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Happy birthday, Led Zeppelin I! Forty years ago this week, the world was rocked by a band that might have struggled to establish themselves as something rather more than Jeff Beck Group copycats but for one oh-so-crucial difference. The drummer. Jeff Beck had Micky Waller (who died last year). But Led Zeppelin had John Bonham, and overnight rock 'n' roll had a brand new beat which echoes to this day.

The arrival of Bonzo on the scene makes 1969 the year of the rock star drummer. For 1969 was the year Jagger rhetorically enquired from the stage at Madison Square Garden, "Charlie's good tonight, innee?" (and Watts had indeed made a giant leap that summer with the cowbell-and-kick-drum bump-and-grind of Honky Tonk Women, a worldwide Number 1 for the Stones). It was the year even Ringo treated us--on Abbey Road--to a solo to show he could keep up with the Keith Moons, Ginger Bakers and Mitch Mitchells--drummers whose combination of prowess and showmanship demanded they share the spotlight with the front-stage rock gods swinging the mike stands, humping the humbuckers and being busted by the Man.

These war baby rock 'n' roll drummers so bulged with style, panache and personality that you didn't have to be a trained muso to know at gut-level that if you subtracted them from the band, you no longer had a band. Or at least, not one half so good. Whatever happened to drummers like that? Drummers whose names even non-drummers knew? Drummers you'd champion in Melody Maker and Playboy year-end polls? Drummers at whom you'd even shout, "Do Toad!!"?

Struggling to name a contemporary rock 'n' roll drummer with the kind of clout that back in the Nixon era turned every velvet-looned fan of rock music's finer points into a gleeful, head-banging idiot, I came up with just three names: Dave Grohl and, at a pinch, Larry Mullen and Meg White.

Only three? Either there is something wrong with drummers these days, or something wrong with me. I craved guidance, and for my pains was furnished with a list of names and YouTube links featuring hot polyrhythmic action. So I got lost online for a while, and guess what? The best drummer alive is still funk legend Bernard Purdie (which is to say, you can watch him host a drum clinic and find yourself tapping your foot and muttering a groovy "Yeah!" to a computer screen, for crying out loud). But his aren't the kind of chops I was after.

So, factoring out post-'69-but-no-longer-cutting-edge masters (for instance, Richie Hayward, Paul Thompson, Stewart Copeland, Pete Thomas, Paul Cook, Topper Headon, Budgie, Steve Morris, John Maher, Reni or Brendan Canty) and still-breathing hired hotshots (like "Pretty" Purdie, Hal Blaine, Steve Gadd, Sly Dunbar, Steve Jordan or Phil Collins--wonderful on Eno and John Martyn records even if his band work with Genesis, like that of Bill Bruford with Yes and King Crimson, is more likely to induce a cerebral aneurism rather than a wiggle in your hips) I give you a thumb less handful of drummers who would merit comparison with the class of ‘69 if they had a little more originality: Phil Rudd of AC/DC, The Roots' ?uestlove, Rammstein's Christoph Schneider and The E Street Band's Max Weinberg.

I also give you, and you're welcome to them, any number of onanistic speed-freaks, paradiddlists and swing-free flamsters for whom the human pulse, heartbeat and feet are an utter irrelevance, thus flying straight over my head.

I'm sure Danny Carey (Tool), Joey Jordison (Slipknot), Dave Lombardo (Slayer), Brian Chippendale (Lightning Bolt) and Todd Trainer (Shellac) are lovely guys, but, please God, don't move in next door. Nor, frankly, do Lars Ulrich of Metallica or the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Chad Smith measure up to the Great Generation either: too pedantic, too short on swing, too, in a word, white.

For it seems to me that a drummer's apprenticeship lies at the heart of why the class-of-'69 so overshadows every generation since. The greats-of-‘69 learned their trade copping R&B and jazz drummers like Baby Dodds, Gene Krupa, Dave Tough, Elvin Jones, Cozy Cole, Benny Benjamin and Jabo Starks, and honed their chops on a highly competitive live circuit where if they didn't get the customers to their feet, they wouldn't be asked back.

And if there's no denying that Metallica's Lars and the Chili Peppers' Chad have been getting their fans to their feet in far greater numbers and for far, far longer than did Cream's Ginger Baker, then there's no denying either that these cold and uncharismatic drummers rule right now because they are, quite frankly, the only game in town. We march to a different drum these days.

Rant over. Instead, a challenge: here are six mind-blowing showcase moments from my class of '69. Can today's skinsmen get within a rim-shot of any of them? Over to you.

Ringo Starr: "Rain" by The Beatles (single B-side, 1966)

Mitch Mitchell: "I Don't Live Today" by The Jimi Hendrix Experience ("Are You Experienced," 1967)

Ginger Baker: "Tales Of Brave Ulysses" by Cream (Live Cream Volume II, recorded 1968)

Charlie Watts: "Monkey Man" by The Rolling Stones (Let It Bleed, 1969)

Keith Moon: "Magic Bus" by The Who (Live At Leeds, 1970)

John Bonham: "In My Time Of Dying" by Led Zeppelin (Physical Graffiti, 1975)

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