Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Drummers Who Shaped Rock History (Ringo Starr, John Bonham, Charlie Watts, Dave Grohl & More) [Episode 340]

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Drummers Who Shaped Rock History (Ringo Starr, John Bonham, Charlie Watts, Dave Grohl & More) [Episode 340] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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Speaker 1: The stories behind rock and rolls, history making drummers and
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Speaker 1: what makes them so great, including Ringo star Charlie Watts,
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Speaker 1: John Bonham, Dave Grohl and Moore. Coming up next on
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Speaker 1: Booked on Rock.
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Speaker 2: Who We're totally booked rock and roll. I mean, I'll
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Speaker 2: leave you. You're reading. Little Hands says it's time to
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Speaker 2: rock and roll.
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Speaker 1: Roll up, I totally booked. Welcome back to Booked on Rock,
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Speaker 1: the podcast for those about to read and rock. John
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Speaker 1: Lingen is our guest his brand new book titled Backbeats,
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Speaker 1: A History of Rock and Roll in fifteen Drummers. John,
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Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
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Speaker 2: How you doing, Thanks so much for having me Eric,
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Speaker 2: I'm doing great.
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Speaker 1: Five star reviews across the board on Amazon, and among
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Speaker 1: the compliments is that it's written for musicians while also
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Speaker 1: connecting with those who are not musicians but music fans.
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Speaker 1: And there's a great comment from one reader who said,
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Speaker 1: quote as a steering wheel drummer with no musical and
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Speaker 1: little sense for the history of drumming, this was a compelling, entertaining, informative,
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Speaker 1: utterly delightful read. Gotta love reading those reviews.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, that kind of message in particular is really great.
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Speaker 2: Because that was certainly like a like a secondary goal
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Speaker 2: of the book really was, you know, and this I
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Speaker 2: was sort of talking to a friend, another writer in
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Speaker 2: the course of writing it, who brought this idea to
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Speaker 2: my attention. So it wasn't like an original thing, but
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Speaker 2: just like the idea that a book like this, there
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Speaker 2: aren't that many general interest books about drums, period, regardless
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Speaker 2: of whatever the topic is or whatever, and so like,
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Speaker 2: I wanted this book to not only be like a
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Speaker 2: history of rock and roll, like it says on the cover,
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Speaker 2: but also if it's a person's like first introduction to
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Speaker 2: like thinking about drums for two hundred and fifty pages
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Speaker 2: or whatever, I want it to be approachable like that.
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Speaker 2: So yeah, I think it's a wonderful compliment. That's why
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Speaker 2: there's a glossary in the front. That's why I commissioned
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Speaker 2: a wonderful illustration of a drum set that's in the
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Speaker 2: book as well, because yeah, I thought, like it's a
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Speaker 2: good story. But for many people, this will probably be
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Speaker 2: the first time they ever think at this length about
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Speaker 2: something they've listened to their whole lives.
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Speaker 1: Fifteen drummers covered to the book, So what goes into
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Speaker 1: your choice of fifteen drummers.
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Speaker 2: Well, once I decided, you know, that the organizing principle
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Speaker 2: was going to be a history of rock and roll,
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Speaker 2: so you know, as opposed to a list of the
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Speaker 2: fifteen greatest drummers or something like that, then that sort
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Speaker 2: of helped me build out what that list was. And
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Speaker 2: I didn't have at the time when I decided, Okay,
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Speaker 2: it's going to be this particular history, I did not
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Speaker 2: have a number in mind. So then it became an
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Speaker 2: idea of like, okay, well, how many different life like
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Speaker 2: branches on the tree of rock and roll do you
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Speaker 2: sort of need to explore for this to be a
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Speaker 2: halfway you know, sort of you know, just like comprehensive
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Speaker 2: history of this genre, which you know started in the
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Speaker 2: forties or the fifties, you know, depending on who you
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Speaker 2: talk to, and continues to this day. So like, how
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Speaker 2: many different sort of roads do you have to travel down?
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Speaker 2: And I, you know, I thought ten was too little,
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Speaker 2: twenty was sort of like becoming too many, fifteen was
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Speaker 2: ultimately you know, you know, just picked for no reason
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Speaker 2: on this the kind of arbitrary, but it just it
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Speaker 2: did cover enough ground, and so then I became like, okay, well, now,
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Speaker 2: now I want there to be like not necessarily the best,
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Speaker 2: although I think these are all fantastic players and I
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Speaker 2: love their playing, But it's not a list of the best.
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Speaker 2: It's more a list of, like, Okay, if we're going
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Speaker 2: to talk about this particularler subgenre or this particular development
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Speaker 2: in rock and roll, who is the sort of like
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Speaker 2: the best stand in for that. Who is the drummer
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Speaker 2: that best exemplifies that particular thing?
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Speaker 1: And so there.
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Speaker 2: Then it became like, Okay, how many of these different
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Speaker 2: steps do I want to go along? And then who's
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Speaker 2: going to be the exemplary player for each of these
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Speaker 2: sort of subgenres?
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and I want to ask you about some of
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Speaker 1: those drummers. But this is the list of fifteen. Sam Lay,
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Speaker 1: Hal Blaine, Al Jackson, Junior Ringo Star, Charlie Watts, Kenny Butchery, Motucker,
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Speaker 1: Clyde Stubblefield, John Bonham, Bernard Pretty Perty, Earl Hudson, Tony Thompson,
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Speaker 1: Dave Lombardo, Dave Grohl, and Questlove.
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Speaker 2: There you go, Yeah, that's the list.
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Speaker 1: The hell of a list. Let's start with Sam Lay.
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Speaker 1: He performed the best blues musicians ever, Muddy Waters, Little Walker,
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Speaker 1: Hollod Wolf, Paul Butterfield, John Lee Hooker, Bo Didley. You're right.
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Speaker 1: Quote Lay wanted to be an athlete, a sprinter like Jesse. Oh,
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Speaker 1: but he loved music and seems to have been born
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Speaker 1: for the drums, even if he never touched a pair
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Speaker 1: of sticks as a kid. Talk about Sam's background, how
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Speaker 1: he ended up becoming a drummer.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a great example of a person who sort
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Speaker 2: of comes comes to the instrument from a sideways perspective,
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Speaker 2: which is, like I say, as you read right there,
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Speaker 2: not a musician growing up, although he was in a
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Speaker 2: church in Birmingham, Alabama, you know, a sort of gospel
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Speaker 2: style Black church, very musical and very percussive, lots of
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Speaker 2: like you know, handclapping and even even a certain like
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Speaker 2: rudimentary drum set in the congregation, so very rhythmically inclined,
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Speaker 2: but did not think of himself in those terms as
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Speaker 2: a maker of music whatsoever. Then he goes, like a
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Speaker 2: lot of black people, millions of Southern Black people as
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Speaker 2: part of the Great Migration, he moves up to Cleveland
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Speaker 2: and then Chicago, and it's in Cleveland and he arrives
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Speaker 2: like right around the time that Alan Freed is a
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Speaker 2: rock and roll DJ, sort of using that term famously.
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Speaker 2: For the first time, Lay wasn't interested in that. He
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Speaker 2: watched jazz music in clubs there, and then he and
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Speaker 2: then he listened to blues music, which was becoming, you know,
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Speaker 2: the sort of urban black music of the time as
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Speaker 2: opposed to it being the sort of the country blues
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Speaker 2: tradition of a generation earlier. So he gets into that
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Speaker 2: and then you know, plays for the first time in Chicago,
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Speaker 2: just because he sort of moved I'm sorry, in Cleveland,
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Speaker 2: because he sort of moved to then moves to Chicago,
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Speaker 2: and that's the epicenter of electric blues, you know, especially
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Speaker 2: at that time Chess Records was up and swinging absolutely,
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Speaker 2: and so yeah, he plays with Little Walter, doesn't record
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Speaker 2: with Little Walter, but then moves on and works and
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Speaker 2: records prodigiously with Howl and Wolf and you know, and
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Speaker 2: then as you say, a sort of list of the
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Speaker 2: greatest ever and then eventually with the you know, even
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Speaker 2: in the sixties for a time with the Paul Butterfield
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Speaker 2: Blues Band, and that's how he ended up with with
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Speaker 2: Bob Dylan. Even so, yeah, it's just a tremendous legacy,
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Speaker 2: and to me, like you know, a guy that you
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Speaker 2: pick that you want to highlight in this history because
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Speaker 2: you know, he really shows this transition, this movement from
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Speaker 2: the blues as a sort of like regional black music
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Speaker 2: into the mainstream into the let's call it co option
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Speaker 2: or whatever you want, you know, like a culturation of
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Speaker 2: it by by younger white people, and then its movement
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Speaker 2: into you know, the ultimate mainstream with something like Bob
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Speaker 2: Dylan and his and his performance at the Newport Folk Festival.
