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| Photo: Rob Shanahan |
A recent post in the social media reminded me of
this article from long ago…
Let’s talk drums. The revolutionary
new floating action parallel snare strainer and internal damper will impress
even the most (continued on page 386....)
Let’s talk drums. Consider
first that nearly all of the great rock’n’roll groups switched drummers on the
eve of their success. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who and The
Clash all traded up (or down, depending on your point of view), thus depriving
Pete Best, Tony Chapman, Doug Sandom and Terry Chimes of the joy of not having
to touch their drum kits until show time. There are a few successful
drummers, such as Fairport Convention’s Dave Mattacks, who perversely insist on
unpacking and setting up their own hardware, but such cases are rare and
psychologists are baffled.
Drummers come in for a lot of
stick. How many times have you read about ‘the world’s only intelligent
drummer’, or heard the cruel jokes about drummers hanging around with
musicians? In every biography, sleeve note or fan club newsletter the
drummer’s name usually comes last in the group line-up, but it is often the
drummer (technically adept or otherwise), who is the driving force, the leader,
the motivator.
Dave Clark, Mick Fleetwood, Phil
Collins and Don Henley have all contributed much more to the success of their
respective groups than the sound of a swishing hi-hat. Without wishing to
get too Chris Welchian about it, a
strong drummer is crucial.
Then there are the super drummers
whose nuances, names and noses have been the down payment on world domination; Ringo
Starr and Charlie Watts are two such men. Ginger Baker is a third, but he
doesn’t have a new record out right now.
During Beatlemania, everybody in the
world (bar the odd High Court judge) had heard of Ringo. His very name was
the sole excuse for dozens of Jak and Giles cartoons. He had four rings on
each hand! He was the shortest Beatle! He was the most famous drummer
in the world and therefore much better than Buddy Rich or Eric Delaney.
Ringo’s style was simple. With
the minimum of fills, he would maintain a steady four-to-the-bar on his bass
drum whilst simply bashing away at the top kit, hi-hat ajar, head swinging from
side to side. Critics would lambaste the fourth Beatle but they overlooked
the simple fact that he could swing like Battersea Funfair.
Not quite so famous, but just as
influential, was the great Charlie Watts; he of the granite boat race and
orthodox grip (note 1). He had played jazz! He had worked in an advertising
agency! Consequently, his image was more Jermyn Street than Charing Cross
Road and his technique was a bit more tricky than Ringo’s, but only just.
Where are they now? Well, Ringo
Starr fronts a supergroup (the All Starrs) with his able son, Zak, on drums and
former members of The Nazz, The James Gang, Love Sculpture, Poco, Grin and The
Guess Who, on all other instruments. These musicians provide faultless
backing for some of Ringo’s Beatles hits, plus they get their own cameo spots,
the best of which are Todd Rundgren’s ‘Black Maria’ and Burton Cummings’s ‘American
Woman’. The worst is undoubtedly Joe Walsh’s excruciatingly crap version
of ‘Desperado’, a curious (and spurious) choice.
The All Starrs’ live LP was recorded
on 13th June, 1992 at the Montreaux Jazz Festival, presumably in front of
learned students of the orthodox grip, who were probably far too busy rolling
up their jacket sleeves to have ever been aware of Ringo hits such as ‘I’m The
Greatest’. Therefore the audience reaction is, appropriately for jazzers,
muted.
A week later, your correspondent witnessed
this grand scale rock’n’roll cabaret at Radio City Music Hall and the
cheer-led-at-birth Americans went wild as Ringo bounced around the stage,
alternating McCartneyesque and Churchillian hand signals between the hits.
Charlie Watts, at the time of
writing, leads his jazz combo and lends his famous name to Warm And Tender, an album of good, old-fashioned songs, sung by Nat
Cole-oid native New Yorker Bernard Fowler. Beautiful melodies such as ‘Bewitched,
Bothered and Bewildered’ and ‘They Didn’t Believe Me’ (‘when I tell them and I'm
certainly gonna tell them...’ - that one) litter this collection. Throughout,
Charlie tickles his modest kit, delicately brushing his snare drum and extra
loud ‘sizzle cymbal’ (note 2).
Nowadays, there are drummers who, on
their group’s stage plan, specify the area required to set up in cubic
metres! In a pub! There are no photographs of Ringo or Charlie
sitting behind massive arrays of redundant tom-toms. As any observer of
tub-thumpery knows, four drums and four cymbals is quite enough kit to make a
racket, and neither Ringo nor Charlie ever over-equipped. (OK, Ringo added
a third tom-tom in 1968, but did he actually hit it?)
More importantly, there is not one Beatles
or Rolling Stones recording that contains a complex or technically challenging
drum fill. The records that Ringo and Charlie once had the privilege of
playing on contained songs so great that any clever-dickery was superfluous. They
made it all sound so easy and, as a result, thousands of young hopefuls fooled
themselves into imagining that they could drum with equal effect. Most of
us were wrong.
‘Will Birch is a drummer
who has been hanging around with musicians for 29 50 years.’
1.
Orthodox grip versus matched grip - the great debate
in The Ludwig Drummer circa
1964. Two different ways of holding the left stick (or right stick, if
left-handed). The former, more of a ‘knitting needle’ approach, is the
conventional style of marching bands, jazz drummers and Brian Bennett, whereas
the latter, a more moronic method, was adopted by Ringo and therefore, most
rock drummers. Charlie still adopts orthodox grip.
2. A sizzle cymbal is concentrically drilled and then plugged with loose
rivets that ‘sizzle’ when struck. Essential.
Originally published in Mojo 1993
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