steve smith, Billy Ashbaugh, Bill Cobham, max roach, steve gadd, dennis chambers, dave weckl, tony williams, buddy rich, ext. ext. ext.

    Dave Grohl! He got me into drumming in the first place. I always enjoyed the parts that he played for Nirvana. His playing has always reminded me of a modern day John Bonham. They both were very creative on the drums, and their parts were often something that most people wouldn't come up with.
    Tony Williams because of his controlled madness on the kit (that's almost a cliche statement but I can't say it any better).
   Neil Peart because of his unique sound and style.
  Terry Bozzio because of his unique and amazing use of the his kit (or orchestra, I guess you can't just call what he has a drumset ) in such a melodic way.
   And myself. I enjoy the way what I play, but then again I guess everyone probably should enjoy their own playing .

eddie prevost
rashied ali
steve jansen
ninh le quan
william winant
hamid drake
jim white
daniel denis

thats a good start.

Hal Blaine, Jim Gordon†, Russ Kunkel, Jeff Porcaro, Larrie Londin, Kenny Malone, Eddie Bayers, Gene Chrisman, and Jerry Kroon to name a few.



_{† I'm leaving what he did out of this.}

Alright, i'm game-

Ringo
Hal Blaine
Gary Chester
Phil Ehart
Carl Palmer
Dino Danelli
Jim Gordon
Alan White
Ansly Dunbar
Bun E. Carlos
etc,,,,,,

Neil Peart
Carl Palmer
Bill Bruford
Tim Alexander
Chad Sexton
Jerry Gaskill
Dave Weckl
Terry Bozzio
and many more....

For me I gotta say:

Lars Ulrich (i hope i don't catch grief for this one, lol)
Dave Lombardo
Paul Bostaph
Raymond Herrera
John Bonham
Dave Grohl
Nick Menza
Tommy Stewart
Nicko Mcbrain
Steve Asheim
Vinnie Paul

You always manage to name a bunch of people with whom I am not familiar!  

Mine would be (in no particular order)

Mitch Mitchell
Ginger Baker
Richie Hayward
Omar Hakim
Buddy Rich
"Philly" Joe Jones
Elvin Jones
Tony Williams
Ian Paice
Barriemore Barlow
Carter Beauford
Vinnie C.
John Bonham
Dino Danelli
Billy Cobham
Lenny White
Jim Gordon
Jim Keltner
Steve Gadd
Zigaboo Modeliste

I know there are more...............

From my brain. I alphabetized it, to make it easier for me to check if I'd forgotten anybody. Why?

I like a lot of drummers, being a fan of most styles of music. So when I started that list, I decided to limit it to guys who'd had a really strong influence on the way I play - not just a list of guys who play great. Hell, the list of guys who play great would go on and on and on! So I arbitrarily set that as my criteria for who goes on the list. If I could immediately think of some aspect of my playing that was influenced by a specific player, his name went on the list. And if I couldn't, the name stayed off.

Tommy's great, but my double-bass playing was influenced much more by Steve Smith, Rod Morgenstein, Deen Castronovo, and Terry Bozzio. So I left Tommy off - with absolutely NO disrespect. He's an AMAZING drummer.

There's a lot of incredible drummers out there who I really respect, but who for one reason or another haven't really impacted my playing very much - for example, you won't see Dave Weckl, Dennis Chambers, and many others on my list, although they're awesome players.

On the other hand, some other guys who might not be as familiar to some drummers did make the list - guys like Rick Gratton, Paul DeLong, Irv Cotler, John Von Ohlen, etc.

And that was off the top of my head - I spent about a half hour thinking of names. Ask me next week and I might not come up with the exact same list!

Hope that makes sense. The problem with posting such a long list is then you second-guess who should be on or off the list. Maybe I should have just done a "top five" list - but that would be REALLY hard!  

hm Rat, that looks an awful lot like the drummers of www.drummerworld.com !!!!

haha

Welcome to moderating: you sure get the HEAT

sorry     not making a concerted effort to by any means.  allmusic.com has listing for all these cats if im not mistaken.  

and also this isnt necessarily a list of influences, just favorites, which means they are even more likely to be obscure  

I love all those guys but a real quick list of who INFLUENCED ME the most- no particular order:

Steve Gadd
Simon Phillips
Cozy Powell
Tommy Aldridge
Neil Peart
Randy Castillo
Bill Ward
Dave Weckle
Vinnie C.
Jim Chapin

and that's about it...I hear great things from so many guys I can't keep up, but my all time favorite drummer is:

ME!!!!!!

I gotta admit, Mr. A, I thought at first that perhaps you did the ol' C&P with that list, but I then gave you the benefit of the doubt when I remembered that some people just type well.  

Here's mine... If I were President, I'd invite them all (only the living ones of course) to the white house for an "extended visit" while the IRS went over their returns.  

Rick Allen
Ginger Baker
Carter Beauford
John Bonham
Terry Bozzio
Will Calhoun
Deen Castronovo
Dennis Chambers
Billy Cobham
Vinnie Coliuta
Stewart Copeland
Phil Ehart
Dennis Elliot
Fish
Steve Gadd
Dave Garibaldi
Simon Kirke
Keith Moon
Mitch Mitchell
Joe Morello
Rod Morganstein
Ian Paice
Neil Peart
Simon Phillips
Jeff Porcaro
Bernard Purdie (Especially on the early Beatles stuff  )
Buddy Rich
Danny Seraphine
Chris Slade
Steve Smith
Richard Starkey
Dave Weckl
Lenny White

Nope, I'm just a geek. I wrote the list in a table in Word, then sorted it by last name. I guess the length of the list and the alphabetization (is that a word?) made it look like drummerworld. My list is long because A) I'm old  , B) I like almost all musical styles, and C) I've really made a study of a lot of drummers' playing in an effort to advance my own playing.

Incidentally, drummerworld is great. It's a good exercise to go down their list and check out drummers you haven't heard of. Now and then I'm a little surprised by who he chooses to include and who he does not include, but the bottom line is the guy is doing us drummers a favor by hosting that excellent site!