10 Greatest Drummers In Hard Rock

The musical trends of the '70s were in desperate need of a change around 1978. While not every band had an awful year or anything, the sounds of heavy rock were getting much too bloated for their own good. That is, until Van Halen came along and lit the entire place on fire.

Compared to the other riffs you would find from his brother, Alex Van Halen was really the lynchpin of the Van Halen machine. Instead of the usual setup that other drummers had, Alex's snare had so much power that it almost sounded like an extension of a tom tom. While the uninitiated might get St. Anger flashbacks from something like that, the way Alex plays is really the best of both worlds, taking the intensity of the snare hit and making it ring with that much punch whenever he was locked in with Michael Anthony.

A lot of people even forget that Alex had a lot of drum breaks much like his brother did with guitar solos, which made songs like Hot For Teacher feel absolutely massive with its jungle rhythm intro. Any other drummer could have gotten the job in Van Halen as long as Eddie was out front, but if you took away Alex's feel, the entire landscape of the group would have changed.