Truly great drummers are hard to find. The technical demands of the kit and its pivotal role as the backbone of modern popular music mean that the pantheon of drumming geniuses is far more exclusive than that of guitarists or bassists. While it’s possible to get by as a mediocre six-string or four-string player, being an average drummer is simply unacceptable for any band aspiring to the greatness of their idols. One man who knows all about being a great drummer is Deep Purple’s Ian Paice.

Paice holds the remarkable accolade of being the only constant member of Deep Purple, a band famed for its many iterations and high number of members over the years. An incredibly dynamic and emphatic player who has always toed the line between measured nouse and raw elemental force, he has been their ballast throughout the years, logistical transmutations and shifting sound.

Dave Grohl, the Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters leader who also resides in the pantheon of drumming greats and is openly deferential to the hard rock era, is a big fan of Paice. He once said of Deep Purple: “Their drummer Ian Paice was amazing and a big influence on me.”

It’s not just across Deep Purple’s oscillating career that Paice has provided solid grooves. He also linked up with Purple bandmates David Coverdale and Jon Lord in Whitesnake, played in Paice Ashton Lord, and has backed various prominent names, including former Beatles Paul McCartney and George Harrison, The Velvet Underground and Gary Moore. That small list of names resoundingly indicates how revered he is; they are some of the most prominent musicians of his generation.

Paice has enjoyed a lengthy career and played alongside a wide array of stars thanks to his stylistically versatile drumming, a natural result of his deep appreciation for all kinds of music. Like many great drummers of his generation, he holds a select few in high regard, including jazz and big band pioneers like Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. He also reveres 1960s innovators such as Ginger Baker and Mitch Mitchell, who were instrumental in bridging the gap between rock drumming and the calculated form of jazz as it evolved. These influences helped shape Paice’s own approach, blending precision with power.

While Baker and Mitchell will always be hailed as the finest drummers of the 1960s due to their undoubted technical mastery, Paice was also aware of the brilliance of another player, an artist who was widely overlooked by the masses when his band was at its peak: The Beatles hero Ringo Starr. Although cherished by the other great drummers, Starr’s comedic personality and propensity to serve the song and not show off are what put the punters off. However, for keen-eared drummers, he proved widely influential as he steered the ship through The Beatles’ various experimentations and shifting sounds.

In 2020, on his YouTube channel, Paice discussed the drummers who greatly “affected” him and named Starr one of his all-time favourites. He noted that the Fab Four’s music became increasingly brilliant over the years and mentioned Starr’s work on the 1967 psychedelic masterpiece Sgt. Pepper’s as “absolutely perfect.”

Paice said: “Every Beatles track from the very simple rock tunes at the beginning to the more complex stuff when they were getting into Abbey Road, The White Album, and Sgt. Pepper, especially Sgt. Pepper is brilliant. I don’t think anybody could improve on that, I don’t care how much technique they’ve got, it can’t be improved. It’s absolutely perfect.”

It says it all that Paice joins the other most prominent drummers of his era in celebrating Starr. There was no one like The Beatles in their heyday, and they could not have transformed music without their drummer, who was so technically gifted that he kept up with all the other members’ creative whims and provided them with the confidence to keep pushing forward into the future. That’s the sign of a true legend.