Stewart Copeland explores why drums are essential to modern popular music and how they remain, across the world, the consistent force behind musical evolution.

Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club celebrates the contribution of bass to popular music, tracing its progress from doo-wop to drum and bass, grime and beyond.

Lenny Kaye, Patti Smith's guitarist, explains how the quest for new guitar sounds has driven the history of pop music, from Les Paul's first guitar to Ed Sheeran's looper pedals.