I’ve only been writing for a few months, but it feels like it’s taken me ages to pay homage to Keith Moon, the man who got me into drumming. It really all started with the Live at Leeds album, which I regard as one of the most important albums for any drummer to listen to, let alone me. I expect that one of these days I’ll take a look at the record; I’m even tempted to do a full note-for-note transcription of it…
But today I have “Behind Blue Eyes,” off of Who’s Next. I heard this song a bunch growing up, but I was inspired to give it a closer listen all these years later after 12Tone posted an analysis of the track back in April:
If the jargon keeps you from making it through all 15 minutes, at least skip to the 10-minute mark where he gushes over Moon’s playing.
What I have is very nearly a full transcription of the tune, since there’s only about a minute of drums; after much debate, I decided to include the final measures as well, even though I’m sure you could figure it out on your own!
While “Behind Blue Eyes” only has 60 seconds of drumming, they are still a good snapshot of Moon’s playing: a lot of crashes, heavy use of the four-stroke-ruff/single-stroke-four thing (a hot item for 70s rock drummers in England),* and steady 8ths on the kick anytime he fills.
Speaking of the kick, shortly after the drum entrance, the backbeat drops out as the kick timbre changes slightly. Here, I think Keith is stomping on both kick drums at the same time. Since I don’t notate double kick as separate notes, I have it written as double stops. Keith would do this occasionally, but it’s an odd technique that’s not often used; it doesn’t help that you need two bass drums to play it properly.
I have also written the kick with its own rhythm. I don’t normally default to this style, since I think it makes things messy more often than not. Still, it is convenient for a busy but steady kick part underneath more varied playing from the hands.
“Behind Blue Eyes” has an isolated drum track floating around online, such as this video on YouTube. I’m not sure what the deal is with the slideshow that accompanies it. I’ve seen other videos on the channel, and I think the uploader regards themselves as some sort of visual artist.
Many subtle details are revealed by listening to the isolated track. Check out the drags that Moon throws on a lot of his fills, including the fast singles at the finale. Also in the finale is some delicate and graceful triplet action — essentially the same idea as the ruffs from earlier in the tune, but with much more finesse:
On this track in particular, Moon carries a lot of his fills through the downbeat of the next bar, ending on beat 2. You can hear him do a bit of foreshadowing beginning at measure 9, where he starts to throw in crashes on beats 2 and 3. These moves go a long way to give the song some additional edge.
Listening closely to Keith, I noticed that he seems to be sticking to just 2 of his rack toms for most of his fills. By this point, Moon was using his black Premier double bass kit with six toms: three rack toms, and three floor toms (one floor tom on his left and two on his right). All things considered, I don’t think Moon had a very scientific approach to how he played all his toms, and probably just hit whatever felt right.
I’m a bit fascinated by Moon’s philosophy regarding toms — that is, getting three rack toms that are all the same size and tuning them differently. Nobody takes that approach nowadays. I don’t even think any drum manufacturer offers such a factory setup.
Also revealed from the isolated track is a decent array of flubs, usually some sort of stick click/rim click. These are hard to notice on the full mix — producer Glynn Johns certainly had his work cut out for him. It does irk me when I see a lot of comments on these isolated Keith tracks about the apparent sloppiness, which seem either very defensive towards Keith’s legacy, or ignorant of how many drummers have their own blunders documented across their discographies. We’ve all heard the “Money” guitar solo, right?
On the topic of YouTube nonsense, it triggers me to no end that the Limp Bizkit version somehow has 100,000,000+ views on YouTube, much more than the original. I’m not sure who asked Limp Bizkit to cop someone else’s song and play it the way I imagine Squidward Tentacles would play it.
Whatever — there are certainly more things to worry about right now.
* ^ I think it’s important to point out that, as popular as this lick is, it’s not technically a rudiment, and it never has been. The “four stroke ruff” is not on the 13/26/40 rudiment lists, and while the Single Stroke Four is very similar, the true rudimental version has no accents.