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Speaker 2: So to me, a character like that who moves through
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Speaker 2: so many things and connects so many different kinds of
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Speaker 2: music is really Yeah, that's what I wanted to really
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Speaker 2: highlight in a book like this.
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Speaker 1: There's a common from Quirky Siegel, a harmonica player, talks
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Speaker 1: about Sam playing the full dynamic range all the time.
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Speaker 1: Can you expand on that what made Sam Lay so unique?
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Speaker 2: This is one of those things. I'm grateful that you
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Speaker 2: brought that particular quote up because this is one of
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Speaker 2: those things that we were saying earlier about people who
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Speaker 2: know music but maybe don't know drums. Is that, like
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Speaker 2: you know, I've talked to a lot of people in
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Speaker 2: writing this book, who think of drums and drumming as
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Speaker 2: just sort of like, oh, you're keeping, it's like timekeeping,
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Speaker 2: but dynamics and what we talk about is the sort
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Speaker 2: of like the variations in volume that players have that
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Speaker 2: drummers have are hugely important to drums and also to
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Speaker 2: the sort of historical development of drums. Throughout this book
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Speaker 2: you see examples of different people, different players who introduce
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Speaker 2: like a sort of wider dynamic range in different ways.
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Speaker 2: And Lay was the same way because it wasn't rather
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Speaker 2: than just like a boom clap boom clap, boom clap,
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Speaker 2: you know, sort of blues backbeat like that, he was
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Speaker 2: able to sort of add these little ghost notes of
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Speaker 2: like boom and so like that, that little variation, that
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Speaker 2: little change in there, just gives it a deeper feeling
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Speaker 2: that again, I think a lot of people don't necessarily
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Speaker 2: even pick up on, but musicians, people like Quirky Siegel
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Speaker 2: certainly do and certainly always have.
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Speaker 1: So many people know about the Wrecking Crew, top notch
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Speaker 1: session musicians based in Los Angeles who played on many
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Speaker 1: studio recordings in the sixties and the seventies, including hundreds
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Speaker 1: of top forty hits, and among that crew drummer Hal Blaine.
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Speaker 1: Really interesting to read that the guy who's among the
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Speaker 1: greatest studio musicians ever was primarily a live nightclub drummer
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Speaker 1: into his late twenties. What led him to studio work.
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Speaker 2: What led him to studio work was the creation of
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Speaker 2: rock and roll studio work. You know, like when a
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Speaker 2: guy like Hal Blaine, who I believe was born in
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Speaker 2: nineteen twenty nine, but you know, late twenties, early thirties,
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Speaker 2: so when he makes the decision or a person his
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Speaker 2: age makes the decision they want to become a professional musician,
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Speaker 2: it's the big band era. You know. It's like, that's
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Speaker 2: what being a professional musician is. It's like playing jazz music,
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Speaker 2: ideally playing with a famous singer and supper clubs, which
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Speaker 2: is exactly what Hal did. Suddenly, by the late fifties,
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Speaker 2: you've got this growing you know what people can thought
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Speaker 2: was just going to be a trend towards music for teenagers,
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Speaker 2: pop music, and you even have certain you know, record makers,
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Speaker 2: people like Phil Spector who are creating an entirely sort
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Speaker 2: of new way and approach and sound for this music.
10:54
Speaker 2: And you know, so again it's like what led to
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Speaker 2: that opportunity was souddenly that opportunity existed, and then for him,
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Speaker 2: you know, everyone has lucky breaks. Of course, he met
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Speaker 2: one of the other earliest session musician like rock and
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Speaker 2: roll drummers and men in an incredibly important drummer in
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Speaker 2: this story, although he's not one of these fifteen that
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Speaker 2: get their own chapter, but this gentleman named Earl Palmer
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Speaker 2: who also went His transition was from playing New Orleans
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Speaker 2: rock and roll like little Richard. Then he went to
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Speaker 2: Los Angeles. So by the time the two of them met,
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Speaker 2: suddenly there's this big Los Angeles record making culture that's
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Speaker 2: turning their eye, and it's like, hey, we got to
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Speaker 2: capitalize on all these young people buying records. But none
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Speaker 2: of the old, none of the old jazz playing farts,
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Speaker 2: know how to play this stuff. So guys like Earl
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Speaker 2: Palmer and Hal Blaine knew how to play this new
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Speaker 2: fangled music. And that's why they sort of like built
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Speaker 2: such a grand, such grand careers in it for so long.
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Speaker 1: You read the book quote, How's most famous and influential performance?
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Speaker 1: Whose ticket to immortality was? It beat so simple that
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Speaker 1: its signature element is an unplayed snare and you're referring
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Speaker 1: to the song be My Baby from nineteen sixty three
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Speaker 1: by the row Nets. If you could talk about that
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Speaker 1: opening where he leaves out the first snare and how
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Speaker 1: producer Phil Spector relied on how to propel the drama
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Speaker 1: throughout that track.
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Speaker 2: So this is the famous boom boom boom bop boom
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Speaker 2: boom boom bop. So like there's there's different tellings of
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Speaker 2: like how this happened, whether it was like how made
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Speaker 2: this decision to leave it because because typically a beat
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Speaker 2: like that would be boom bah boom boom bom boom,
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Speaker 2: and that would have a very different, more upbeat kind
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Speaker 2: of and more typical, uh kind of pattern to it.
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Speaker 2: So by leaving out that first snare, it makes that
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Speaker 2: second one just like hit so hard, and it also
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Speaker 2: slows down the tempo of the entire song and creates
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Speaker 2: this sense of like tension even within within the rhythm part.
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Speaker 2: And of course that song is all about building up
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Speaker 2: and releasing tension, so you know, there are different quotes
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Speaker 2: you can find about whether that was Hal's decision or
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Speaker 2: someone told him in the studio to leave that part out,
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Speaker 2: but either way, you know, that's a great example of
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Speaker 2: one of those drum beats that everybody knows. I mean,
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Speaker 2: it's been repurposed dozens, if not hundreds of times in
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Speaker 2: all sorts of contexts, whether by the Beatles or the
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Speaker 2: Jesus and Mary Chain or just like you know, Bruce Springsteen.
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Speaker 2: He's like, it's just like there's so many examples of
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Speaker 2: that beat, it's almost its own sort of like genre
13:43
Speaker 2: of rhythm. Like certain things are like, we have certain
13:46
Speaker 2: certain beats that are just kind of canonical, like a
13:49
Speaker 2: like a Cuban clave beat or a disco four on
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Speaker 2: the four beat four on the floor beat, something like that.
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Speaker 2: And that's absolutely what be my Baby is. It's like
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Speaker 2: it's its own feel unto itself at this point.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, Another project I want to ask you about is
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Speaker 1: his work on the Beach Boys pet sounds. He's using
14:08
Speaker 1: orange juice bottles, a water jug, a mallet. But it's
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Speaker 1: not just his ingenuity. You write about how his ability
14:15
Speaker 1: to read other instruments and adjust on the fly that
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Speaker 1: made him the perfect guy to translate Brian's vision Brian
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Speaker 1: Wilson's vision. Brian wasn't a trained composer, right, so the
14:25
Speaker 1: average musician would have trouble with how he wrote the charts,
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Speaker 1: which wasn't, I guess technically the way they normally would
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Speaker 1: have been written.
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Speaker 2: So again like to talk about how because again people
14:40
Speaker 2: ten years younger than him, maybe even less mate might
14:44
Speaker 2: come up in a different way as drummers and have
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Speaker 2: like a more rock and roll feel. He, as we say,
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Speaker 2: jazz trained, literally went to music school, So this guy
14:53
Speaker 2: knew composition. But there's also a great quote that that's
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Speaker 2: that I did not get out of anybody, but I
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Speaker 2: found it somewhere describing him in the studio and how
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Speaker 2: like the people in the studio would laugh because his
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Speaker 2: drums sounded terrible in the room, and as you might expect,
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Speaker 2: playing orange juice bottles would also sound terrible, you know,
15:18
Speaker 2: or doing all these other sort of almost sound effect
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Speaker 2: kitchy kind of things that he added to tons of tracks.
