Background
Ok, so I’m a late starter.
Apart from messing around on a good friend’s drums at home in Liverpool, absolutely nothing musically noteworthy happened in my youth. Well, apart from that occasion when my mate Don made a synthesizer from parts and we fancied ourselves as Tangerine Dream. Fail.
As John Lennon once said, “life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.” So, I last played my friends kit just before I left for University in 1976, and then ... well, life happened. For about 25 years actually. Degrees, marriage, jobs, children, change of career, jobs, another child.
Just around the turn of the century, it dawned on me that my three daughters were all (as well as other achievements) talented musicians - filling our house with flute, clarinet, piano, bass guitar, classical guitar, French horn, cornet, and voice. This coincided with the scheduled arrival of my mid-life crisis. The traditional options were of course open to me: buy an impossibly fast motorbike having never ridden one before, or take a mistress. But I was too cheap and too chicken for either of them.
And then it occurred to me ... instead of living vicariously through my children’s musical accomplishments, why not hurl myself bodily on the musical bandwagon. Stupidly, I avoided the easily portable choices (harmonica, piccolo, vibralap) to take up the biggest, most unwieldy instrument in the band; which probably makes me an idiot. Since that time, I’ve taken every opportunity to inveigle myself into the company of anyone who wants things hit with sticks in a more or less rhythmic fashion. Big band, jazz, rock, pop, soul – I’m just a feckless genre-whore. And here, as they say, we are...
Influences and Favourite Players
Oh dear, that old chestnut. I tend not to play this game as my notion of ‘favourite’ may not match yours, and frankly may not even match my own by tomorrow. I try to take something positive from every drummer I hear or see. But if I had to pick a few that perhaps get more spins on the iPod than others, they’d be:
Simon Phillips (Toto, independent). I first saw Simon with Jeff Beck on the ‘There and Back’ tour in Manchester in 1981 or 1982. It was a life-changing moment. I didn’t realize that drumming could look as much fun as it sounded. Simon is one of the surprising number of drummer-producers, and has a signature sound and style that I adore.
Dave Weckl. I first saw Dave on a video of Chick Corea’s Elektric Band playing in Barcelona broadcast on TV in the mid-late 1980s. Another eye opener. At that time he was mixing electronics with acoustics, but it was his style that gripped me - and since his ‘reinvention’ even more so. No one moves around a drum kit like him - fluid, effortless, all curves and no straight lines. Seeing him live at Ronnie Scotts was a thrill. Another drummer-producer with one of the world’s best drum sounds.
Gavin Harrison (Porcupine Tree, King Crimson, O5Ric). Gavin matches incredible precision (both in time and space) with passion and inventiveness and a desire never to play the same fill twice. And, yes you guessed it, another drummer producer with a signature sound.
There are many others, of course. Jeff Porcaro, Steve Smith, Benny Greb, Todd Sucherman, Jojo Mayer, Abe Laboriel Jr, Ricky Lawson, Peter Erskine, Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa, Pete Cater, Mark Fletcher, Stanton Moore, Steve Holmes, Nate Morton. Too many to list.
Gear
Not enough. Too much.
Yamaha drums and hardware, Highwood snares, Istanbul cymbals, Silverfox sticks. As if anyone cares. Oh, and a tatty piece of off-cut carpet from CarpetRight.