SKF NOTE: Here’s one of my favorite photos of drummer Shadow Wilson. The original is from the liner note insert of The Complete Joe Newman RCA Victor Reccordings (1955-1956): The Basie Days CD. Joe Newman’s two-CD set includes music from four LPs. Shadow Wilson is on Newman’s two Octet dates, which is where this photo was taken. The photo is used in the CD insert courtesy of French jazz pianist and record company executive Henri Renaud.
From the opening track, Corner Pocket, Shadow Wilson plays so well on this date. As is often true of the few Shadow Wilson photos I see, the drummer is recording with a bare bones drumset: bass drum, ride cymbal, snare drum, hi-hat. That’s all Shadow needs to create model swing drumming. Phew!
In a moment you’ll read an excerpt from the CD liner notes the back story to this session, including that this date was recorded using one microphone.
I wish this music was online for you to listen to. As of this morning I am unable to find it, but perhaps a reader will find the music and let us know.
Excerpt from Don Waterhouse’s liner notes: [Joe Newman] was booked into New York’s Webster Hall to record for the giant RCA-Victor. He took with him an octet built around a nucleus of fellow Basie-ites (Ernie Wilkins, Freddie Green and Shadow Wilson) and completed by a team of seasoned exponents of the swinging Kansas City style — a formula he would retain for most of his subsequent recording dates. The arrangements here are mainly by hornmen Ernie Wilkins and Al Cohn, but Manny Albam also lends an appreciable helping-hand.
The session was beautifully captured by sound-engineer Dick Gardner using a single microphone, no mean feat by today’s multi-tracking standards. The musicians were seated around this lone mike, and drawn into the foreground for their solos simply by standing up! An after hours affair, the gig took place between midnight and ten o’clock the next morning. As fairly usual in America, it was broken down into three three-hour stretches, with a half-hour break between each.
This can prove an amazingly efficient way of operating, with a fine balance between concentrated spells of hard work and well-earned rest, and it somehow avoids the constraining pressures of time. The atmosphere certainly proves wonderfully relaxed, and the music strikingly imaginative.
SKF NOTE: Writers of Modern Drummer’s 10th Anniversary Issue all agreed our interviews, in MD founder/publisher Ron Spagnardi’s words, “would be to assess the current state of the art by looking back at how it was arrived at, and then looking ahead to predict where it might be going. As always, the answers had to come from the drummers themselves. [T]he obvious drummers to contract were those whom the readers of the magazine had honored in the MD Readers Poll: the four living Hall of Fame members, and six other drummers who were voted to the top of their categories in the most recent poll.”
Today, my written introduction to Neil Peart’s 1986 interview brings back two new points worth mentioning. Yes, ours was a telephone interview, and I scrambled at the last minute to make it happen. Normally I would have made sure I had either a working electrical outlet, or fresh batteries, for my cassette recorder. Cleaning and demagnetizing the tape heads were routine. Finding a quiet, comfortable place to sit, where I could take notes, or refer to my written ideas/questions was key. That was all good in Northport, Maine the day of this interview.
What I had not planned on — because I had never experienced it before — was desk phones (land lines) not working with my Radio Shack suction cup mic. Fortunately, I was in a home with two phones, so I improvised. I placed one phone’s earpiece near my cassette recorder’s built-in mic and recorded our interview that way. Using the other phone in the other room, Neil and I had our conversation.
East Vassalboro, ME Grange
The busboy I wrote about in 1986 who said Neil Peart was among his favorite poets? Well, I’m still having encounters like that. Here’s one encounter I wrote about in an April 7, 2014 letter:
Two weekends ago I’m at a contra dance in the East Vassalboro, ME Grange. Putting on my coat to leave after the dance I ask a 20something lady if she is a dancer. No, she says. I then ask if she’s a musician. She tells me she’s just started singing.
Well, yours truly asks, “What kind of music do you sing?” And then I ask about, perhaps, favorite songwriters.
