Backbeats: A History of Rock and Roll in Fifteen Drummers

Music writer Lingan (Homeplace) celebrates the unsung musicians “who often go uncredited, who sit all night between the amps,” with this animated tribute to 15 of rock’s most influential drummers. Covering the 1950s to the 2010s, he highlights famous names like the Beatles’ Ringo Starr and the Rolling Stones’ Charlie Watts, whose sense of pace and rhythm shaped the “refined looseness” of the band’s sound. Less well-known names include Hal Blaine, who recorded for Phil Spector and with the Beach Boys, and who added accessories to the drum kit that expanded the range of notes one could play, inspiring the “sprawling drum rigs” of Van Halen’s Alex Van Halen and Rush’s Neil Pert. Also spotlighted is Moe Tucker of the Velvet Underground, who shattered “all the usual requirements for drummers” with her “strange” kit (it featured “an upturned bass drum that she hit with a mallet, and no cymbals”) and unconventional image and performance style (after her, drummers “no longer had to be a boy, be traditionally technically gifted, or even play sitting down with four limbs”). Closing out the book are odes to Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters) and Questlove (the Roots), both of whom have married newer technology with a classic rock sound. Peppered with colorful anecdotes (Ringo Starr “played with such wild force that stagehands would screw a plywood plank to the back of his risers to prevent his stool from skidding off”), the profiles shed light on how drummers have helped shape rock music’s “many sounds and styles.” It’s both a vibrant group biography and a fresh perspective on what makes rock and roll special. (Nov.)