Which bands have had the most drummers is a question I can answer more precisely than most people, because I have spent years building research sheets that put every credited musician against every studio album. When you draw those sheets as tube maps, the drum stool is almost always the line that breaks first. It breaks more often than bass, more often than guitar, and far more often than the singer.
What surprised me is that counting band members badly undercounts it. If you count everybody the credits list on drums, rather than everybody the band called a drummer, the numbers roughly double.
Eleven People Are Credited on Drums Across Liam Gallagher's Thirteen Albums
My Liam Gallagher map runs 13 studio albums from Definitely Maybe in 1994 to Liam Gallagher & John Squire in 2024, across Oasis, Beady Eye and the solo years. Four men held the job in a formal sense: Tony McCarroll, Alan White, Chris Sharrock and, for two records, Zak Starkey.
The credits list at least seven more. Noel Gallagher is credited on drums on a track of three separate Oasis albums. Terry Kirkbride drums on one track of Dig Out Your Soul. Dan McDougall and Greg Kurstin both play drums across the solo records. Homer Steinweiss and Parker Kindred each take a single track of Why Me? Why Not. And Dave Grohl drums on C'mon You Know.
Eleven people, one seat, thirty years. Drawn out, that column of the map looks less like a band and more like a rota.
The Ramones Are Famous for Three Drummers and Actually Have Five
The Ramones story everybody knows is Tommy, then Marky, then Richie, then Marky again. Three men, four spells, across 14 studio albums from 1976 to 1995. That much is right.
Two more names sit on the same line. Jim Keltner, one of the most recorded session drummers alive, is credited on End of the Century in 1980, the album Phil Spector produced. Billy Rogers plays drums on one track of Subterranean Jungle in 1983.
Neither has ever been described as a Ramone and neither needs to be. They are on the record, so they are on the map, and the effect is that the busiest-looking part of the Ramones drum line falls exactly where the band was supposedly at its most self-sufficient.
Marky Ramone's Line Is the Cleanest Break I Have Drawn
Most line-up changes are messy. Somebody drifts out over two records, somebody else is credited on half an album. Marky Ramone is the exception, and it is the reason I use his line when I explain what these maps do.
He arrives on Road to Ruin in 1978 and runs through End of the Century, Pleasant Dreams and Subterranean Jungle. Then nothing for three albums while Richie Ramone takes over. Then he comes back on Brain Drain in 1989 and runs to the last station.
On a chronological list of albums that is a footnote. On a map it is a rectangular hole with his name on either side of it, and your eye finds it before you have read a single word.
The Kinks Went the Other Way: One Drummer Who Would Not Leave
My Kinks map covers 24 studio albums from 1964 to 1993, and four people are credited on drums across it: Mick Avory, Bobby Graham, Clem Cattini and Bob Henrit.
Two of those are the story. Bobby Graham, a session drummer, is credited on eight tracks of the 1964 debut while Avory, the band's own drummer, is credited on five. And Bob Henrit is widely written up as having replaced Avory on Word of Mouth in 1984, except that Avory keeps appearing for another five years, on Think Visual in 1986 and UK Jive in 1989.
Clem Cattini is the other good one. He drums on three tracks of The Kink Kontroversy in 1965 and is not credited again until Sleepwalker in 1977. Twelve years between two stations on one line.
On a Single Album Map the Question Changes Shape
My Goats Head Soup map is the only print in my range that goes inside one record rather than across a career, plotting the ten tracks of the 1973 Rolling Stones album as stations. There is exactly one drummer on it. Charlie Watts is credited on all ten tracks, which makes his the one line that crosses the whole print without a break.
The interesting bit is what gathers around him. Three separate percussionists are credited on "Can You Hear the Music": Jimmy Miller, Anthony "Rebop" Kwaku Baah and Nicholas Pascal Raicevic. Four people on rhythm duties on one track of one album.
So a stable drummer does not mean a thin map. It means the density moves sideways into percussion instead of forward into replacements.
The Count, Side by Side
| Map | Albums | Members on drums | All credited on drums |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liam Gallagher | 13 | 4 | 11 |
| Ramones | 14 | 3 | 5 |
| The Kinks | 24 | 2 | 4 |
| Goats Head Soup (one album) | 1 | 1 | 1, plus 3 percussionists |
The pattern holds across the range. The longer the career, the more the gap widens between the drummers a band had and the drummers a band used.
Why Producers Do Not Inflate These Numbers
One rule keeps this honest. On every map I draw, you get a line if you are credited playing something, and not otherwise. Producing does not earn a line. Arranging does not earn a line. Engineering does not earn a line.
That is why Phil Spector is nowhere on the Ramones map despite producing their most discussed album, and why Jim Keltner, who was in the room on the same record, is on it. It is also why Jimmy Miller appears on my Goats Head Soup map, not because he produced it but because he is credited on percussion on one track.
Applied consistently, the rule means a drum count is a count of people who actually hit something, which is the only version of the number worth printing.
Questions People Send Me About This
Which band on your maps has the most people credited on drums?
The Liam Gallagher map, with eleven across 13 studio albums spanning Oasis, Beady Eye and the solo records. No single band in my range comes close over a comparable span.
Do you count session drummers the same as band members?
Yes. A line is a line. A one-album session player is drawn exactly the way a founder member is, just shorter, and one-off contributors get a branch line of their own.
Does a drummer on one track get the same line as one on the whole album?
On a discography map, yes, because each station is an album rather than a track. The one exception is my Goats Head Soup map, which plots a single record track by track and is the only print in my range that shows roles at track level.
What is not counted here?
Live albums and compilations, which are left off every map in the range, so these are the studio records only. Drum programming and drum machines are also left off unless a person is credited by name for playing them.
How do you resolve credits that disagree?
I follow my own research sheet, which is what the artwork was drawn from, and I say so when a published source disagrees with it rather than quietly picking a winner.
The Maps Behind These Numbers
Each of these is a Giclée art print in A2 or A1, unframed or in a black wood frame, from £42. The Liam Gallagher Discography Map is the one with the rota. The Ramones Discography Map has the cleanest break, and the Kinks Discography Map has the handover that takes five years.
For the track-level view, the Goats Head Soup album map is the only one that goes inside a single record. The rest of the range sits in the Music Wall Art Prints collection.
Every credited musician, drawn as a line, on the studio albums they actually played on. A2 or A1, unframed or in a black wood frame, from £42.
Explore the Music MapsNot sure which map they would want? An art print gift card lets them choose.