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Speaker 2: His genius and like the significance of him in the
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Speaker 2: story of rock and roll is that he was one
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Speaker 2: of the first drummers to conceive of their role as
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Speaker 2: like existing inside the studio his and like his job
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Speaker 2: was to play and get it to sound good through microphones.
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Speaker 2: It wasn't to get it to sound good live and
15:44
Speaker 2: like in the room or live in a club, it
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Speaker 2: was to use whatever thing. He just like had a
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Speaker 2: way to understand not only how to translate, you know,
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Speaker 2: he was I should say, he was able to translate
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Speaker 2: both like you know, into the more complex like theoretical
16:02
Speaker 2: compositional side, and was able to bridge that with this
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Speaker 2: just like totally free for all creative studio environment that
16:11
Speaker 2: was only being invented at the time by guys like
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Speaker 2: Specter and Brian Wilson.
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Speaker 1: So he had an idea of what it was going
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Speaker 1: to sound like coming out of the other side.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and he had no and he had no ego
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Speaker 2: about it. He was like, I want to add something
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Speaker 2: to this thing. I think we can get this sound
16:28
Speaker 2: by Dnkin on water bottles or Dnking on orange juice bottles.
16:31
Speaker 2: And like, you know, a person who takes themselves more
16:35
Speaker 2: seriously thinks of their job as being more of an
16:39
Speaker 2: artiste might not make those kinds of connections. But that's
16:43
Speaker 2: a great kind of rock and roll spirit that this
16:46
Speaker 2: guy born in the twenties was really able to embody
16:50
Speaker 2: at the time terrific.
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Speaker 1: And an aside, you know, a phenomenal drummer, but somebody
16:55
Speaker 1: in the book was talking about the guy just had
16:58
Speaker 1: great looks. He had.
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Speaker 2: It was Aura Palmer. Yeah, who just like out of
17:04
Speaker 2: nowhere because there's a he has an autobiography that's sort
17:08
Speaker 2: of like built on uh interviews with him that's called
17:12
Speaker 2: Backbeat actually uh and uh yeah. In that book he
17:16
Speaker 2: just like sort of out of nowhere. It drops this
17:18
Speaker 2: great book that like how Blaine had the prettiest.
17:21
Speaker 1: Eye, prettiest.
17:24
Speaker 2: Look him up, look him up like they he had
17:26
Speaker 2: a he had a smolder. Wasn't wrong, Earl wasn't wrong.
17:33
Speaker 1: The Book Down Rock podcast is part of the Boneless
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17:38
Speaker 1: classic film like I am, go to Boneless dot lovable
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Speaker 1: him right to the Boneless podcasting network. It is what
17:54
Speaker 1: you want to be listen with confidence Ringo by Ringo's
18:00
Speaker 1: influenced many of the greatest drummers, yet doesn't get the
18:03
Speaker 1: notice musically that the other members get in my opinion,
18:07
Speaker 1: because of course we're talking about John Lennon and Paul
18:10
Speaker 1: McCartney and George Harrison. But you bring up a great
18:13
Speaker 1: point in the book. His ability to adapt to the
18:15
Speaker 1: unprecedented and unforeseen musical challenges throughout the Beatles recording career
18:21
Speaker 1: is astonishing and people don't talk about that. I've never
18:24
Speaker 1: heard anybody mention that, But think about that, how he
18:27
Speaker 1: had to keep up with those massive changes and advancements
18:31
Speaker 1: in what those guys were doing with the music. Talk
18:34
Speaker 1: about Ringo, what makes him such a good drummer and
18:38
Speaker 1: what other drummers mean by him having a great feel.
18:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, you mentioned that that thing about him being like
18:46
Speaker 2: the sort of the lesser beetle to everybody and sort
18:49
Speaker 2: of being musically taken for granted and it being this
18:53
Speaker 2: you know, sort of joke for many years. You know
18:58
Speaker 2: that Ringo like wasn't a good dry or something like that.
19:01
Speaker 2: And I do feel like the record has been corrected there.
19:03
Speaker 2: But there is there's this way that people talk about
19:06
Speaker 2: him in terms of what he did not do, in
19:09
Speaker 2: terms of like, oh, he he was so like patient
19:13
Speaker 2: and like didn't mess up rehearsals or recordings. He didn't
19:16
Speaker 2: play very much, or he had this very sort of
19:18
Speaker 2: spare style and I wanted to really showcase like those
19:23
Speaker 2: are true, but like he was a masterfully creative player.
19:29
Speaker 2: And I think the way to understand that is to
19:32
Speaker 2: really look at, like what this guy had to do
19:36
Speaker 2: over the course of eight years early sixties. And it
19:40
Speaker 2: wasn't like they plucked him from obscurity early sixties. He
19:43
Speaker 2: joins the Beatles nineteen sixty two. He's a very well
19:46
Speaker 2: known percussionist and a revered one in Liverpool and in Hamburg,
19:52
Speaker 2: so they knew who he was and like, we're excited
19:55
Speaker 2: to get him in the band. Then they become insanely popular,
20:01
Speaker 2: and suddenly this guy who's used to playing in tiny,
20:04
Speaker 2: little club settings is playing on TV sets and he's
20:08
Speaker 2: playing at these massive concert halls and within you know,
20:12
Speaker 2: before too long, he's playing at Shay Stadium, he's playing
20:18
Speaker 2: he's playing at you know, a Candlestick park, and like,
20:21
Speaker 2: these are not great environments to be a drummer. You
20:25
Speaker 2: can't hear yourself sound equipment was at the same time,
20:28
Speaker 2: so they they break it off, they stop and they
20:31
Speaker 2: focus only on recording, and then so you think about
20:34
Speaker 2: that he has to he starts as this great live
20:39
Speaker 2: rock and roll drummer, completely loses the plot in terms
20:44
Speaker 2: of like what he brings to the band as they
20:46
Speaker 2: blow up, then they retreat to the studio in a
20:49
Speaker 2: way and become super creative, and his role in the
20:52
Speaker 2: group at that point completely changes, completely changes from you know,
20:58
Speaker 2: they hire him in nineteen six to be this like
21:01
Speaker 2: great energy boost and now he's the guy who's sitting
21:05
Speaker 2: still as they work out things in the studio and
21:08
Speaker 2: they record orchestral parts and all these other things. And
21:13
Speaker 2: damned if Ringo didn't play some of the most creative
21:16
Speaker 2: parts during that whole time period. It wasn't like he
21:19
Speaker 2: just sort of like drifted into the background. He played
21:21
Speaker 2: amazing parts in every single Beatles recording, and you can
21:27
Speaker 2: look at like all these different examples of just like
21:31
Speaker 2: wildly creative beat making and approaches to that instrument in
21:37
Speaker 2: a musical way, but also just like in a fascinatingly
21:40
Speaker 2: rhythmic way. So, yeah, that was a hard chapter because
21:45
Speaker 2: it's hard to write anything new about Ringo at this point,
21:48
Speaker 2: or anything new about the Beatles at this point. But yeah,
21:51
Speaker 2: to find it at least try it, I had to
21:53
Speaker 2: just sort of put myself in his shoes and think
21:55
Speaker 2: about what that was like to be on that journey
21:59
Speaker 2: for so long, and yeah, it's more even more incredible
22:02
Speaker 2: than I considered it before.
22:05
Speaker 1: Charlie Watts. So glad he's in this book. I love
22:09
Speaker 1: Charlie Watts. Actually good to love him and his sound
22:12
Speaker 1: more and more as the years went by. So essential
22:15
Speaker 1: to the Rolling Stone sound. You're right quote no one
22:17
Speaker 1: else has a backbeat like Charlie Watts. Explain why Charlie
22:22
Speaker 1: was so unique in that sense.
22:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally unique in the sense of that band, especially
22:29
Speaker 2: as they went on and they entered that sort of
22:31
Speaker 2: like mythic period, you know, Beggars Banquet and let it
22:35
Speaker 2: bleed up through Exile on Main Street. I mean, I'm
22:38
Speaker 2: not alone. That's my favorite of their music. And so
22:42
Speaker 2: like the whole sort of what they achieved in that
22:45
Speaker 2: time was this just sort of amazing looseness where the
22:49
Speaker 2: guitars are kind of snaking between each other and the
22:52
Speaker 2: reverb is forming part of the stew and like you know,
22:57
Speaker 2: they got background singers and Mick Jaggers taking things and
23:00
Speaker 2: it's just like this big and like what Charlie Watts
23:04
Speaker 2: did was like keep that really steady, and not just
23:09
Speaker 2: in a timekeeping way, because he was honestly not a
23:13
Speaker 2: great time. I mean he was like he he sort
23:16
Speaker 2: of shifted and moved the you know that it was
23:19
Speaker 2: a loose band. They shifted and changed the tempo from
23:22
Speaker 2: time to time, but as a sort of calm in
23:25
Speaker 2: the storm and a just sort of like keeping a
23:28
Speaker 2: kind of like jazz influence and just like steadiness in
23:32
Speaker 2: the midst of that. Yeah, just like the equivalent of
23:37
Speaker 2: an of just an absolutely flawless rhythm guitar player, just
23:41
Speaker 2: like never made a song, always made a song better
23:45
Speaker 2: when he when he played on it. Yep.
23:47
Speaker 1: I was fascinated at the part about Charlie snares sound
23:50
Speaker 1: really being a mix of sounds. Can you explain how
23:54
Speaker 1: he came up with that?
23:56
Speaker 2: So again, I love I love to be asked these
23:59
Speaker 2: kinds of questions because these are things that I did
24:01
Speaker 2: want to sort of highlight in the book. Is these
24:03
Speaker 2: sort of like physical aspects of drumming. So the Charlie
24:07
Speaker 2: watts backbead if you think of like a drumstick sort
24:11
Speaker 2: of tapers to a to a sort of bead at
24:14
Speaker 2: the end, And if you think of a drumstick hitting
24:17
Speaker 2: a drum, you would think of like that bead making
24:21
Speaker 2: contact with one area of the drum and then like
24:25
Speaker 2: as it as it hits that drum and you lift
24:28
Speaker 2: off from it, then the air in between those two
24:32
Speaker 2: you know heads, as we say, reverberate and that's what
24:36
Speaker 2: makes a drum a snare. Drum of course is two
24:38
Speaker 2: super tight and it has these like snares on the bottom,
24:41
Speaker 2: so it doesn't reverberate but as much, but it still
24:45
Speaker 2: does reverberate a little. And one way that you can
24:47
Speaker 2: get it to reverberate more is to sort of simultaneously
24:50
Speaker 2: hit the bead on the head as well as the
24:54
Speaker 2: sort of middle part of the stick on the on
24:58
Speaker 2: the metal rim, and that's call rim shot. So you
25:01
Speaker 2: get this sort of like that. It's like a tighter sound,
25:03
Speaker 2: but it also makes the drum vibrate more. So he
25:07
Speaker 2: was great at that, and he was great at like
25:11
Speaker 2: and again talk about those dynamics that we were talking
25:14
Speaker 2: about with sam Leigh, he was the master at like.
25:17
Speaker 2: His backbeat was super steady, but each one would sound
25:21
Speaker 2: different in certain ways because sometimes he'd hit us he
25:24
Speaker 2: sometimes he hit it in a different part of the drums.
25:26
Speaker 2: Sometimes he'd be a rim shot and it just gave
25:29
Speaker 2: it this like as as I say, this depth, this
25:34
Speaker 2: dynamism of the sound in a way that like Ringo,
25:37
Speaker 2: for example, we think of his playing as being very like,
25:40
Speaker 2: very like tight contained, and Charlie's much more reverberative and
25:48
Speaker 2: even in his snare, which is just an amazing thing
25:50
Speaker 2: to achieve. And he's like you can tell him from
25:53
Speaker 2: the moment you hear.
25:54
Speaker 1: So he's utilizing every part of the stick, every part
25:57
Speaker 1: of the kit.
25:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's he's hitting it so that it's not just
26:02
Speaker 2: those it's not just the head of the drum reverberating
26:09
Speaker 2: and the air going back and forth between the top
26:11
Speaker 2: and bottom there. But it's also because you're hitting, you
26:15
Speaker 2: get the click sound of that of that wood hitting
26:18
Speaker 2: metal on the drum hoop, and then you've also got
26:22
Speaker 2: this greater reverberation that you hear because the like the
26:26
Speaker 2: wood of the or the metal in a snar's case
26:30
Speaker 2: is it is reverberating more because you're slamming a bigger,
26:35
Speaker 2: like more of the stick on it. And so again,
26:40
Speaker 2: would you notice this, like, is this the kind of
26:43
Speaker 2: thing that like a normal non obsessive listener is going
26:48
Speaker 2: to necessarily notice. No, not really, But if you're the
26:51
Speaker 2: kind of person. It's the equivalent of like how a
26:54
Speaker 2: guitar player like what effects they use, or just what's
26:58
Speaker 2: sort of like if you have reverb up a little echo.
27:01
Speaker 2: It's just like it's how to get a little bit
27:03
Speaker 2: more voice, a little bit more life into the sound
27:06
Speaker 2: you're making. And yeah, he was, just, like I say,
27:10
Speaker 2: was really one of the one of the masters of
27:12
Speaker 2: that for sure.
27:13
Speaker 1: But now that you point this out, whenever we listen
27:17
Speaker 1: to the Stones, now listen closely. See if you can
27:20
Speaker 1: hear I loved you. I think you mentioned in the
27:22
Speaker 1: book too. The Stones, the shows get bigger and bigger
27:24
Speaker 1: the state, the stage gets bigger and bigger, and it's
27:28
Speaker 1: these huge backdrops of they get throughout right up until
27:32
Speaker 1: the end. Charlie had the same kit.
27:35
Speaker 2: And an old one, the old kids. Yeah, there's the
27:38
Speaker 2: great quote from Gina Shock of the Go Gos, who
27:42
Speaker 2: who I did talk to? And who did say this
27:44
Speaker 2: to me? But she So they opened for the Stones
27:48
Speaker 2: in their nineteen eighty one tour, which was the first
27:51
Speaker 2: rock and roll tour to take place exclusively in athletics stadiums.
27:56
Speaker 2: So this is They filmed it for a concert movie
27:59
Speaker 2: called Let's spend the night together. And so they're they're
28:03
Speaker 2: playing in like Tempe, they're playing in a giant, like
28:08
Speaker 2: seventy thousand person football bowl. And she said the quote
28:13
Speaker 2: was that she was talking to Charlie's roadies and they
28:15
Speaker 2: were laughing at like the oriental rug underneath of his
28:19
Speaker 2: kit was worth more than the drums itself.
28:23
Speaker 1: It's so great and it's terrific, by the way, the
28:27
Speaker 1: best dressed drummer in rock and roll history.
28:30
Speaker 2: It's those those several seats and it's again big time
28:34
Speaker 2: jazz guy like so many people of that era, and
28:37
Speaker 2: he really those were the that was the sort of
28:39
Speaker 2: standard that he set for himself in a lot of
28:41
Speaker 2: different ways, including.
28:44
Speaker 1: John Ling and the author of Backbeats, A History of
28:47
Speaker 1: Rock and Roll In fifteen Drummers, John Bonham Bonzo great
28:51
Speaker 1: quote from Robert Plant including the book to describe Bonzo's
28:53
Speaker 1: steadiness on the bass battle. Jimi Hendrix was blown away
28:58
Speaker 1: by it, and Robert said to me after the show,
29:01
Speaker 1: he's like a rabbit.
29:02
Speaker 2: He's like a rabbit. Yes, if I'm breaking any news
29:06
Speaker 2: in this book, I do believe that that is an
29:08
Speaker 2: original Jimmy Hendrix quote that Robert Plant shared with me
29:13
Speaker 2: when I when I interviewed him.
29:14
Speaker 1: Don't recall ever hearing that before.
29:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was just it was such a fascinating It
29:20
Speaker 2: was a fascinating anecdot because, of course Plant has amazing
29:25
Speaker 2: insightful things to say about Bonzo's playing, But you know,
29:29
Speaker 2: Jimmy Hendrix is like, he's not just a guitar player,
29:33
Speaker 2: like he's the guitar playing genius. And so it's like
29:37
Speaker 2: the idea of a guy with that level of sort
29:41
Speaker 2: of instrumental command watching led Zeppelin early in London and
29:46
Speaker 2: then immediately the first thing he wants to talk about
29:48
Speaker 2: isn't Jimmy Page. He wants to talk about the drummer.
29:51
Speaker 2: I think that really embodies kind of what Bonham brought
29:56
Speaker 2: to that instrument. It was just like he was, you know,
29:59
Speaker 2: kind of a Hendrix's equivalent, you know in many ways.
