Drummers You Just Can’t Beat: # 26 – Jaki Liebezeit
Drummers You Just Can’t Beat is an occasional series here at Off The Tracks/Substack
Jaki Liebezeit was best known for his drumming work with CAN — though he was a multi-instrumentalist, and had a background in free jazz, ahead of his Krautrock work. He also appeared on albums by other artists, released things under his own name, and in small combos, duos, and various collaborations.
He is one of the most important, and influential drummers of the 70s, creating a whole new sound at the tail end of the 1960s. He pioneered the “Motorik” beat — essentially the Krautrock drumbeat/groove. People considered him half man, half machine. He could lock in on a deceptively simple groove for close to 20 minutes.
Other times, he took CAN almost towards pop-tunes, but with the same determined drumming which is somehow both single-focus and utterly kaleidoscopic.
As the drummer of “Motorik”, and the drummer of CAN and one of the drummers of Krautrock, his influence can be felt across the rhythms of Talking Heads, the drumming on certain Wilco songs (Spiders - Kidsmoke), and as a touchstone for so many players across so many genres, not limited to hip-hop, jazz, down-beat, trip-hop, alt/indie, and so many other experimental forms.
There he is playing on Depeche Mode’s album, Ultra.
And long before that, he was on Brian Eno’s Before and After Science.
But it’s his precision and inventiveness on the CAN records that is the reason he’s remembered.
He passed away in 2017 — and I wrote a small tribute to him at the time:
But his playing remains. And continues to be an inspiration to many, and an infectious component of so much of the CAN material.
