Bonzo, Paice, Powell, Carey and a ton of others have all been given the freedom to let rip within their respective musical settings.
That's a fair point, but those guys are 50+ (or would be in the case of 2); For young up-and-coming rock musicians I'd say there seems to have been a general coyness about overt displays of virtuosity from the new generation of both drummers and guitarists - certainly in the UK.
Every time I listen to Rock radio stations or see the magazines etc the bands that people still go on about the most are the ones who have been at it for decades: check out the line up for this year's Download [Donington] festival - Metallica, Megadeth, Saxon, Soundgarden . . . even the original line up of Black Sabbath. Same deal with Sonisphere [Knebworth] - headliners are Kiss, what's left of Queen, and Faith No More.
Don't get me wrong, I love this stuff - but I think the point is that the reason why these bands still draw the crowds that they do is that there hasn't yet been a young band to take their place and I feel that is in part owing to this recent trend of young rock guitarists
and drummers overdoing the
less-is-more approach to rock music: i.e. they are
painfully dull.
I don't want to be one of those old coots who wanks on about The Good Old Days, but surely the point about Rock music is that you are
supposed to be over the top - never mind your austere, laughably-serious, hipster no-solos/no-fills/no-songs-over-3-minutes horse-pat. Give me King Arthur On Ice.
Every great guitar shredder had/has a barking, booming, bludgeoning (but ultimately skilful) drummer behind them: Townshend had Moon, Page/Bonham, Clapton/Baker, Hendrix/Mitchell, Blackmore/Paice, May/Taylor, Van Halen/Van Halen, Gilbert/Torpey, Bettencourt/Geary (and Mangini), Petrucci/Portnoy; and players like Vai and Satriani always used the best (occasionally shredding) drummers on the circuit - Gregg Bissonette, Terry Bozzio, even Manu Katche did an album with Satriani.
What's the best we can manage these days? Coldplay?
Seriously?