30:04
Speaker 1: Sure, sure he played ghost notes on the bass drum
30:07
Speaker 1: without sacrificing intensity or energy. For those not familiar, what
30:11
Speaker 1: is a ghost note and what made Bottom so good
30:14
Speaker 1: at that?
30:15
Speaker 2: A ghost note is just sort of the technical term,
30:17
Speaker 2: as we say, for those kind of those sort of
30:20
Speaker 2: half hits in between the main backbeats. So instead of
30:24
Speaker 2: that like boom bop boom bop doing the boom. It's
30:29
Speaker 2: that like that sort of echo. It's just as they say,
30:32
Speaker 2: they call it the ghost because it's just the sort
30:34
Speaker 2: of like tail. So any kind of like as we say, like,
30:37
Speaker 2: that's one of those ways to get that variance and
30:39
Speaker 2: intensity and in uh and in volume really that drummers
30:44
Speaker 2: can use. And so a lot of people can do
30:47
Speaker 2: that on their hands or with one hand, and Bonham
30:50
Speaker 2: was really one of the first people to do that
30:52
Speaker 2: with his bass drum foot And you can hear that
30:55
Speaker 2: right off the top side one track one, you know,
31:00
Speaker 2: on the led Zeppelin self titled album Good Times, Bad Times.
31:05
Speaker 2: You can hear like his entrance when he comes in
31:07
Speaker 2: with the funny little high hat thing, and then he
31:09
Speaker 2: does this like once Plant comes in. He does these
31:12
Speaker 2: great little like triplet almost like kind of movements on
31:16
Speaker 2: the bass drum. And similar to what people how people
31:21
Speaker 2: reacted to Hendrix, that's just one of those like people
31:26
Speaker 2: in the club are going to look at that and
31:27
Speaker 2: just be like, oh my god, who the hell is
31:29
Speaker 2: this guy. That's just like a real, a real pathbreaking,
31:34
Speaker 2: new kind of way to blow people's minds with the
31:38
Speaker 2: drum set in nineteen sixty eight.
31:40
Speaker 1: I remember reading about the song rock and Roll and
31:44
Speaker 1: bottom intentionally messed with a little bit. So anybody that
31:49
Speaker 1: was going to do any cover band that was going
31:51
Speaker 1: to try to do it would have difficulty with it.
31:52
Speaker 1: And that reminds me of the hal Blaine thing with
31:54
Speaker 1: like where's he going with this at the start of
31:57
Speaker 1: the song, right, you're not sure where when he's gonna
32:00
Speaker 1: come in when hit the bass pedal?
32:02
Speaker 2: Totally, Yeah, so hard to It's so hard because I
32:04
Speaker 2: believe what you're referring to is there's the great song
32:09
Speaker 2: rock and Roll starts with a drum intro, and from
32:12
Speaker 2: the way he plays it, you like find yourself going
32:15
Speaker 2: like here comes the entrance of the whole band, and
32:17
Speaker 2: you're always wrong. And I believe that's because he actually
32:20
Speaker 2: starts the fill on beat two of a measure, so
32:24
Speaker 2: it's like it's like an eight beat a two measure phrase,
32:28
Speaker 2: but he starts in the two, so it only it's
32:30
Speaker 2: a seven. It's like a seven beat fill instead of
32:33
Speaker 2: what you would expect to be an eight beat film.
32:36
Speaker 2: Just an example of that. Yeah, And I think he
32:39
Speaker 2: was conscious from the start that like he had the
32:44
Speaker 2: kind of style that people were going to be kind
32:47
Speaker 2: of mesmerized by and not. I don't think he was
32:50
Speaker 2: in any way like worried about people nicking his moves
32:54
Speaker 2: or anything like that, but I can definitely imagine him
32:56
Speaker 2: being like, oh, I'll make it harder in a playful
32:59
Speaker 2: sort of way to to ape my style.
33:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, hey, guys, we'll get back to the show, but
33:05
Speaker 1: first I want to tell you about an exclusive deal
33:07
Speaker 1: for Booked on Rock. Listeners get fifteen percent off any
33:10
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33:18
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33:26
Speaker 1: Go to old Glory dot com make sure to use
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Speaker 1: the promo code. Booked on Rock. Also find a link
33:31
Speaker 1: in this episode show notes, or just go to Booked
33:33
Speaker 1: on Rock dot com and click on my deals. Tony
33:37
Speaker 1: Thompson another legendary session guy who doesn't get the acclaim
33:40
Speaker 1: deserved I don't think. Best known for his work with
33:42
Speaker 1: The Chic and the Power Station On the power Station
33:46
Speaker 1: that album sounds just massive. I mean that's like when
33:49
Speaker 1: the Levy Breaks is Bonzo's famous one for the Monster Beat,
33:53
Speaker 1: but the Power Station is one of those big beat albums.
33:59
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you know, and you know who agreed with you
34:02
Speaker 2: was Robert Plant and Jimmy Page because when Zeppelin reunited
34:09
Speaker 2: at Live Aid in nineteen eighty five, Thompson was the
34:12
Speaker 2: guy they came to to replace John Bonham. And like
34:16
Speaker 2: you would think thirty five year old black guy from
34:21
Speaker 2: I think He's from the Bronx, plays with chic, he
34:23
Speaker 2: plays the incredible drum intro on I'm Coming Out by
34:28
Speaker 2: Diana Ross, so like massive killer drummer, but you wouldn't
34:33
Speaker 2: think replaces John Bonham. This is not this new kind
34:37
Speaker 2: of style, but it's a fascinating thing. And this is
34:39
Speaker 2: what I loved about sort of putting this book together,
34:42
Speaker 2: was sort of highlighting these types of when you look
34:45
Speaker 2: at drums this way and you sort of follow where
34:50
Speaker 2: influences go, you make these connections that you might not otherwise.
34:53
Speaker 2: So like, for example, Tony Thompson, as I say, black
34:57
Speaker 2: kid from the Bronx, born in the sixties, massive Zeppelin fan,
35:02
Speaker 2: he like idolized Bonhom above anybody, but also idolized Ginger
35:08
Speaker 2: Baker and these other incredible players from that time. So
35:11
Speaker 2: this this great big snare drum, you know, and this
35:15
Speaker 2: very classical eighties sound that you associate with something like
35:19
Speaker 2: the power Station, you know. We think of that as
35:22
Speaker 2: being this like, you know, mid eighties sort of synthpop sound,
35:27
Speaker 2: but again came straight from led Zeppelin. Like so many things,
35:30
Speaker 2: you know, you wouldn't you wouldn't. You wouldn't find those
35:34
Speaker 2: connections if you were trying to find them through Jimmy
35:37
Speaker 2: Page or Robert Plant, but through the drums, it comes
35:40
Speaker 2: through loud and clear.
35:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a quote he had you put in
35:44
Speaker 1: the book where he talks about Bonhom's ability to listen
35:46
Speaker 1: and be smart about when it's time to do a
35:48
Speaker 1: drum fill. And that is really important because there could
35:52
Speaker 1: be those gratuitously look at me, Look what I can
35:54
Speaker 1: do drum fills. But to place it just where it
35:58
Speaker 1: needs to be, I would imagine that's not that easy.
36:03
Speaker 1: You have to be you have to have a certain feel.
36:05
Speaker 2: We mentioned that you have to have a real musical
36:10
Speaker 2: sense beyond just a talent at the drums. This is
36:15
Speaker 2: also something that people said about Dave Grohl decades later,
36:19
Speaker 2: you know that that he had this just incredible ability
36:23
Speaker 2: to not just come in and play loud and aggressively
36:27
Speaker 2: and give Nirvana this newfound intensity. He also had this
36:32
Speaker 2: great sense of like not only could he play amazing fils,
36:37
Speaker 2: but he knew where to put them and like knew
36:40
Speaker 2: like how to design a fill. So it wasn't just
36:42
Speaker 2: an improvised thing, but it was a thought through, kind
36:45
Speaker 2: of composed idea. And with him, it's kind of obvious
36:51
Speaker 2: and it's a compliment. You know, he's chapter fourteen in
36:54
Speaker 2: the book. I love him as a drummer, but you
36:57
Speaker 2: can tell, like in Nirvana songs that these are these
37:00
Speaker 2: you can drum along to them like he had their
37:02
Speaker 2: real parts. Bonham was a little bit more loose like that,
37:05
Speaker 2: but he absolutely had the same. I mean, he was
37:08
Speaker 2: so alive to everything else that the other musicians were
37:12
Speaker 2: doing and plant I mean, that was the main thing
37:15
Speaker 2: he talked about. You know, he talked about him being
37:17
Speaker 2: a great, impressive drummer, but he talked about just like
37:19
Speaker 2: as a band, they were just so unbelievably powerful and
37:25
Speaker 2: just like really mind melded in an amazing way.
