Phil Collins has spent decades behind a drum kit, first as the driving rhythmic force in Genesis and later as a solo superstar. When he names the players he considers the finest to ever sit behind the drums, his choices carry weight. Among them is Buddy Rich, the legendary jazz drummer whose speed, precision, and explosive performances made him one of the most formidable musicians of his era. Rich was one of the first great drummers Collins discovered and studied closely.
Hearing Rich’s 1966 recording of “West Side Story” opened up an entirely new perspective for the young drummer. The arrangement transformed Leonard Bernstein’s music into a fast-moving big band performance with Rich driving the orchestra from the kit. For Collins, it demonstrated that a drummer could shape an entire performance rather than simply keep time. Collins later recalled that hearing Rich was one of the reasons he wanted to play with a big band himself.
Born in Brooklyn in 1917, Rich was performing professionally as a child. He worked with some of the biggest names in jazz before leading his own orchestra. By the time Collins discovered his records, Rich had already spent decades building a reputation as one of the most technically gifted drummers alive. That influence stayed with Collins through his Genesis years.
The band’s complicated arrangements and changing time signatures required a drummer who knew when to accent a section, when to build tension, and when a fill could carry the music into another passage. In 1996, Collins formed the Phil Collins Big Band, reinterpreting songs from Genesis and his solo career for a jazz ensemble. The project fulfilled an ambition that had started decades earlier while listening to Rich. Rich died in 1987 at 69.
In 1998, Collins performed with Buddy Rich’s Big Band at a tribute concert celebrating his legacy. When asked who he considered the greatest drummer of all time, Collins named Buddy Rich. Ringo Starr may seem like an unexpected choice next to Buddy Rich, but for Collins, that contrast is exactly what makes him so important. Collins has spoken warmly about Starr’s drumming and his enormous influence on generations of players.
Starr never tried to overwhelm a song with complicated solos or technical displays. His strength was knowing exactly what a song needed and finding the groove that made everything around him work. When Starr joined the Beatles in 1962, his arrival changed the rhythm section almost immediately. His playing was economical but never plain.
His unusual approach to fills, timing, and song structure became an important part of the Beatles’ sound. Rather than simply following John Lennon and Paul McCartney, he interacted with them, creating rhythmic parts that became inseparable from the songs themselves. That difference mattered to Collins. A drummer can possess extraordinary technique and still fail to serve the music.
Starr demonstrated the opposite, making relatively simple parts sound exactly right because he understood where the beat needed to sit. On “Rain,” his heavy rolling drumming gives the song a restless quality. On “Come Together,” his restraint leaves room for the bass, guitar, and vocals while still giving the track its unmistakable pulse. Starr’s slightly behind-the-beat approach gave the Beatles a looseness that kept their recordings from sounding rigid.
That became one of the most influential aspects of his playing. Collins came from a generation of musicians heavily influenced by the Beatles, and Starr became one of the drummers young players studied. That influence followed Collins into Genesis, where he learned that memorable drumming was not always about complicated fills. Collins eventually met Starr and developed a genuine admiration for him.
Both understood the importance of serving the song. Charlie Watts brought a completely different kind of authority to the drums. For Collins, Watts was proof that restraint, timing, and feel could be just as powerful as speed or technical complexity. Watts joined the Rolling Stones in 1963, shortly after the band had begun establishing itself in London’s rhythm and blues scene.
He listened closely to Keith Richards and built his parts around the guitar, creating the loose but controlled rhythm that became one of the Stones’ defining characteristics. Richards’ guitar style depended on interlocking rhythms, and Watts knew how to leave enough space for those patterns to breathe. Rather than filling every gap, he could sit behind the beat and create a groove that felt relaxed without losing momentum. On “Gimme Shelter,” his playing gradually intensifies the track without overwhelming the guitars or vocals.
