Karen Carpenter’s intuitive choice of instruments was drums, but she had to break down a few invisible walls, crack a few glass ceilings, and crash a few cymbals along the way. However, by the height of her career with her brother Richard in the mid-1970s, millions of people loved drummer/singer Karen Carpenter. Just about everyone, except one person: Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham. For all the people who said they subscribed to Playboy Magazine mostly for the articles, it really was true for the dedicated music lovers who helped make the Playboy Music Poll one of the benchmarks and most respected polls of its time. We’ll pass on repeating Bonham’s exact quote once he heard that she beat him out in Playboy’s 1975 Music Poll as Best Drummer but, suffice to say, he wasn’t one of the readers who voted for her. Beyond that, there’s no official word on what other […]

June 2022 Issue