37:29
Speaker 1: Going back to power Station, you had some comments from
37:32
Speaker 1: John Taylor, who was in the Power Station with Tony Thompson.
37:36
Speaker 1: That was a supergroup by the way, for those who
37:38
Speaker 1: may not now Robert Palmer, Tony Thompson along with Andy
37:41
Speaker 1: and John Taylor from Duran durand now John told you
37:44
Speaker 1: it wasn't a comfortable experience recording with Tony. What what
37:49
Speaker 1: does he mean by that? Did he not get along
37:51
Speaker 1: or was it more of a musical.
37:53
Speaker 2: I think so. So that group came together, and yeah,
37:57
Speaker 2: I spoke to John Taylor, and I have to say
38:00
Speaker 2: I've told this to many people, just like personally, but
38:03
Speaker 2: on the record, John Taylor is one of the greats.
38:05
Speaker 2: Like this guy was really one of the coolest, most
38:08
Speaker 2: insightful musicians I've ever spoken to in his way to
38:12
Speaker 2: talk not only about music, but in his way to
38:15
Speaker 2: talk about musicians and their personalities and so what he
38:19
Speaker 2: was talking about there was that like by the time
38:22
Speaker 2: Duran Duran and Chic met, they were both wildly popular.
38:28
Speaker 2: But she but but Duran Duran was like influenced by Ic,
38:32
Speaker 2: so they like revered those guys, and the Sheep guys
38:36
Speaker 2: sort of respected the new sort of upstop, upstart pop
38:40
Speaker 2: pomp guys. So they met, like when this supergroup started,
38:43
Speaker 2: it was this total excitement about like meeting there. It
38:47
Speaker 2: was kind of playing with a hero was the essential.
38:50
Speaker 2: It was the nature of like playing and especially with
38:53
Speaker 2: John who plays the bass based as a very you know,
38:57
Speaker 2: direct close relationship with the drums. To be playing with
39:00
Speaker 2: Tony Thompson was like this great, incredible moment. And it
39:03
Speaker 2: wasn't anything to do with them not personally getting along.
39:07
Speaker 2: It was more just sort of like when he got
39:10
Speaker 2: close to that power, when he got close to that
39:13
Speaker 2: drumming and he played alongside it, he realized that there
39:17
Speaker 2: was a real sort of like like it's not just
39:21
Speaker 2: that it feels intense, like it is intense. It was
39:24
Speaker 2: almost like it was almost like physically uncomfortable to have
39:27
Speaker 2: this guy just kind of like you know, beaten the
39:30
Speaker 2: music forward against you. And also that he recognized that
39:34
Speaker 2: this came from a really real place that it wasn't
39:36
Speaker 2: like it wasn't like Thompson was a depressed or angry
39:39
Speaker 2: guy at all. But he said about all the guys
39:42
Speaker 2: in chic you know who were black men born in
39:45
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties, like they saw crazy stuff and they
39:50
Speaker 2: overcame crazy stuff, and they came up in the middle
39:53
Speaker 2: of the civil rights movement, and so it wasn't so
39:57
Speaker 2: much that they were like, it wasn't that they disagreed.
40:00
Speaker 2: It was just like fascinating for him to come and
40:04
Speaker 2: see the guys from Chic, this great fun band and
40:09
Speaker 2: realize that they're really not happy go lucky guys. It
40:12
Speaker 2: wasn't like there were bad dudes at all, just not
40:14
Speaker 2: happy go lucky. But his point was that, like that's
40:17
Speaker 2: what makes that music so durable and lasting even now.
40:22
Speaker 1: And that intensity overwhelmed him at times.
40:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, he had this quote about it, it's like it's
40:27
Speaker 2: harder to make something about like it's harder to make fun,
40:33
Speaker 2: happy music than it is to make sad music in
40:36
Speaker 2: the sense that like it's harder to make like lasting
40:39
Speaker 2: happy music. And his point was that like that little
40:43
Speaker 2: just like that in the same way that like a
40:45
Speaker 2: little bit of vinegar in the soup, you know, just
40:47
Speaker 2: sort of adds that little tang, that little it's just
40:50
Speaker 2: like that little bit of intensity, that underlying intensity added
40:55
Speaker 2: something really musically durable to these songs that are just
40:58
Speaker 2: like pure joy. But that's why they still sound fresh
41:01
Speaker 2: almost fifty years later.
41:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well intensity and Slayer. I think those two
41:10
Speaker 1: go together. Dave Lombardo from Slayer, You're right. Quote the
41:14
Speaker 1: thing that defines Slayer's evilness as much as the guitars
41:17
Speaker 1: was a bass drum technique beyond any herd and rock
41:19
Speaker 1: to that point. Okay, so let's talk about double bass drumming.
41:23
Speaker 1: What does that mean? And then what makes Lombardo so
41:25
Speaker 1: good at that?
41:26
Speaker 2: So your typical bass drum, or your typical drum set
41:29
Speaker 2: rather has one bass drum, which is the one on
41:32
Speaker 2: the floor operated with a pedal, typically with your right foot,
41:38
Speaker 2: and occasionally even pre rock and roll, in certain jazz
41:43
Speaker 2: bands Duke Ellington's band and others, you would have two
41:47
Speaker 2: bass drums, and that would usually be used like you know,
41:51
Speaker 2: it's a flashy thing. It's a thing for drummers to
41:54
Speaker 2: use it as like a kind of timekeeping in a
41:57
Speaker 2: solo or to bring up a you know, a big
41:59
Speaker 2: kind of crowd pleaser, showmanship kind of deal. Great drummers
42:03
Speaker 2: who did that in jazz. In metal, of course, it
42:08
Speaker 2: can be used, like so many things, just to sort of,
42:11
Speaker 2: as you say, like dial up that intensity, and metal drummers,
42:15
Speaker 2: like you know, really grabbed on and starting in like
42:18
Speaker 2: the seventies and leading into the eighties, really grabbed onto
42:21
Speaker 2: this idea, including you know, guys like Phil Taylor in
42:25
Speaker 2: Motorhead and so Slayer, guys from San Francisco. They formed
42:31
Speaker 2: their band in about nineteen eighty two, and like so
42:36
Speaker 2: many metal bands, their whole thing is just like we're
42:39
Speaker 2: out to crush the world. We're gonna be the fastest, loudest, heaviest,
42:42
Speaker 2: every most evil blah blah blah, and so like the
42:44
Speaker 2: double bass thing just sort of becomes this natural thing
42:47
Speaker 2: that Lombard is doing it. He starts playing in Slayer
42:50
Speaker 2: when he's like sixteen, He's so young, and just quickly
42:54
Speaker 2: becomes like an absolute prodigy on this double bass technique
43:00
Speaker 2: and also uses it not just to dial up intensity,
43:03
Speaker 2: but as this band grows, means like a true real musician,
43:08
Speaker 2: not just like a meathead basher. And so you know
43:12
Speaker 2: you can hear even through the thudding and the volume
43:15
Speaker 2: and everything, a great deal of control that he has,
43:19
Speaker 2: and he's not always just playing loud, really musical stuff.
43:24
Speaker 2: And he's a person I didn't have any knowledge of.
43:26
Speaker 2: I mean, I'll be perfectly honest, like I'm not by
43:29
Speaker 2: nature a metal guy, and this was one of those
43:32
Speaker 2: genres where like, Okay, if I'm going to write a
43:35
Speaker 2: history of rock and roll, it has to include certain things.
43:39
Speaker 2: So I really had to learn about the blues, for example,
43:41
Speaker 2: in a different way than I had before. And then
43:44
Speaker 2: I had to figure out how to talk about metal
43:47
Speaker 2: as a subgenre. And so again that's another one like
43:51
Speaker 2: if I've been talking about if I've been talking about
43:54
Speaker 2: a subgenre, you might have gone to Black Sabbath to
43:56
Speaker 2: talk about like the most epical epocal metal band. But
44:02
Speaker 2: if you're talking about drums, suddenly a group like Slayer
44:05
Speaker 2: becomes a really fascinating sort of window to look at
44:07
Speaker 2: that genre because that drummer, that particular player is just
44:11
Speaker 2: so unique and frankly just impressive to me. I just
44:17
Speaker 2: love the way this man plays. He's just absolutely amazing.
44:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, And in the way that Bill Ward was influenced
44:24
Speaker 1: by jazz, you've got Lombardo influenced by Latin music. And
44:29
Speaker 1: then now there's the example being Angel of Death. Right.
44:33
Speaker 2: This is another reason why you know I wanted to
44:36
Speaker 2: include him was that you know, he brings another element
44:41
Speaker 2: to talk to, which is the sort of Latin influence
44:44
Speaker 2: on rock and roll. Surprised me as much as anybody
44:47
Speaker 2: that Slayer would be the way to talk about that.
44:50
Speaker 2: But yeah, Slayer, or rather Lombardo was born in Cuba,
44:54
Speaker 2: came to America as a very young kid, what was
44:57
Speaker 2: raised by immigrants in a Cuban American community, and so
45:02
Speaker 2: heard a lot of Latin music live and on the
45:06
Speaker 2: stereo when he was growing up. And uh, there was
45:10
Speaker 2: this great anecdote again not one, but just one that
45:12
Speaker 2: I found in a previous interview he had done where
45:15
Speaker 2: he talked about this very famous like if you asked
45:19
Speaker 2: a metal drummer, what is the most famous metal drumming
45:24
Speaker 2: phil of all time? They would probably say this drum
45:28
Speaker 2: this double bass break that he does on the Slayer
45:31
Speaker 2: song Angel of Death from their album Rain and Blood.
45:34
Speaker 2: So he does this great double bassed timekeeping and then
45:39
Speaker 2: he plays this like tom pattern over it to kick
45:42
Speaker 2: the band back in. And he said that when he
45:45
Speaker 2: when he recorded this and then listened back to it,
45:48
Speaker 2: and at this point he's in his early twenties, that
45:51
Speaker 2: was when he first realized, like, oh, this is that
45:54
Speaker 2: I just pulled a move right out of Tito Puente,
45:59
Speaker 2: who is like, you know, they call him l Ray.
46:01
Speaker 2: He's the king of Latin music. Anyone who he's the
46:06
Speaker 2: first stop if you say, I want what's what's Latin music?
46:09
Speaker 2: What can I get into? He's just he's an unbelievable
46:12
Speaker 2: figure and so yeah, so Lombardo of all people and
46:16
Speaker 2: who he himself has been incredibly influential to metal drummers
46:21
Speaker 2: ever since. You know, even he subconsciously was bringing this
46:25
Speaker 2: great you know, almost obvious to him Latin influence to
46:30
Speaker 2: his playing, and you can really tell it, I think
46:33
Speaker 2: in the in the subtlety of what he plays. He's
46:36
Speaker 2: not the kind of guy who's got his hands up
46:38
Speaker 2: as high as he can get them so he can
46:40
Speaker 2: smack as hard as he can. You know, he's not
46:43
Speaker 2: straining when he plays. He has a great sort of control, uh,
46:48
Speaker 2: and just a wonderful musical guy to watch. He's like
46:52
Speaker 2: an athlete that has to sort of master his approach.
47:00
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, thanks so much for checking out the booked
47:02
Speaker 1: on Rock podcast. If you've just found the podcast, welcome.
47:05
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47:08
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47:10
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47:14
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47:19
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47:33
Speaker 1: at Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back
47:37
Speaker 1: to the show. We did talk about Dave Ryel a
47:41
Speaker 1: little bit, but I wanted to ask you a little
47:43
Speaker 1: bit more about him because it's interesting to find out that, hey,
47:47
Speaker 1: maybe maybe he would have been part of Tom Betty's band,
47:50
Speaker 1: right because there was that SNL appearance.
47:53
Speaker 2: He was given the opportunity to.
47:57
Speaker 1: How did he end up behind the kit that night? Know.
48:00
Speaker 2: Tom Petty's album Wildflowers came out, I guess a little
48:06
Speaker 2: bit after the suicide of Kurt Kobain in nineteen ninety four,
48:13
Speaker 2: and there was a really great outpouring of support towards
48:16
Speaker 2: Grole and Chris nova Selk in the aftermath of that,
48:19
Speaker 2: because I you know, Nirvana was so revered by people,
48:24
Speaker 2: and so one of those examples was that Petty, who
48:27
Speaker 2: had just parted ways with his original Heartbreakers drummer Stan Lynch.
48:33
Speaker 2: Stan Lynch great player, great player, great feel on those
48:38
Speaker 2: Petty singles. Absolutely, But anyway, so they had they had
48:43
Speaker 2: he had recently left the band, and so they didn't
48:45
Speaker 2: officially have a drummer. And so they had a Saturday
48:47
Speaker 2: Night live appearance and Tom Petty invite Scroll to come
48:50
Speaker 2: in and just sit in on the drums for the
48:53
Speaker 2: two songs they play, and as you can imagine, Dave
48:56
Speaker 2: role playing Tom Petty is like the loudest that the
48:59
Speaker 2: Tom Petty and the heart Breakers have ever sounded, like yeah,
49:03
Speaker 2: oh my god. Yeah, but Campbell is literally like laughing
49:07
Speaker 2: as they play, and I mean, role's great. He's really,
49:11
Speaker 2: needless to say, he's a super funky drummer. And so
49:14
Speaker 2: after that performance, I don't know exactly the timetable or
49:19
Speaker 2: but yeah, Petty did say like, if you want to
49:21
Speaker 2: be the Heartbreakers drummer, come aboard, and yeah, amazingly Grohl
49:29
Speaker 2: said no. And I say amazingly because he was like,
49:33
Speaker 2: I mean, he writes about this in his memoir. He
49:35
Speaker 2: was like incredibly honored by it, needless to say, but
49:39
Speaker 2: you know, just pretty fascinating that he obviously because that
49:42
Speaker 2: was the start of the Foo Fighters from there. So
49:44
Speaker 2: it was really kind of amazing that he turned down
49:48
Speaker 2: this unbelievable opportunity. He'd been nearly homeless like a few
49:53
Speaker 2: years earlier, and now he's a chance to join Tom
49:55
Speaker 2: Petty and the Heartbreakers, and instead he has the wherewithal,
49:59
Speaker 2: but also the desire to kind of step back, gather
50:02
Speaker 2: and regather himself after the tragedy and start this whole
50:06
Speaker 2: new chapter which is still ongoing thirty years later.
50:10
Speaker 1: I wonder how much of an effect the fact that
50:13
Speaker 1: he is a drummer, how much that influences his songwriting,
50:18
Speaker 1: because I've heard I've heard, like, for example, Eddie van Halen,
50:22
Speaker 1: I think we talked about how he was trained to
50:24
Speaker 1: play on the piano, so he played the guitar kind
50:27
Speaker 1: of like a piano player.
50:29
Speaker 2: Sure, so you now thinking.
50:30
Speaker 1: Like a drummer, you're kind of writing music from that standpoint, maybe, I.
50:34
Speaker 2: Think if we were to compare the two, and it's
50:37
Speaker 2: a fair comparison, I don't remember, but like the sort
50:43
Speaker 2: of songwriter drummer component and guitar player component for Grohle
50:49
Speaker 2: has always been like a little bit more intertwined than
50:55
Speaker 2: his career makes it seem like in public he was
50:58
Speaker 2: a drummer in the most famous rock band in the
51:01
Speaker 2: world and then suddenly made this pivot to guitar playing
51:04
Speaker 2: and singing and songwriting. And the truth is that, like
51:08
Speaker 2: he was, he recorded like one man band albums when
51:12
Speaker 2: he was a kid, like we do it, yeah, like
51:15
Speaker 2: a literal child, And so he always had this kind
51:19
Speaker 2: of songwriter's you know, compositional sense, even when he was
51:24
Speaker 2: a drummer. I don't think he was ever at that
51:27
Speaker 2: time thinking he would like make his living as a songwriter.
51:31
Speaker 2: I think drumming was always the thing he was most
51:33
Speaker 2: talented at, and that was certainly like the break that
51:36
Speaker 2: he got was playing with a with a DC punk
51:39
Speaker 2: band called Scream. But so yeah, I think he was
51:43
Speaker 2: always drummer first. But it wasn't like Kurt Cobain died
51:48
Speaker 2: and he was like, I better pick up a guitar.
51:51
Speaker 2: They shared songwriting notes a lot like role had you know,
51:56
Speaker 2: input in the composition of Nirvana songs and brought his
52:02
Speaker 2: own songs to Kurt Cobain for songwriters advice.