“Do you know the band Rush?” she asks. “Yes,” I say. “Well, their drummer doesn’t sing, but he writes lyrics to their songs. And I think he’s very, very good.”
To which Neil replied in an April 7, 2014 email:
As Count Basie said after hearing a playback of “Francis A. & Edward K.” (still an all-time masterpiece),
“Always glad to hear about that kind of carryin’ on!”
[SKF NOTE: 6/17/17 – Neil Peart’s full interview is now available on MD‘s Archive Page.]
Derek Hess and I met at that concert. I liked the Rossington Collins Band songs — the band was tight and swinging. And Derek played loose, musical, creative. Assuming from what I was hearing and seeing onstage, Derek was a schooled drummer, his answer surprised me: “If you laid [a drum method book] out in front of me, a basic rudiment pattern, or a school book, I’d have no idea what was going on. I swear. I could not do it,” Derek said.
“I guess, to categorize, my playing would be, in some instances — [drum] fill-wise — melodic. There’s music going on besides pounding. That’s what I’ve been told, and I guess that kind of makes sense, because I had a lot of music training,” he said. In his full interview, Derek details his music experience with piano, alto sax, listening to all kinds of music, from Glenn Miller, to Joan Baez, to Jeff Beck. In brief, Derek Hess had a great ear, which showed in his drumming.
Our second interview took place by phone, January 8, 1982, andModern Drummerran Derek’s feature interview in May 1982. Here’s a snippet from the transcript on Derek’s drum and cymbal setup at the September 5, 1981 Rossington Collins concert — which you can now hear for yourself!
And thank you, Eclipse Recording Studio in St. Augustine, Fl for the updated studio photo here of Derek Hess.
Scott K Fish: You’re endorsing Slingerland now, right?
DH: Just the hi-hats. The rest of them are Zildjian Brilliants. I’ve got one Ride and four Crash. My ride cymbal’s a 21″ Medium weight. They’re real pingy sounding. They don’t swell up and sit there and roar while you’re doing a ride. I like a lot of close-to-the-bell playing, anyway. So it’s really pingy — like a San Francisco trolley car.
The Crashes are 15″, 16″, and two 17″. The little [Crash is] over the hi-hat, one [is] over the floor tom, and the other two in the midst. I like that explosive, realy quick bash that quiets right down. That’s what smaller cymbals are good for.
I’ve got a 15″ pair of Sound-Edge hi-hats, and I’m probably going to have to use something else. They’ve got too top-endy for me. I like a fatter sounding hi-hat.
SKF: What do you look for when you’re choosing your cymbals?
DH: I think the only time you’re going to hear any contrast between cymbals is in the studio, because live, it ain’t going to make much difference. Under all that volume and miking, you might hear a little pitch difference, but a cymbal’s a cymbal when you’re running live, and there’s no way I could be convinced otherwise. That is, outside of a Pang cymbal or something special.
I just mainly go for small sizes, and have maybe a two-step difference in pitch, and that’s about it. Nothing fancy. I don’t try to hear notes in them because it’s important. But, maybe in rock-and-roll [distinct cymbal sounds] can be captured how you want it [by the recording engineer] at the [mixing board] knob.
Derek Hess at Eclipse Recording Studio, St. Augustine, FL
SKF: Why are you playing Slingerland drums?
DH: That’s a combination of two things. I started out, and we were going to do a deal with Ludwig. And then, because the band was new — and Ludwig is a pretty together company. I like their drums for the most part. I guess, in the beginning I preferred having their [Ludwig’s] stuff. But they damn horsed around, wish-washed back-and-forth about whether they were going to do an endorsement deal or not.
They turned me on one time, then turned it down. I had to go out with a borrowed set of drums, about the first three months the band was touring.
DH: No. They’re a wood finish, and they’re, like, six years old. I still like a real impressive stage look. I just like a mean looking stage. If it’s too empty or barren, it takes away. I know I’ll probably get a loot of objections to that, because bands like Journey, and Heart, are going for a cleaner stage look. Heart has the best looking empty stage there is.
