Drums like you have fallen off said wall with a bucket on your head.
I guess drummers are more at risk of having to follow "tips" from the producer than many other instruments, as whole time periods are characterised by their drum sounds. Whether the "falling downstairs with the breakfast tray" of the late 60s to the "thwump" of the 80s, I am sure the drummers were largely as good (or bad) but had to follow the fashion of the day.
The drummer I always felt sorriest for was the one in (Bruce Hornsby and) the Range. He had to, or maybe had to, stick in the most repetitive leaden plod of all times. Spoils an otherwise quite good first record by them, it then all seeming to sound the same, perhaps due to that drumsound.

The problem was the dreadful slapback that Phil Spector put all over the drums.

The delay was so long it was running over the next beat, giving that effect of two drummers playing together - slightly out of time.

I've heard the same effect for real myself when trying to rehearse in an empty hall that's far too big. The echo off the back wall takes so long to get back to you, it interferes with the next beat and, unless you concentrate hard, your time naturally drifts to fit in with the echo.

Hasn't it always been true (at least in the post-classical era) that virtuoso musicianship is only an indication of how well played the finished piece or music might be, rather than how good the final piece itself ends up?

Punk produced some amazing records made by people who'd clearly just picked up a guitar that morning, and I often think it's strange that singers with indisputably technically fine voices (Celine, Mariah, Xtina etc.) make the dullest records imaginable, whereas the biggest stars of all time (Dylan, Lennon, Bruce, Elton, you name them) tend to have technically undistinguished voices, however characterful (NOTE - I only just noticed that there seems to be a male/female divide there, unintentional I assure you...)

Off the bat let me say i'm no musician so don't shoot the messenger.
I read that the reason Joy Division were so influential on other bands is beacause their music is so easy to play(and great songs). Therefore, adapting it a tad gives you a great sound without the need for "Chops".
Saw the documentary yesterday. Very good.

Has a legendarily out of tune guitar - check it here at 2:43

http://www.last.fm/music/David+Bowie/_/Young+Americans+(2007+Digital+Remaster)?autostart

And there's a huge list of Fab's anomalies here...

http://wgo.signal11.org.uk/wgo.htm

Death Of A Ladies Man. Strip down the overdone production and you've got some great tunes and lyrics. Particularly the underrated Don't Go Home With Your Hard On. People often can't get past the title, but its a classic tale.

This is sort of related I guess - despite the fact that Blackbird is one of the loveliest tunes ever written I cannot stand that metronome scratchy ticking thing that runs through it. It's only on one channel so I've gone to the extent of creating my own mono version using Audacity so I can carry on enjoying it.

For many years I've wrangled with myself as to whether the horns on Curtis Mayfield's Move On Up were a) Deliberately wonky in an Afrobeat kinda way, or b) A bit out

Can anyone help?

Much as I love the '68 comeback special, the sound of Elvis' mates banging loudly and out of time on the back of their guitars never fails to annoy me

White has a few words to say himself on what he and Spector were trying to do, though admittedly not sure it leaves me any the wiser ... From http://www.nfte.org/interviews/AW_Lennon.html

MOT: How did you become involved with "Instant Karma", your first post-Toronto session with John.

AW: I got the call again, said John's having a session. "He wants you to play drums on it," and I said fine, and so I took my drums down there, set them all up, and everybody came in. Then I met Phil Spector, and you know, he said, "Well. I've got a demo of the song." They played a demo of the song, and then John came in, and we started messing around with it, and then he says, "Well, we need a drum break here," and I said, I've been experimenting with kind of playing a drum kind of beat, but when it comes to the drum break, you play in a different meter, so it kind of steps aside of the meter for a while. And he says, "Well, I'm not too sure what you mean," and then instead of using a high hat or a cymbal, I'd use a tom-tom instead, and Phil Spector recorded it like that; that's where you get that dum-di-dum-di-dum, but when it comes to the drum break dum-di-dum-di-dum-dum-dum-dum--you usually do something like that, but I didn't. I took to another meter, where it goes into another meter, so which is another feel, and John goes "I love that!" and it was something I'd been experimenting with, because when you get to the drum part, it just goes in another area and then comes back to the song again. So I started doing that, and he loved it, and they really made a feature out of it on the record...

MOT: The drums are very prominent on that record, more so than a lot of pop singles. Really up-front.

AW: Yeah, Phil got to like the sound and got to like all that it was, and Phil Spector also records multiple things of what are on tracks and stuff like that, so at the end of the day, we were overdubbing piano, I think, and there was John Lennon and myself. He was playing lower keyboard, and I was playing high keyboard going dang-dang-dang-dang, and then there was those two pianos, and Gary Wright and I think there was a guy from Badfinger. We were all going just dang-dang-dang, and he was taking all the sound in and like making it what it is.

George Harrison's frankly rubbish out of tune guitar solo on All You Need Is Love always sets my teeth on edge.

Nice bloke, to all reports. Good songwriter, on occasion very good, but more prolific than his quality should have controlled, and good singer. But, really, weren't all his guitar solos a bit crap?

Is all over the shop. I remember Mark Radcliffe saying that the drummer, one Ernest 'Boom' Carter, retired from the E Street Band and from rock because he found the idiom too restrictive. On the song Born To Run he tries three or four different styles, never really settling into any of them.