52:06
Speaker 1: Like wasn't there one song that ended up on a
52:08
Speaker 1: deluxe edition.
52:09
Speaker 2: Not you believe. Yeah, you're right. I forget the name
52:13
Speaker 2: of it, but I think there is one song that
52:15
Speaker 2: was officially released, uh, that was written and I think
52:19
Speaker 2: sung by Grohl as a as a Nirvana song, But
52:22
Speaker 2: it was like it was known, like he recorded stuff
52:25
Speaker 2: during that time. Uh. I mean, I don't think he
52:29
Speaker 2: was like sitting on a on a on a warehouse
52:31
Speaker 2: of unused songs. It wasn't like the first Foo Fighters
52:35
Speaker 2: song was like his all Things Must Pass or something
52:37
Speaker 2: like that. I think it was that that was a
52:39
Speaker 2: new sort of project in response to something, but always
52:43
Speaker 2: a highly musical, compositionally minded person from the from the
52:48
Speaker 2: get go, for sure.
52:49
Speaker 1: So to finish up, I'm curious, do you have a
52:52
Speaker 1: favorite drummer or top three drummers?
52:55
Speaker 2: Oh? Boy, so impossible to say. But you know, one
53:00
Speaker 2: of the people we did not mention here because you know,
53:04
Speaker 2: it's you know, even in a great long interview like this,
53:06
Speaker 2: you can't talk about everybody. But I was really proud
53:10
Speaker 2: and excited to include Motucker from the Velvet Underground in
53:15
Speaker 2: this book. I think her legacy is not as well
53:21
Speaker 2: understood as it could be, and I liked the idea
53:24
Speaker 2: of positioning her among figures like Charlie Wattson, Ringo Starr
53:30
Speaker 2: and other people who are a little bit better known,
53:34
Speaker 2: because I think she really deserves to be known, like
53:36
Speaker 2: for her innovations. In terms of again talk about just
53:39
Speaker 2: sheer creativity behind. You know, she could be the loudest,
53:45
Speaker 2: she could be the quietest, she could just anything that
53:49
Speaker 2: served that band, and I think she's so influential for that,
53:55
Speaker 2: you know, in terms of people that really don't get
53:59
Speaker 2: mentioned book, you know, I would bring up a guy
54:02
Speaker 2: named greg Sonnier from the indie rock band Deer Hoof,
54:08
Speaker 2: who've been going since the late nineties. I just think
54:10
Speaker 2: he's a phenomenal, phenomenal player and just like so much fun,
54:15
Speaker 2: so creative and so interesting. And now I'm thinking like
54:20
Speaker 2: there's a billion names flashing through. Oh sure, because you
54:23
Speaker 2: asked for three, of course, But I'm just trying to
54:25
Speaker 2: think of like I.
54:26
Speaker 1: Think about it in terms of if it's a well
54:28
Speaker 1: I listened to the song, even if the song itself
54:31
Speaker 1: isn't great, but I'll just listen for the drummer, and
54:33
Speaker 1: what comes to mind? Who comes to mind? Stuart Copland, Huh,
54:37
Speaker 1: he was a big one. Yeah, just to listen to
54:40
Speaker 1: him play. I can listen to his isolated tracks.
54:42
Speaker 2: Totally, totally, and he had great you know, soundtrack work
54:46
Speaker 2: and other thing. I'm not as big a fan of
54:49
Speaker 2: of him as a lot of people are, just and
54:51
Speaker 2: it's not like it's just personal preference, but like he
54:55
Speaker 2: and Ginger Baker were absolutely the two people that the
55:00
Speaker 2: most folks asked me about, like is this guy going
55:03
Speaker 2: to be in the book? So like, yeah, Neil Pier.
55:07
Speaker 2: It's interesting to see, like which of these players has
55:09
Speaker 2: actually like registered in the popular consciousness, you know, among
55:14
Speaker 2: that you know, I when I was a kid, I
55:17
Speaker 2: loved Keith Moon a lot. Oh, of course he was amazing.
55:21
Speaker 2: So I'll also say, uh, you know, I get into
55:24
Speaker 2: him in the introduction of the book. But you know,
55:26
Speaker 2: the guy who actually did end up replacing Stan Lynch
55:30
Speaker 2: long term in The Heartbreakers was a wonderful British drummer,
55:35
Speaker 2: black guy, uh, Steve Ferroni. And he's a guy that,
55:41
Speaker 2: like not a household name, but boy he's played with
55:44
Speaker 2: absolutely everybody. And a guy like Questlove, who's of course
55:49
Speaker 2: like an amazing drummer, but just like a music nerd extraordinaire.
55:54
Speaker 2: I believe Questlove has a snare drum that he refers
55:59
Speaker 2: to as his Steve Ferroni's stare because he has it
56:02
Speaker 2: like perfectly set up to like have the same backbeat.
56:06
Speaker 2: So like that's who Steve Ferroni is. He's the kind
56:10
Speaker 2: of player that, like other drummers just like listen and
56:13
Speaker 2: like just get.
56:15
Speaker 1: Super tight, super tight. And I mean Tom Petty when
56:19
Speaker 1: he I think the first song I think he may
56:21
Speaker 1: have played on Steve Roni was you don't know how
56:24
Speaker 1: it feels or one of the at least that was
56:26
Speaker 1: the moment where Petty's like, this is my guy. And
56:29
Speaker 1: it's real interesting to talk about how a change in
56:33
Speaker 1: drummer can change the sound of an artist. The songs
56:38
Speaker 1: that Tom Petty wrote with Ferroni the different from what
56:41
Speaker 1: we heard you know, pre Ferroni. And you know that's
56:46
Speaker 1: the impact that a drummer can make.
56:49
Speaker 2: He's a great example too of a guy who you know,
56:53
Speaker 2: because of course he played the class. I mean, say
56:55
Speaker 2: what you will about Ferroni. I don't think he played
56:58
Speaker 2: on like the most popular He didn't play on the
57:01
Speaker 2: classic Tom Petty and the heartbreaker songs. I guess he
57:03
Speaker 2: played on Wallflowers, which people love, but for many decades,
57:07
Speaker 2: you got to hear him play those songs and it's like, yeah,
57:11
Speaker 2: I give all respect to Stan Lynch, who I thought
57:14
Speaker 2: put an incredible flavor on those early petty tracks. And
57:20
Speaker 2: now you get to hear a guy like Ferroni who
57:22
Speaker 2: just is so different, and you can really feel the
57:25
Speaker 2: difference in the way that band sounds with just that
57:28
Speaker 2: slight that one replacement just makes all the difference, Like
57:32
Speaker 2: you say.
57:34
Speaker 1: Find the Bookdown Rock website at bookdown rock dot com.
57:38
Speaker 1: There you can find all the back episodes of the show,
57:40
Speaker 1: the latest episode in video and audio, links to all
57:43
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57:45
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57:54
Speaker 1: Find your local independent bookstore, find out all the latest
57:57
Speaker 1: hot rock book releases, and before you go, check out
58:00
Speaker 1: the Booked on Rock online store. Pick up some booked
58:02
Speaker 1: on Rock merch. It's all at booked on Rock dot com. Well,
58:07
Speaker 1: this was fun to talk about all the great drummers.
58:10
Speaker 1: John I really was looking forward to this. I love
58:13
Speaker 1: the book that beats a History of rock and Roll
58:15
Speaker 1: in fifteen drummers. It's out now you can find it.
58:18
Speaker 1: Hriver books are sold. Look for at your nearest bookstore.
58:21
Speaker 1: Go to booked on rock dot com to find your
58:23
Speaker 1: nearest independent bookstore for one there and where can people
58:27
Speaker 1: find you online?
58:29
Speaker 2: Probably the best place is just to go to my
58:31
Speaker 2: website John Lingen dot com j O H N L
58:35
Speaker 2: I N G A n H. And yeah, that's got
58:39
Speaker 2: this is this is my third book, so you can
58:41
Speaker 2: learn about the older ones too there about music as well.
58:44
Speaker 2: All my articles and stuff are there, so yeah, that's
58:47
Speaker 2: the place to go. But this was this was a
58:49
Speaker 2: blast man, great talk, really fun to talk to go
58:52
Speaker 2: through all this stuff. O. S.
58:53
Speaker 1: Dan. Yeah, John, thanks again and we'll hopefully have you
58:55
Speaker 1: on again online.
58:57
Speaker 2: Can't wait. Thank you, Eric. That's it. It's in the box.
59:09
Speaker 1: H