"Black George Does It With His Tongue" from the Deviants third LP. as a fine drum solo.

Dennis Wilson on Shut Down vol 2. Almost certainly the least competent drum solo ever committed to tape.

is the drummer Art Blakey? If it was him I bet he does that irritating rim-shot* thing he always does. Shame, as he was a brilliant drummer and bandleader.

With drums it's less is more - a decent fill can lift a track from ordinary to interesting.

*Non-drummers: please do not google this. Just ask a drummer. There's probably one rootling around in your bins.

...that I usually DO enjoy drum solos in the context of live small-group jazz: it's a natural part of the whole thing, and relies on musicality rather than volume and grand-standing, as most rock drum solos tend towards.

The handful of drummers in a vaguely rock context whose solos I can enjoy tend to have come from a jazz background (Terry Cox of P*****gle was astoundingly original and listenable, for instance).

It's hard to imagine the Mahavishnu Orchestra Mk 1 without Billy Cobham - but then his powerhouse, precision onslaught was integral to the whole. He generally only took an extended solo in one tune onstage, 'One Word', but exchanged solos/fills in a call and responses fashion with the guitar, violin and keys throughout most of their tunes on record and onstage. So a slightly different thing than set-piece solos. The same could be said for Keith Moon - it's either ALL a solo or its an integral part of the whole. But either way, it's exciting!

I think my fave drummer from a non-jazz background (as far as I know) is Pierre Van Der Linden from Focus. I can't explain why I find his playing, his sound, so unique and compelling - but I do. When Thijs Van Leer's revived Focus played Belfast in 2009 or thereabouts I was a few feet from the stage all night, delighted to see Pierre back in the line-up. The response to his solo feature in the main set (around 10 mins or more) was so rapturous that there was a second 10+ min solo in the encores. I made a point of shaking his hand afterwards - one of the very few times I've felt the need to do so.

This example is quite interesting - it's 'Anonymous 2' on OGWT in 1973. On record the track was around 30 mins long and EVERYONE had a long solo section; in the OGWT studio its down to 10 mins and Pierre's solo is essentially a 45 second fill! And brilliant, of course. It's from 6:50 - 7:35...

Is the only drum solo to matter to me.

Totally agree. I love drums and particularly groups of drummers like Yamato but drum solos ........... yawn. There is a cut-off between break and solo and I wouldn't disagree with your 15 second rule.

Back in the day when every band had at least a five minute drum solo I would usually take the opportunity to visit the bar. Exception would probably have been John Hiseman - mesmerising.

Never understood what possible service can be done to a song by disappearing off on some flight of aren't-I-amazing in the middle. I'm very wary indeed of solos in pop music, and think if you absolutely must have one, at least have the good manners to make it short, and at least try to make it fit the overall message of the song.

Music's for communication. It's a conversation, not a lecture.

OOAA, natch.

or a solo, are irrelevant to me. The question is: does this add anything to the recording or performance?

A live solo, even if it's just grandstanding, can be entertaining for the punters in the hall on the night but should never see commercial release as it'll probably be plain boring in the home. And most recorded drum solo's, I'm afraid, are just that too. (As are 10 minute guitar solos, extended bass breaks etc etc.)

Note: just seen Bob's post above. Hear hear and well said, that man.

Never, never, never.
However, doing the band intros during the closing number and allowing the drummer a few bars to 'strecth out' is always good value and doesn't short change the punters. Keep the beat. It's what you're there for.

I hate drum solos, they are pointless and boring. Particularly in jazz, although I can't stand the whole indulgent soloing in jazz full-stop.

My limit for drum 'breaks' would be Gene Parsons' turn in Fido by The Byrds. It's funky, it forms part of the song and it's short.

..... always works for me.

I love this! Gene Krupa! I think he keeps the beat, drives the band and the song. A master class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=r2S1I_ien6A

Is it me or does the second track keep speeding up.. or is that Krupa just playing in front of the beat?

I love this! Gene Krupa! I think he keeps the beat, drives the band and the song. A master class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=r2S1I_ien6A

Is it me or does the second track keep speeding up.. or is that Krupa just playing in front of the beat?

Doh!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=r2S1I_ien6

Here is the second version, for those too lazy to click on the link... if it works.

Joe Morello's drum break in Take 5 is pretty special.

And I could listen to the famous drum break from Funky Drummer for ever and I doubt it would lose its appeal.

For favourite drum performances I pick the Jimi Hendrix Experience's abrupt stopping on the Lulu show of Hey Joe for a rip through Sunshine of Your Love as although the camera work is closely cropped it really captures the non verbal communication between Jimi and Mitch Mitchell.

...it's a promo for a DVD of Ginger Baker (or Albert Steptoe) & his friends a year or two back.

Ginger's pretty much the whipping boy for drum solos, isn't he? Personally, despite having a soft spot for Cream, I don't really care for his 'sound' and could happily never hear a note of 'Toad' ever again...

I don't object to a short, well-placed break - Ringo's moment of glory on Abbey Road is the exemplar - but anything much more than that disrupts the flow of the piece. Mind you, I feel the same way about guitar/keyboard solos as well.

I guess there's a place for a showcase if the drummer is an exceptional talent in his own right but I'd rather it were a standalone piece and I'd struggle to come up with more than a handful of drummers who would have something novel to say in a solo.

I've always enjoyed Kodo drummers. Guess a live performance is pretty much one very long solo of sorts.

