasn’t operating some massive kit that required its own road crew, loading dock and local zoning approval. They were never more wrong.

None of that ever mattered because Meg White lived in the song.

“Fell in Love with a Girl” doesn’t need technical drumming. It needs panic. It needs somebody hitting the kit like the song might disappear if they stop for half a second.

“The Hardest Button to Button” needs that blunt, marching beat because the repetition is the entire point. Every hit makes the riff feel larger.

“Seven Nation Army” might be built around one of the most recognizable riffs ever written, but Meg gives it its soul. The song doesn’t float around that riff. It walks forward on her drums. (Side note: My groomsmen and I walked out to this song at my wedding.)

That was always the relationship. Jack White could squeal, thrash, distort, stop, restart or make the guitar sound like a dream dying in the rain. Meg stayed underneath him and gave the chaos a pulse again.

She never needed to chase him. She made him come back to the beat.

That’s why replacing Meg White with a more technical drummer wouldn’t have improved The White Stripes. It would’ve destroyed them. A busier drummer would’ve filled every opening, cleaned up every rough edge and removed the strange, primitive chemistry that made the band sound like a juggernaut crashing through the garage door.

Meg didn’t play like a machine. She played like a heartbeat.

She was the heart of the band. When the heart stops, everything else is fucked.