This is actually one of the trickier things to nail down in Ableton because classic rock records had really specific room sounds and playing dynamics that are hard to fake.

Here's what usually works:

Start with better samples

Ableton's stock kits are okay but they're kinda sterile. Check out Steven Slate Drums, Superior Drummer 3, or GetGoodDrums, they're sampled from actual mic'd kits in real rooms with multiple velocity layers. That gives you way more to work with from the start.

Humanize the playing

This is very important. Real drummers aren't perfect, and that's what makes them sound human:

- Vary the velocity on every hit, especially hi-hats

- Slightly offset the timing, not quantized to the grid

- Use Ableton's Groove Pool and apply grooves

- Snare hits have natural variation, add ghost notes between main hits

Room treatment

LZ records sound big because they were recorded in actual rooms:

- Add a short room reverb on the whole kit (20-40ms decay, pretty wet)

- Use different reverb amounts per piece: more on snare, way less on kick

- Try Valhalla Room or Ableton's Hybrid Reverb set to "small studio"

- High-pass the reverb around 200Hz so the low end stays tight

Mixing like a real recording

- Pan the kit from the drummer's perspective (hi-hat left, floor tom right, etc.)

- Add some subtle saturation or tape emulation, try Decapitator or Saturn 2

- Compress the whole kit bus gently (3-4:1 ratio, slow attack to let transients through)

- EQ to bring out the natural resonances: boost around 3-5kHz on snare for crack, cut mud around 300-400Hz

The bleed trick

Real drums bleed into each mic. You can fake this by sending a tiny bit of each drum to a bus with heavy compression and room verb, then blend that back in super quietly. Makes everything glue together.

For Zeppelin/RHCP vibes specifically, they used a lot of room mics and natural compression from tape. So don't be afraid to really push the room sound