Our assistant engineer on the first album knew some guys at Slingerland. And he helped, I think, Dennis St. John….
And I sold drums at the music store for eight years, and I always thought Slingerland’s toms sounded good. Real resonant, and easy to tune. I think they were ready to jump on a half endorsement deal.
See, my Gretsch drums fall short of making an impressive appearance. I pretty much made these Slingerland drums like I wanted them. The company was real cooperative. There’s nothing to look at on them other than the color. There’s nothing that really looks any different from any one of [Slingerland’s] catalogs.
I’ve got a longer kick drum. The power toms are longer. I’ve got a 16×24 kick drum which sounds great. The toms are all equal in depth. My 12″ and 13″ are both 10 inches long. The 14″ and 15″ [toms] are 12 inches long.
The floor toms are standard siz, and the cutaway toms are catalog items — except I got them in chrome.
People ask, “God! What are those?” They’re just a lot of drums that look sassy. My only dissatisfaction is that I’m having some hardware problems, mainly with the tom stands and cymbal stands where they clamp down. They’re too hard to work. SKF: You were using Aquarian cymbal springs, weren’t you?
DH: Yeah.
SKF: What do you like about the cymbal springs?
DH: They just have enough rock about them. They don’t sustain the cymbal so much, where it bangs up against those little washers. They look sturdy, and they move right. When you hit them [cymbals], they come back, and get in place quick enough so that you can get at [the cymbal] again.
The whole concept of [Aquarian cymbal springs] is real clever. I just like them. They way the cymbal gets protected.
SKF NOTE: This is the fourth and final installment of the complete transcript of my 1983 interview with Dave Weckl for Modern Drummer. MD published a much shorter version of this interview in April 1984 as an Up and Coming profile of Dave Weckl, which still holds up well. Here’s the back story.
I am surprised to learn, while posting this final interview installment, that this interview took place after seeing Dave Weckl perform with Simon and Garfunkel at Giants Stadium. At one point here I ask Dave about his solo at Giants Stadium on Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover.
This interview closes with Dave and I discussing “characteristics of successful people.” Around 1976 I wanted to learn more about business, and how business works. I began reading popular books about successful businessmen, which led me to Napoleon Hill and his 17 Success Principles.
I used Hill’s Success Principles as topics for questions in several Modern Drummer interviews, and I still have a book manuscript I wrote on that subject. The photo here showing the Success Principles is of the photocopy I had hanging on my office wall at MD.
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Scott K Fish: Did Gary [Chester] teach you about the music business too?
Dave Weckl: Oh yeah. Any question I ever had about the business, he would always answer it for me, and try to direct me in a way that was good for me, based on knowledge he’s acquired from mistakes he’s made. There were things [Gary] told me he’d do over again if he had the chance.
One of the aspects we covered was money management, and what to do with your money as you make money. I was never into spending it foolishly. I don’t have to worry about having a drug habit, because I’ve never done any of that stuff. I don’t have to worry about spending 50 grand a year on cocaine, even if I had [the money].
Gary Chester (Photo by Rick Mattingly)
Cocaine seems to be the new thing nowadays with musicians coming up. It always seemed ridiculous to me that the big deal was, “Wow. He cleaned up his act. He’s not taking drugs anymore.” It never made sense to me, any way. I never had any desire to do any of that. And the thing that’s happening now is that a lot of musicians coming up now are not into drugs at all. I’ve met so many people who are just real straight ahead. They’re into making music.
I really want to stress that for younger players coming up. You definitely don’t need that. And you don’t have to worry about the social scene end of it, too, and whether you’re going to fit in.
That’s one thing that always kind of bothered me: Am I going to be able to hang out with everybody? I doesn’t work that way. You’re there to do your job. That’s always the way I thought it was, and that it should be. You’re there to play. You’re there to make music, and you’re there to do it to the best of your ability. And you’re respected for that.
You can still be a normal person, and hang out, and have a good time without getting wasted off your gourd so that you can’t get up the next morning.
All of a sudden, right now, I’m getting drum endorsements, cymbal endorsements. My parents were always behind me to help if I needed the help. I was real against that. I wanted to do it on my own. If I had $1,000 dollars in the bank, I was cool. I could keep that where it was, and still pay the bills.
But now, all of a sudden, I don’t have to pay for any equipment. I’m making more money than I made in the last two years with this [Simon and Garfunkel] tour. And I have no desires to go out and buy drugs.
SKF: Do you feel pressure on this tour?
DW: Not at all. It’s what I want to do. I’ve wanted to play with people of this caliber for a long time. Now that I’m getting the opportunity, and I’m learning so much from doing this, I’m not going to run out and try to buy everything that I want.
SKF: How far ahead do you usually think?
DW: I usually don’t think that far ahead. This business is unpredictable. Who knows what’s going on in anybody’s future in the business?
But, generally it’s been said that you last 10 to 15 years in the business. It’s just a cycle. Somebody’s always coming up. So, I just want to start it right.
That’s where Gary’s advice starts coming in. He told me that when he first started hitting it, and making it, that he went crazy and spent it all.
I just get such a natural high from doing what I want to do, and playing with these people. So, I don’t know where the self-destructiveness comes from in so many musicians. But, I’ve never really known guys like that. I’ve always associated myself with, or been associated with, non-self-destructive people. That’s real important. You’ve just got to make up your mind what’s right for you. I’ve never been the type of person who has to do what somebody else is doing, or be influenced by that.
SKF: What do you like to do when you’re not playing music?
DW: Sleep. I have hobbies, too. I’ve always loved cars. I always said that if I don’t make it in this business I’m going to be a race car driver. I’ve got a picture of a Porsche 944 on my bedroom wall. My dream Porsche would probably be black.
I’m into sports, too, and I love to work out. I think that’s important, too. Not to be a weightlifting contender or anything, but just to stay in shape. I don’t run. I don’t like to run. I work out on the Nautilus and then some weightlifting things.
There’s this aerobic bicycle program that I like to do. But, I don’t like to run because I’ve had a bad knee from an old football injury. I’ve re-injured it a couple of times by running too quickly. Like, up stairs. So I’ve kind of taken it easy on the legs.
I also enjoy spending time with friends.
SKF: Do you read?
DW: Not heavily. If there’s something I want to learn about something — I will. I was really into learning about recording studios for a while, and the frequency response of different drums, and learning about different drum heads. I’m really into sound.
I carry my own sound system when I play in town because I’m so into the drums sounding good. I use Shure 57 mics, and my own little sound system — which is compact, but it works great. Now that I’m using the Simmons drums I’m going to need it any way.
DW: I don’t use Evans heads. They’re clear Remo Emperor’s.
SKF: Do you place any importance of the spiritual side of your life?
DW: None, other than having someone there to really be able to talk to who know you real well. I have a real special lady that does that. That’s important to me.
I’ve never really gotten into the per se spiritual end of it. In talking to Sammy Figueroa, and Michel [Camilo], that’s a very heavy thing in Brazilian drumming. That’s a big part of the whole thing. Some of the beats are actually calling to the spirits to make sure everything is cool.
I want to learn about it just to see what it is. But, it’s not something I think about a whole lot. And if I do, it’s not consciously.
You’ve always got to have the faith. What that faith is, I’m not sure. That’s one subject I was always kind of weird about. Who knows? I never knew what that was supposed to be, or what you’re supposed to believe in. I just figured… to do the right thing.
SKF: Can you give me a rundown on your current drumset?
DW: I just became connected with Yamaha before the tour, which I’m very happy with. As of right now, my toms are 8×8, 8×10, 10×14, and 12×15. The 10×14 is on my left side near the hi-hat. A lot of my setup was based on Gary [Chester’s] teaching, because he teaches a lot of left hand floor tom things.