On “Start Me Up,” the directness of the rhythm is part of its power, while his timing gives it the unmistakable swagger associated with the Stones. Watts had a serious interest in jazz and studied players such as Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk before joining the Stones. That gave him a different understanding of rhythm and phrasing, which he brought into rock and blues without making the music sound overly complicated. He remained remarkably consistent throughout his decades with the Rolling Stones, providing the rhythmic foundation behind the band’s most important songs.
When Watts died in 2021 at 80, musicians around the world recognized the loss of a drummer who had quietly occupied one of the most important seats in rock music for more than half a century. His absence immediately showed how much of the Rolling Stones’ identity had been built around his playing. Keith Moon brought a kind of chaos to the drums that few musicians could control. Yet that chaos became one of the defining sounds of the Who.
For Collins, Moon represented another side of great drumming. He attacked songs with enormous energy, filling spaces with explosive rolls, crashing cymbals, and constantly changing patterns. Collins admired that freedom because Moon could make the drums feel like an active voice in the music rather than simply a timekeeper. Moon joined the Who in 1964 just as the band was establishing itself.
His arrival gave the group a drummer capable of matching the intensity of Pete Townshend’s aggressive guitar, John Entwistle’s busy bass work, and Roger Daltrey’s powerful vocals. Instead of restraining the others, he often pushed even harder, creating a rhythm section that sounded almost constantly on the verge of breaking apart. On songs such as “My Generation,” Moon’s playing was frantic without being directionless. He filled gaps, interrupted patterns, and drove the song forward with urgency.
Rather than simply marking the tempo, he treated the entire kit as part of the arrangement. Beneath the wild playing was a sharp sense of arrangement. He knew how to respond to Townshend’s guitar, creating bursts of drums when the music surged, and using fills to build movement when the arrangement opened up. On “Baba O’Riley,” he had to maintain momentum while leaving room for the synthesizer and other instruments.
On “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” his drumming helps drive the long arrangement toward its climactic sections. Moon also changed the way rock audiences viewed the drummer. His playing became as recognizable as Townshend’s guitar or Daltry’s voice. His career with the band was tragically short.
Moon struggled with alcohol and drug use for years. In September 1978, at just 32, he died from an overdose of clomethiazole, a medication prescribed to help with alcohol withdrawal. By then, his influence was already firmly established. Moon had spent roughly 14 years with the Who, but the sound he created continued to influence generations of rock drummers.
For Collins, Moon demonstrated that great drumming did not always come from restraint or technical perfection. Sometimes it came from personality, instinct, and the willingness to take risks. John Bonham was the kind of drummer who could make a rock song feel physically larger. His playing combined enormous power with an unusually deep sense of groove, giving Led Zeppelin a rhythmic foundation that could support the rest of the band without ever sounding buried underneath them.
Bonham joined Led Zeppelin in 1968 after Jimmy Page assembled the group. Page already knew he needed a drummer capable of matching the scale of the music he wanted to create. His heavy bass drum attack and powerful snare sound gave the band’s early material a force that separated it from the blues rock groups surrounding them. On “Good Times, Bad Times,” the track lasts barely three minutes, yet Bonham fills it with rhythmic ideas that would have been unusual for a conventional rock drummer.
His bass drum work moves rapidly beneath the guitars while his fills appear in unexpected places. On “Whole Lotta Love,” Bonham locks into a groove that leaves space for Page’s guitar and Robert Plant’s vocals while still giving the song enormous weight. On “When the Levee Breaks,” his drum performance became even more distinctive. The recording was built around a huge echoing drum sound created at Headley Grange, where Bonham’s kit was positioned in a large hallway and recorded to capture the natural ambiance.
The result became one of the most recognizable drum sounds in rock. Bonham could play with enormous force, but his timing remained precise. He also had an unusually strong feel for the bass drum, using it to create patterns that became part of the song’s identity rather than simply reinforcing the snare. His versatility became obvious when the band moved away from straightforward blues rock.