...especially about Ringo - that break on 'Abbey Road' is fantastic, perfect in the context of the track - and yet, as someone whose musical taste is very largely for instrumental music, it follows that instrumental soloing is a huge part of most tracks, not simply an annoying adjunct to the melody, verse/chorus lyrics, etc.

There's obviously lots of people here whose musical taste is very much in the zone of pop/rock songs where its all about the lyrics and thinghs being over in 3-4 minutes without too much messing around. Which is fine - I love a few acts who do/did that kind of thing too (Bread especially - masterpieces of pop song writing/arranging where anything going over the 3 minute mark was a rarity!).

But music under the broad umbrella of 'rock' which is wholly or almost wholly instrumental by nature - like, for example, two of my faves, Focus and the Mahavishnu Orchestra - ahouldn't be lambasted simply because people take solos. The 'rules' have to be different. But that said, Focus were an act which (aside from the odd fusion jam based piece, like 'Anonymous 2' above) often dealt in 'songs without words' - instrumentals like 'Sylvia' where a melody instrument replaces what would otherwise have been a vocal melody.

The MO never dealt in 'songs without words' but even they had a handful of pieces within which no one ever soloed, which were the same length/notes every night (eg 'Hope' and 'Resolution'). But with the MO of course, such pieces were light relief - it was, unashamedly, music based on improvisation within precision architecture of themes and motifs. Which is precisely why collecting the live recordings is so exhilarating - every night really is a completely new experience! Whereas every Paul McCartney or REM gig recording, for example, is going to be very, very similar to the one before it and the one after it. But, to bring the argument full circle, that's fine - because we're not comparing like with like: some acts deal in songs, some in improvisation. Horses for courses...

During the 1980's the drummer Mickey Waller played with a friend's blues band for a while. In a packed pub on a Friday night when the audience has finished work for a week and is getting sozzled dancing to exciting Sarf London blues it was quite thrilling to witness Mr. Waller (who looked like Woody Allen's brother) during the encore go round the kit a few times over the course of a few minutes and show off his expertise. Great fun.

...on record, certainly not any of its live incarnations, but watching it on the Zeppelin DVD is another matter - it's a fascinating visual thing. Here's a mercifully short clip...

Surely the true meaning of a solo is just one instrument being played and no other, which is what you get with a drum solo? Whereas most guitar solos are just instrumental breaks where the guitar leads, which is a different matter and potentially one of the best things ever. A drum solo is boring since it is just an unaccompanied drum being bashed which seems pointless to me - and the options are quite limited. Once you add a bass it's altogether a more appealing proposition. Improvisational extended instrumental playing is not for everyone, personally I like it, but I think even a short pop song is better for having an element of that kind of invention to it.

of any band worth a lick:
1) No drum solos
2) No bass solos*
3) No guitar solo should take longer than it takes to order a round of drinks.

* I'm a bassist, BTW.

Time to get the King out again.

(Not Reni, Collins, Paice, Bonham, Moon, Jay Osmond. And not a solo either).

Many moons ago we were doing a gig - a wedding reception in a marquee - and halfway through 'Rebel Rebel' the master power switch tripped. Cue shouts of 'Drum solo!' and he did us proud. After a couple of minutes of frantic searching for the trip switch in the dark, someone reset the power, the lights came back on and we crashed back into the song to carry on as if nothing had happened. It was one of our better moments. Sadly the recording of the gig was from the mixer, so all we got for posterity was a long silence while the power was out.

Is it a drum solo or just the drums being used much more as a lead instrument? Don't know. I do know, however, that Gadd's virtuosity has rarely been better demonstrated.

This isn't Steve Gadd. And it shows. He's still a drummer of quite blinding skill but not The Master.

so I've honestly never heard a drum solo that I didn't like.
On the other hand I can't stand guitar solos, unless they're played by mr Angus Young.

"Funeral Pyre" job done

Speaking as a drummer I get one break in the last song of the set and I always keep it short, sharp , exciting and visual. Seems to work.

Love prog rock. Hate drum solos. I find them excruciating, embarrassing, enervating (and that's just the Es, of course).

But what really bugs me is going to some folk festival or roots gig and finding all the cool beautiful people, who would instinctively react against a Carl Palmer workout, going into raptures over a talking drum solo from West Africa. That just strikes me as hypocrisy. Worse still, I have witnessed bodhran solos. Very clever, I'm sure, but please let the instrument serve the music, not become the centrepiece in its own right.

Saw him at Big Band Britannia at the Barbican a year or so ago, and couldn't keep my eyes off his actions

... was used as a "refreshment" break for Rod and the lads at the bar they used to have on stage. He was often left thumping away for minutes on end, with his bandmates cheering him on as they downed another large brandy.

Having seen it happen, while the solo wasn't what you could call virtuoso, there was a degree of sadistic enjoyment involved in seeing him flailing away, casting ever more desperate glances towards the side of the stage, where it was party time for Rod and the lads.

I'm not wildly keen on drum solos, but Carl Palmer (Buddy Rich's favourite rock drummer, apparently)in his pomp - gongs, overhead church bell, his own light show built into his revolving stainless steel drum kit, howling Moog drums - was always an important part of the show. Even the TV arts programme Aquarius thought it worth a showcase in 1973.

He sold it on to Ringo and, though it might seem hard to misplace 2.5 tons of stainless steel, its current whereabouts seem a big foggy, possibly gathering dust in some warehouse.

Little Feat's marvellous drummer? I think the last minute of Day Or Night from The Last Record Album counts as a drum solo and it's wonderful - it doesn't show off, it's deceptively complex and it suits the song perfectly.