SKF NOTE: Joe English was tough to interview. Here’s what I wrote as part of the feature interview introduction in the June 1986 Modern Drummer:

Joe English agreed to to this interview in 1980. Then he disappeared. In 1983, I got approximately three-fourths of this interview on tape, when Joe disappeared for another three years. I nicknamed him the Howard Hughes of Drumming. I had no positive proof that Joe was a bad guy. He never returned my phone calls or answered my letters, but I have two grandmothers who are guilty of the same thing, and they’re not bad people. The last quarter of this interview was, finally, taped at the tail end of 1985, and I submitted it to MD in March 1986.

This excerpt is from my September 7, 1983 phone interview with Joe English.