Jeff EvansA big problem that drummers have is they don't know how to balance themselves with the rest of the band. They are simply not listening! Drummers can easily be the loudest person on the stage (along with guitarists that is!) Being a recording engineer as well as a drummer I have always approached playing live with the concept of balancing myself so I can hear everyone else in the band. As a result I got tons of work over 40 years of playing.
I am not sure that this is all of it.
In general, most drummers do not know/understand the relationship between their indivisual pieces of drums and the rest of the music they are playing ... beyond counting 1 through 4 to make sure they hit that snare drum at the right time.
The best drummers that we talk about, Bonzo included, Moonie, Pierre Moerlin, Mani Neumeier and only handful of others, do NOT spend their time being "on time" in a mechanical sense (hold on a sec!), but instead try to color the music they are playing, which is more important than your hit on the snare drum on the 4th beat ... why not on the toms.
A couple of examples ... have been listening to "Caravan" and on the albums "For Girls ... " and "New Sinfonia" you hear something that is quite nice ... the drum rolls and wipeouts often start 16 or more beats way before it ends ... and are spread out a lot ... and it makes the music sound better ... most "beginning" and "metal" drummers, try to make sure all the noise is within that one measure and beat ... and thus you get someone like Gavin Harrison that is really good at doing 8 to 12 touches within 4 beats ... and to my ear, it sounds mechanical and quite learned by the DAW influence, instead of it being a detail just coloring the music ... but good ... it sounds ok in PT ... though I am not sure it is great.
Another example ... listen to Steve Gadd 30 years ago helping Rickie Lee Jones in her first couple of albums ... and Magazine being the last one he was on, and the difference was him spending time augmenting her voice and accent, which most drummers do NOT do, or are capable of doing ... they are not listening to anything but their own count in their head .,.. which tells you they are not good enough to play "professionally". And then check out Steve Gadd's amazing touch and "lack of drumming" in Kate Bush's album "50 Words for Snow" ... and in the end, you CAN NOT teach that, specially here, when folks think that no one else can help you learn music, because you know it better than the DAW!
Another example ... Mani Neumeier/Guru Guru ... just been listening to "Dance of the Flames" and I notice that the bass and drums are not quite in sync ... it's like one of the other is a half, or a quarter of a beat behing ... and upon further listening you will find that Mani is having fun and playing against the guitar not the bass ... and this is a very good example of the fact that at different times another person in the group can hold up the count ... that it is not always on the drummer, though the conventional rock'n'roll bullmerde is that the bass and the drummer hold the numbers and the other players are free to go to hell and back, and that is total BS and stupidity and lack of knowledge and appreciation for music and musicians.
Pierre Moerlin ... he was originally schooled as a percussionist and his timing and ability is impeccable and the Gong albums are all you need, and trying to drum along the two large cuts in "You" is not something that most drummers will EVER try ... because they do not have the confidence in the musicians around them, and they do not (also) have the ability to know ... that every one is smart enough to be able to come together in "time" when it is important to do so! You can also see Pierre do this in "Exposed", which is Mike Oldfield's DVD, and Pierre's contribution is really pretty to watch, though here you get to see the percussionist and then a few minutes later .. the drummer ... that knows music. It is ... a percussion/drumming clinic for what "rock'n'roll" is not capable of doing with music at all ... when the only thing that people can teach you is timing and getting as much is as possible within that time! In the end, you never learned how much NOT to do within that time, and this is Steve Gadd's strength!
Bonzo's trick was not the cymbals, though this can be said because his drums were more important than the cymbals, and to Moonie, the cymbals were more important than the drums! And it made for a nice difference between the two, and STILL, best rock'n'roll drummers out there ... telling us what you can do with it all ... that most folks STILL do not do.
One last one ... Bill Bruford ... in one of his videos said something funny. He had a problem with his left hand that got numb at times, and necessitated its movement, or hit, in order to make sure it did not fail him ... and the hit on the 4th on the snare drum has been the most repeated thing EVER in rock drumming for 30 years ... and today's metal and rock bands still can not drum without having that unbelievable metronome on the snare drum ... they are not smart enough to use one tom, a symbal, a bass drum, or a silent tap ... as the beat as way to color the music better ... again, they are not listeing to themusic, as they are too busy counting things in their head!