“The Ocean” gave him room for complex rhythmic changes, while “Kashmir” required him to sit inside a slower, heavier arrangement without allowing it to lose momentum. On “Achilles Last Stand,” he handled one of the band’s densest arrangements with relentless precision. Bonham died in September 1980 at the age of 32 after consuming a large amount of alcohol and subsequently aspirating vomit while asleep. Led Zeppelin decided that without him the band could not continue and announced their dissolution later that year.
His influence only grew after his death. Decades later, Bonham remained one of the most studied and celebrated rock drummers ever recorded. Tony Williams brought something completely different to the drums. Where Bonham could make a rock band sound enormous, Williams could make a jazz trio feel as if it were constantly moving in several directions at once.
For Collins, Williams was not simply keeping time or decorating a song with impressive fills. He was interacting with the musicians around him, responding to their ideas, and creating rhythmic possibilities that could change the entire character of a performance. Williams was born in Chicago in 1945 and grew up in Boston, where he began playing drums as a child. He was already performing professionally while still a teenager.
The turning point came in 1963 when Miles Davis recruited the 17-year-old Williams for his band. Davis was already one of the most influential figures in jazz, and placing such a young drummer in his rhythm section was a remarkable vote of confidence. Williams joined Davis at a crucial moment. Davis was moving away from the more conventional structures of earlier jazz, and Williams fit perfectly into that environment.
He did not simply follow the other players. He pushed them, challenged them, and responded to what they were doing in real time. His work with Davis can be heard on landmark recordings including “Four & More,” “Miles in the Sky,” and “Nefertiti. ”
One of Williams’s most important qualities was his sense of time.
He could stretch a rhythm without allowing it to collapse. He could play around the beat rather than simply sitting directly on it, creating the feeling that the music was accelerating even when the tempo remained stable. Williams eventually moved beyond Davis’s band and formed the Tony Williams Lifetime in 1969. The group brought together jazz improvisation with the aggression and volume associated with rock.
Guitarist John McLaughlin and organist Larry Young were among the musicians who worked with Williams during the group’s early period. Williams played with the intensity of a rock drummer while retaining the freedom of a jazz musician. A fill was not simply there to demonstrate speed. It could redirect the entire performance.
His influence extended well beyond his own recordings. Drummers studying jazz, fusion, and progressive rock began looking at Williams’s technique for ideas about independence, phrasing, and improvisation. He died in 1997 at the age of 51 following complications from gallbladder surgery. By then, his impact on modern drumming was already firmly established.
Billy Cobham brought an entirely different kind of power to the drums, one built around precision, speed, and the ability to handle complicated music without making it sound mechanical. Cobham was born in Panama in 1944 and moved with his family to New York as a child. He began playing drums young and eventually studied at the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan. By the 1960s, he was working with major jazz musicians and becoming an important figure in the emergence of jazz fusion, which combined jazz improvisation with the intensity and instrumentation of rock.
One of the most important periods of Cobham’s career came when he worked with Miles Davis. He played on “Bitches Brew” and “A Tribute to Jack Johnson,” two recordings that helped establish the foundation of jazz fusion. Cobham pushed those ideas even further with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, which he co-founded with guitarist John McLaughlin in 1971. Their first album, “The Inner Mounting Flame,” became one of the defining records of jazz fusion.
The band’s music was extraordinarily demanding, with rapid guitar lines, sudden changes, and intricate arrangements. Cobham supplied the rhythmic force that kept all of it moving. His large drum setup, including a double bass drum arrangement, allowed him to create dense patterns that were difficult to reproduce on a conventional kit. He treated the entire setup as one instrument, moving between the toms, cymbals, snare, and bass drums with remarkable control.
His influence spread among drummers interested in fusion and progressive rock, giving them new ideas about speed, independence, and coordination. Rather than being defined by one rock band or a handful of hits, Cobham became a reference point for musicians who wanted to push beyond conventional rock drumming. For Collins, that was the appeal. Cobham had the technical ability to play extraordinarily complex rhythms, but he never treated technique as the point of the performance.
His power served the music, his speed had direction, and his control kept even the most demanding passages from losing their pulse.