At the moment, I’m using a 22-inch bass drum, and a 7-inch snare drum — which is wood.
I’m using 3 different crashes, and they are all Sabian cymbals. They’re dynamite cymbals. Two of my crashes are the AA model: 15-inch and 17-inch. I’ve got an 18-inch HH ride, and a 16-inch crash with a rivet in it. That’s for this band because Paul [Simon] tends to like that sustain.
I’ve got a regular set of hi-hats on my left, and a set of heavier rock hi-hats on my right. It’s basically set up on a boom stand with a little device that I had a friend of mine engineer to screw on top of a cymbal stand. This is kind of neat because it’s on a boom, and I can angle it whichever way I want.
So, it’s a closed hi-hat stand over the right hand floor toms — which I think is going to be standard equipment in the future. It just doesn’t make any sense to me to play with your hands crossing over. It’s like putting yourself in a straight jacket. If you’re playing with your right hand over your left [hand], you’re constantly, like, putting yourself in handcuffs. It limits the stroke of the backbeat.
For some things I still use that: a cross-stick thing, and if it’s real light, and I have to use a lot of little hi-hat things.
But for just loud playing with a backbeat and a hi-hat ride, this way [not playing with hands crossed over each other] your left hand is free to do whatever it wants. You have the left hi-hat free to do whatever you want with it with your foot or your left hand. It opens up a lot of things.
I really think one day it will be a customary standard setup.
SKF: Jack DeJohnette was the first drummer I ever saw use two hi-hats. That was back in the ‘60s when he was with Charles Lloyd. [SKF NOTE: What I said here about Jack DeJohnette’s use of two hi-hats is based on a Charles Lloyd album photo, either In Europe or Love-In, neither of which I have now. So I’m still looking for verification on DeJohnette’s hi-hats with Charles Lloyd.]
DW: No kidding?
SKF: Given the opportunity to interview your favorite drummers, what would you ask them?
DW: I like to talk to different players about how they approach time and feel.
SKF: Is that something that can be discussed? How do you [Dave Weckl] approach time?
DW: That’s a good question. Come to think of it, I guess that’s something I wouldn’t ask. But it’s always on my mind. When I hear someone playing good, I wonder what’s going through their mind when they think about time.
It depends on what style of music I’m playing. It has to be natural, to a point, but there are instances where it comes across different than you are feeling it at the time. [That is], to the listener as compared to the way you’re feeling it. A lot of times it’ll sound great to you, but when you listen back it’s got too much of an edge on it, or it’s laying a little bit too far behind, and it just doesn’t sit right.
It takes a lot of listening to yourself to know what you have to do to make it sit right.
SKF: If you had a student who had a tendency to rush or drag the time — could you help him correct that?
DW: Well, I’d try to find out what was making that happen, if there was a technical reason. Most of the time it all leads back to coordination problems. It’s because they’re trying to do other things, and the main ingredient of time doesn’t keep happening. What they’re trying to do in-between that messes up the continuity. It doesn’t keep the flow going.
I do have a few students now. But that’s something that I don’t want to do yet on a constant basis. After seeing Gary [Chester] teach, I realize that it’s a professional thing. It’s a whole other league. I just try to go through whatever teachers have taught me so far. I use the things they’ve taught that have helped me, and whatever I’ve done that can help somebody.
SKF: Have you ever gone through studies that, in hindsight, you feel were a waste of [your] time?
DW: No. You can probably capitalize on anything somebody tells you. I’ve always had good teachers — or I’ve made it good. I’ve always tried to see what they have to say, and then take the best from it. Most of the time it has all been very helpful.
Most young kids have pretty decent technique these days, and most everybody’s playing matched grip. I play both ways, because I grew up playing the traditional way, and I practiced that way for years. Certain things feel better and, for me, the time seems to lay better if I play certain things the conventional way. But, I play matched grip probably just as much.
About 5 or 6 years ago I started practicing to develop my matched grip techniuqe to the same level as my traditional technique.
SKF: What’s the finger control you’ve been mentioning? How did you develop it?
DW: That came from Jim Peterczak, and I think Roy Burns uses pretty much the same method. Basically, it’s a two finger technique. It only gets up to a certain speed, because I never sat down and wanted to develop a one-handed roll.
I use that two finger technique during single-stroke rolls, or if different patterns call for it on the snare drum, or for a left hand thing on the hi-hat if I’m playing conventional grip. I probably don’t use it as much as I did when I was first learning it.
After a while, technique becomes something that you’ve been through, and worked on, and then that’s what you use. Then you just apply what you already know, and your mind’s thinking music. It’s not thinking chops and technique.
SKF: How much knowledge do you have of melody and harmony?
DW: When I was going to Bridgeport University I studied that, and I studied mallets when I was in St. Louis, too. Not extensively. I have a set of vibes. I like to read chord changes, and play them over things, playing jazz tunes.
I never got into the serious or classical music end of it. I never really spent the time to learn tunes. But, I know enough about chord structure to be able to play chords. I can’t do it real fast. But, on drums, I played a lot of jazz standards when I was younger. I’ve probably played most of the ones that everybody’s played at one time or another.
SKF: Do you know the lyrics to a lot of tunes?
DW: That’s one thing I never got into until just now, especially with Paul’s tunes. It’s real neat to sit back and listen to the lyrics.
SKF: Do you find that knowing the lyrics affects how you support that tune?
DW: the words affect textures and sensitivity. But moreso, it depends on how the words lay rhythmically with the song. That sometimes helps the feel, or in finding a tempo, in the first place. You have to be able to feel what the music is saying even without words. That’s sensitivity, and that’s very important. I’ve always put a lot of weight on that, being very sensitive to what’s going on around you, almost before it happens.
SKF: Have you studied brushes or worked much with brushes?
DW: Not as much as I would have liked to. I do a lot of that now. Ed Soph has some real neat brush techniques. And Buddy Rich plays the shit out of brushes, and so does Steve Gadd.
SKF: How do you feel about yourself as a drum soloist? At the [Simon and Garfunkel] Giants Stadium concert you took a 4 chorus solo on Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover.
DW: That’s really an open-ended solo. Solo playing all depends on context. In Fifty Ways there’s a phrase that sets up what’s going on. I’m always thinking of a counter-phrase underneath it, that I just play phrases over the top of, and just try to build in a form.
You’ve got to remember that you’re playing for 40- or 50-thousand people, and they don’t want to hear how fast you can play single stroke rolls. They want to feel what’s going on. They have to hear a pulse going throughout the solo.
When I’m playing in a club with French Toast, for instance, I’m a lot freer to stretch out and play more complicated phrasings.
SKF: That opening drum figure to Fifty Ways is a 2-bar phrase. Are you likely to stretch over the bar lines when you’re soloing on that song?
DW: Eventually. At first I try to stick to 2-bar phrases. And it can’t be too long because we go back into the opening 2-bar phrase — or drum riff — at the end of my solo.
SKF: Are you thinking melodically during that solo?
DW: My drums are tuned so that I’m always thinking of a melodic structure of some sort. But in that song, it’s not like you’re playing over the form of a tune where you’re thinking of the song melody, and playing something else that makes sense melodically. It’s more phrasings, playing rhythms along with tonalities.
SKF: If you were soloing in a 32-bar tune with the standard AABA form, would you be following the song form and melody line?
DW: Oh yeah. Of course. I don’t like to play solos where everybody stops, and looks at me and says, “Okay. It’s your turn.”
You can play phrases and licks, and that’s cool. Everybody likes to see that. When you think about it, drummers spend half their time comping for soloists. Then, when it comes time for the drummers to solo, nobody wants to play. Everybody stands there, and looks at you, and expects you to create the comp while you’re playing too.
I like to get complimented when I’m soloing because it gives me some space to let the solo happen. I like to play a duet solo with the percussionist. It’s fun to play with either piano, bass, or guitar keeping a steady thing going. That allows another musician to keep the time, so that the audience can hear what’s going, and [also] let’s you stretch out a little bit.
If you stretch out on your own [with no other musician complimenting you], you’ll know where you are, but if you take it too far out, people aren’t going to understand what’s going on.
In French Toast, we’ve gotten into doing percussion duets with me and Sammy. It’s a lot of fun because we just play all these phrasings which are really hip. Then we stretch them out, and come back in. But it’s more of a groove that way. It’s neat to create the space, and change the tension, rather than just playing by yourself. Because [in just playing by yourself] space is okay, but there’s nothing else to carry it on after that.
SKF: I’m going to name some characteristics of successful people. You let me know how, and if, they apply to you and/or anyone else wanting to become a successful musician. The first characteristic is Definiteness of Purpose.
DW: That leads back to what I was saying about knowing what you want to do, and then you’ve got to go out and get it. And, not making any adjustments towards what you want to do as far as changing your mind, and saying, “Well, I think that’s what I want to go after.”
You’ve got to know. That’s got to be in you that you want to do it, and nothing’s going to stop you.
SKF: The next one is Going the Extra Mile.
DW: You do that every time you get onstage, or every time you sit down behind your instrument. You can apply that in a lot of different ways. You can apply it to practicing, in your mental attitude.
You’ve got to go the extra mile in meeting people, and making sure that you’re doing the right thing attitude-wise. And every time you’re onstage you’ve got to either give it more than you’re physically capable of, by trying to really make it happen.
SKF: Accurate Thinking, meaning that once you’ve decided on where you want to go, that you [also] know what’s involved, and you’re not just guessing at it. And you’re seeking the advice of knowledgable people, rather than the advice of people who really don’t know.
DW: You could look at that in two ways. From the business sense, and from a playing sense.
From a playing sense, I’ve more or less taken what I’ve heard on record album, and have done what I’ve thought I had to do to progress, and get where I want to be.
In a business sense, that’s where advice comes in from somebody who really knows what’s happening. I don’t trust this business as far as I could throw it. I don’t believe things until I’m sitting there in the middle of it.
Of course, you always have to have the faith that it will happen. But, as far as putting too much weight on something, and relying on it? Never.
That’s not to say that I’m going to give up on it, or that I don’t care about pursuing it. My dad always said, “Don’t build something up so much that you get so excited about it, and put so much weight on it, that if it doesn’t happen it really throws you for a loop.”
I always try to play everything down and say, “If it happens, great.” Of course, I always have that underpinning of excitement that something will happen.
I didn’t tell anybody about the Simon and Garfunkel tour until I was called the second time.
SKF: Self Discipline.
DW: When I was teaching, [self discipline] seemed to be a problem with a few. If you really want to do it, you don’t really need a teacher after a while. You do for some things, but you know what you have to do. I mean, I’ll be learning from Gary [Chester] for a long time. All you have to do is listen to yourself on tape and, basically that will tell you what you need to do.
Al Caldwell
SKF: The next principle is called The Master Mind, which simply means that you have a group of two or more associates who are empathetic with what you’ve set out to do with your life.
DW: My roommate, Al Caldwell, is a phenomenal bass player. He had a lot to do with me actually going out and making some connections. He came to visit me in February and, we stayed up for hours and hours talking about the business. What you have to do to get in.
He was really the reason that I started going and hanging out more than I normally did. Conversing with each other and creating that third sense of, “Well, why don’t we go and do this?” He was like a battery charger for me. He’s moved up here now from St. Louis, and we’re trying to do the same thing all over again for him — because he’s something else.
SKF: Personal Initiative.
DW: Sometimes that’s hard to do because it’s hard to go and sell yourself. It’s hard to go and say, “I’m good. I can do this.” I’m not the type of person who can do that, and most people aren’t. That’s where your talent has to speak for itself, and it has to be out in a position where it can speak for itself.
