David Haughton, Clem Burke, and Steve Goulding. A trio of drummers who may not be household names, but who made important contributions to the music of the late-‘70s punk, new wave, and English pub rock scenes.
What stands out for me about their playing is the elasticity, which I define as an ability to slip into different styles and genres without missing a beat. Houghton attacks the drum kit on a song like “Got the Time,” but can slow it to a drag for a song like “Sunday Papers” or “Geraldine and John.” Burke cycles through raves like “Eat To The Beat,” the reggae of “The Tide is High,” and lays out a brilliant dance groove on the disco and rap songs, “Heart of Glass” and “Rapture.”
Goulding offers a similarly eclectic sense of rhythm, playing through Graham Parker’s angry soul and Elvis Costello’s broad pastiche of sounds.
I asked Nick D’Amore, a friend and drummer (World Sucks & Cathedral Ceilings), what makes for a good rock drummer.
“Oh, it can be lots of things. A distinct approach, technical prowess, creativity, ability to groove,” he said. “Dave Houghton has a lot of these attributes. He can swing and groove while playing at a pretty fast pace. A very tight, compact style.”
Houghton disappears after the first few albums. Various sources on the Internet say he retired because he was tired of the touring pace, something that feels a bit ironic. Houghton set the pace for The Joe Jackson Band, a dizzying, shifting pace that helped define that moment in music for me and a lot of others.
Houghton played drums on the first three Joe Jackson records, which moved from punk to new wave, disco and jazz, to ska, with Houghton in the driver’s seat. To get a sense of how important his work was to what Jackson achieved on the first two albums, in particular — Look Sharp and I’m The Man — listen to “On The Radio”:
The slashing guitars, the hyperactive bass, Jackson’s curled-lip delivery are held together by Houghton. His drumming is frenetic, but somehow spare, and the band races to keep up with his urgent, crushing attack. It is a song that serves as a link between punk’s punch and what would become a more radio-friendly new wave, and it’s almost the polar opposite to a song like “The Band Wore Blue Shirts,” with its grungy blues-meets-ska swing:
Houghton’s career was relatively short. A drummer like Clem Burke, who set the tone for Blondie and later would plan on an underrated album by The Romantics (https://www.popmatters.com/romantics-6149-2496044280.html) that returned the band to its more garage-like roots. On that album, as I wrote when it came out, Burke put his foot to the accelerator. On the opening three tracks, in particular — “Devil in Me”, “61/49”, and The Pretty Things’ “Midnight to Six Man” — Burke seems to will the band into a Detroit garage, where it leaves behind any pretensions to stardom and just plays:
It’s a powerful performance, but doesn’t truly give one a sense of what Burked is capable. For that, you have to turn to his Blondie catalogue and the wild swings it encompasses. Disco on “Heart of Glass”:
Reggae/Ska on “The Tide is Hight”:
And punky, girl-group cool on “Rip Her to Shreds”:
The band, D’Amore said, “got a lot of flak, I guess, for ‘going disco’” on songs like “Heart of Glass, “but those drums are not disco-tight at all. It's still got some punk rock looseness to it, which is why it was sort of hard to replicate.”
D’Amore “came to Blondie thinking that's just who they were, a band who incorporated all sorts of styles all the time, before I knew about ‘punk rock’ and NYC in the '70s and everything” — a time and place Blondie captures in its DNA.
As for Goulding, what can you say about a drummer who played on “Soul Shoes” as a member of The Rumour
Along with songs such as “Watching the Detectives” with Elvis Costello:
And “Sweet Dreams” by The Mekons: