Best Rock Drum Performances

The Top Ten
1 La Villa Strangiato - Neil Peart (Rush)

My number one. Ticks And Leeches is great, but La Villa Strangiato is a true masterpiece. The use of the hi-hat is genius and the mini-drum solos are spectacular. It is Neil Peart, the greatest drummer ever, at his best so it has to be number one and where the heck is 21st Century Schizoid Man by King Crimson!

Was the benchmark of rock drumming for a very long time, can't imagine anything else being #1... Ticks and Leeches is awesome, so is Moby Dick, but I have to rank La Villa Strangiato at the very top!

Peart has refined drumming to an art, and if people paid for a drum solo like they did a painting, Van Gohs would be obsolete because of this piece.

Rush is awesome. And Peart's skills showed in this masterpiece are amazing.

2 Ticks and Leeches - Danny Carey (Tool)

Technique, depth, story, and the endurance of a marathon runner on Mars still having the accuracy of a SEAL sniper at the end. For me the argument starts at "why isn't this number one? "

Danny Carey is pretty insane to take this on, but he does it perfectly!

3 Space Truckin - Ian Paice (Deep Purple)
4 Won't Get Fooled Again - Keith Moon (The Who)

This is a great example of Keith Moon's extraordinary stle of play and exemplifies the energy and style that emulates rock. It is simply unreproducable!

5 Painkiller - Scott Travis (Judas Priest)

The best drum intro ever probably - the way Travis plays it throughout the 6-minute song with such intensity, also the double-kicking is impressive!

Awesome performance by Scott Travis, he kicks ass!

The best drum performance ever very few people can play this song especially the intro

6 Haunted - Mike Mangini (Annihilator)
7 2112 - Neil Peart (Rush)

2112 is a masterpiece! All instrument are awesome in this song, I mean Rush is awesome!

8 Moby Dick - John Bonham (Led Zeppelin)

John Bonham is best drum ever. I can't imagine he is 8th in the list.

9 Hot for Teacher - Alex Van Halen (Van Halen)
10 Dance of Eternity - Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater)

How can you remember so many time signature changes in one song?

The Contenders
11 Fire - Mitch Mitchell (The Jimi Hendrix Experience)
12 Burn - Ian Paice (Deep Purple)
13 A Light In The Black - Cozy Powell (Rainbow)
14 My Generation - Keith Moon (The Who)
15 YYZ - Neil Peart (Rush)

You have to see it live to believe it. Neil can't even be seen behind all his percussion gear.
How he manages to hit everything with such precision is amazing. Nothing tops it.

This should probably be the standard "10" to which other drumming performances could be compared.

16 Overkill - Phil Taylor (Motörhead)
17 O' Baterista - Neil Peart (Rush)
18 Holy Wars... The Punishment Due - Nick Menza (Megadeth)
19 XXX for YOU - Tetsu Kikuchi (D'ERLANGER)
20 Shinshoku ~lose control~ - Awaji Yukihiro (L'Arc~en~Ciel)

... And many more, including all dead and white feathers (15 L'anniversary)

21 Message In a Bottle - Stewart Copeland (The Police)
22 Toad - Cream (Ginger Baker)
23 Hocus Pocus - Hans Cleuver (Focus)
24 Good Times Bad Times - John Bonham (Led Zeppelin)
25 In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida - Ron Bushy (Iron Butterfly)

If you play drums everyone knows this 15 minute experience was God sent.

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