Something about drumming - and plastic puke

Further to my post on Patti Boyd (Layla, 31 July) one of the famous love songs written about her was George Harrison's Something, which Frank Sinatra described as the greatest love song of the past 50 years. Well not in your hands, chum, as personally  I never thought Sinatra could sing anyway (an opinion which has got me into a few arguments...) As Ian MacDonald noted in his splendid Beatles book Revolution In The Head, an old crooner like Sinatra singing Something didn't really work as the expressions belong to a gauche young man rather than someone by then middle aged.

I do think Something is a very good song. MacDonald called it "the acme of  Harrison's achievement as a writer" with a "key structure of classical grace and panoramic effect". Lennon thought it the best song on Abbey Road and McCartney said it was Harrison's best song. Ringo thought it on a par with "anything John and Paul or anyone of that time" wrote. Paul Simon described it as a masterpiece  and Elton John, "probably one of the best love songs ever, ever written... much better than Yesterday....it's, like, the song I've been chasing for the last 35 years".

As ever with Harrison, his guitar runs fit the song perfectly. (I once read a critic who argued convincingly that you couldn't imagine any  guitarist could improve on Harrison's work on a Beatles song or John Frusciante's on a Red Hot Chili Peppers song, hence they were two of the best ever guitarists).  But the thing I always listen for on the Beatles version is Ringo's drumming, which is the icing on this particular cake for me. The bit I love is the high hat flourish that kicks in with the lyric "You're asking me will my love grow...", which I think musically is called a bridge section (well it ain't a conventional chorus, anyway).

The website Popdose lists "Gimme Five: songs where Ringo Starr doesn't, you know, suck". In the "also considered" section it refers to the drumming in Something as a "subtle delight", and from the same album, in Come Together, they say "Starr deftly blends his drums with both the vocals (“shoo” …) and McCartney’s bass". It is indeed a wonderful bit of drumming right at the start of Abbey Road. And they note, as I always thought, that Lennon's oft quoted jibe (when asked if Ringo was the best drummer in the world) that Ringo wasn't the best drummer in the Beatles is thoroughly laid to rest when you listen to McCartney drumming on Back in the USSR and The Ballad of John and Yoko.

Something isn't the only song in which I get fixated on the drumming. Other notable songs include Fleetwood Mac's Rhiannon, in which Mick Fleetwood and John McVie are tighter than a mortice and tenon joint. No wonder they were such an admired rhythm section, even in the era of Nile Rogers. I particularly like the way Fleetwood sticks to the rhythm and avoids the temptation to extemporise in between the vocal sections. I love the drumming so much that, although I'm a lyrics man, I couldn't tell you a single word from this song other than the much repeated title. I had thought for several years (and listening mainly on MP3) that Fleetwood was doing a dextrous double hit on the snare drum throughout the song - and in the era before sampling meant you had to keep playing it. But, listening on the hifi, I concluded that it's actually one long sound. I've only just discovered what makes the unusual snare drum sound on this song (and indeed the whole 1975 album Fleetwood Mac). Strangely, the answer is plastic puke.

There's a reference to plastic puke on the section of Mick Fleetwood's Wikipedia page covering this album, which describes how the bass drums was real skin, not a plastic head, but the snare was "plastic puke". This didn't make much sense to me, though some research revealed that plastic puke is practical joke material, like fake dog poo. Eh? The answer is given in a Q&A with the album producer, Keith Olsen, on a website called fleetwoodmac.net. Fleetwood met Olsen essentially by chance in 1974. He introduced Fleetwood to Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks and got himself hired as their producer. In the Q&A he is asked "how did you achieve that crisp drum sound on the Fleetwood Mac album? it sounds really great":
Plastic Puke..... no really...... We taped that soft plastic puke on the snare as a "mechanical" gate.... whenever Mick would hit the snare the "soft plastic" would lift up and the drum would ring like crazy.... (top end) then as the plastic would lie down, the ring and snare rattle would diminish.... kind of linear level drop.... it was cool.
So my ears were right. It's one long sound not a double hit, but nothing like a normal snare drum sound.

Another song in which the drums seize almost all of my attention is Free's My Brother Jake. Simon Kirke's rhythmically hypnotic bass drum, with plenty of tidy rolls and cymbal crashes somehow distract me from the rest of the song going on, for me, in the background.

Which all goes to show that drumming doesn't need to be complicated to hit the spot and sometimes steal the show.

Sources:
Ian MacDonald - Revolution in the Head, Publisher Fourth Estate, 1994
http://popdose.com/heres-something-else-beatles-songs-where-ringo-starr-doesnt-you-know-suck/
Wikipedia
http://www.fleetwoodmac.net/penguin/qa/keitholsen_qa2.htm
and stuff in my head