But you do have to have the initiative to go out and try to make contacts. You’re selling yourself every time you talk to someone.
SKF: Enthusiasm.
DW: You’ve always got to have it. It’s very easy to get depressed, or bummed out sometimes when nothing’s happening. But, I’ve always said that you can do anything you really want to do, if you really put your mind to it. If you stop talking about it, and just do it.
There’s a lot of people who say, “Yeah, man. Tomorrow I’m going to practice 10 hours.” It might be too late by then. You’ve got to have the enthusiasm, and the confidence that it will happen. It’s just a matter of time. And don’t waste any of the time that you have. You have to be enthusiastic about your own progression, even when nothing’s happening.
SKF: Controlled Attention.
DW: I’d put that in the same category as self discipline, because you have to be able to focus, and control what you’re going after. And then have the discipline to keep doing it.
SKF: Teamwork.
DW: Obviously, that’s the most important thing in a band situation. In a football team, the objective is to play together to win the game. And to do the right thing for everybody involved, so that you can make the whole thing come off.
The team in a band is everybody doing what they’re supposed to do, not to make themselves shine so much, but to make the whole thing come out right.
Steve Gadd was the first one I heard say, in his first interview in Modern Drummer, that you have to play for the music. And a lot of time you’re not an important part. Sometimes you’re not even there, and it sounds better without you. You’ve got to play what’s needed.
SKF: Learning from Defeat.
DW: Figure out what happened. Being confident of the situation before you get there can sometimes prevent that. Everybody always says that you can learn from your mistakes, or somebody else’s mistakes. You can learn from someone else’s defeats by making sure that it doesn’t happen to you — whether it be in a playing situation or a business situation.
SKF: Creative Vision.
DW: Again, you can take that so many ways. Creative vision of the music, of what you want to do in the business, of what you want to be. I constantly apply creative vision to my career and life.
SKF: The last characteristic is simple: The Golden Rule.
DW: It gets back to acting toward other people the way you’d want them to act toward you. It’s basically common sense.
SKF: They should call it uncommon sense because so few people have it.
DW: That’s true.
SKF: Any closing comments?
DW: Yeah. For any parents that might be reading this article: If you have a kid who’s talented, and wants to pursue the [music] business, or even if he wants nothing to do with the business — support is the number one thing.
Without the support and help of my parents…. Not many parents that I know would let their only kid, at age 19, leave home to travel 1,000 miles away to be a drummer. Every once in a while, when I was younger, my mom would sort of suggest that I go out and get a job. When other kids were out working, I wasn’t making any money, and [I was] staying home practicing.
My dad would say, “Leave him alone. Let him practice.” Pretty soon my mom started catching on to that too. I’d drive them nuts. It got to the point where my dad couldn’t go to sleep unless I was banging on the drums. And I always tried to do the right thing. I didn’t take advantage of the situation and abuse them.
SKF: What about the kid that wants to begin playing drums in his late teens or early ‘20s? Is it too late?
Gary Hobbs
DW: One other drummer who helped me a lot was Gary Hobbs. He was the drummer in Stan Kenton’s band when I started going to the clinics. He told me he started playing when he was 18. He had a lot of catching up to do, and he’d practice eight to ten hours a day after he got out of school. So, I guess it can be done. It just takes a lot of dedication.
SKF: How did you do in high school?
DW: I never put any weight into high school at all. I took the easiest courses I could so that I could get out quick. I started playing drums six nights a week when I was 16 or 17. The only thing I was really interested in was the band.
I never went to the guidance counselor’s office for advice, because I made up my mind when I was 12 what I wanted to do. And I never had any lack of confidence about going this way because of the support of my parents.
They always had the courage to let me do what I wanted to do.
SKF NOTE: This is the third installment of the complete transcript of my 1983 interview with Dave Weckl for Modern Drummer. MD published a much shorter version of this interview in April 1984 as an Up and Coming profile of Dave Weckl, which still holds up well. