So let's hear a rim-shot for amateur drummer/pro-writer John Lingan for acknowledging the importance of the body behind the kit in his new book Backbeats: A History of Rock and Roll in Fifteen Drummers. Through those fifteen brief chapters on such household names as Hal Blaine, Ringo Starr, Charlie Watts, Mo Tucker, John Bonham, Dave Grohl, and Questlove, as well as such unhousehold names as Sam Lay (who played with Howlin' Wolf, Paul Butterfield, and Dylan), Kenny Buttrey (who played with Elvis, Neil Young, and Dylan), and Earl Hudson (who played with Bad Brains and not Dylan), Lingan shines a spotlight on the backline. His chapters are part biography/part examination of the development of rock and roll drumming. So we learn about Lay's self-defeating fixation on guns as well as how he developed the "double-shuffle" beat and Blaine's stint in the army as well as how he developed the much-copied/never-better "Be My Baby" beat.
Lingan keeps the technicalities super simple, so Backbeats is not one for the drumming geeks; the glossary he includes features definitions of such exotic terms as "hi-hat" and "tom tom." This, along with the brevity and variety of each chapter, keeps the book super readable and approachable, always interesting, even when the author marches over some very well-beaten ground. I initially had mixed feelings about the inclusion of a chapter on Ringo, which retreads the Beatle's story for the zillionth time, while also realizing that there couldn't have been a book without the little guy. But Lingan freshens it up by mostly imparting insights about some of Ringo's less-celebrated rhythmic flourishes. He also makes several sizable boners, my favorite being the assertion that The Beatles opened for Helen Reddy! For his chapter on Charlie Watts, Lingan forgoes biography altogether and just homes in on what made the Stones' foundation such a distinctive musician.
Because fifteen drummers is not a lot of drummers, one might feel compelled to ignore all Lingan's words of explanation for his choices in the introduction and still wish that the development of octopus-arms drumming and wild-man behavior was represented with a chapter on Keith Moon or that the nerdy fealty to technique that infects many a drummer was represented with a chapter on Neil Peart (both favorite drummers of the author, by the way). Both are briefly discussed in the John Bonham chapter, but maybe the full dues are being saved for a sequel.
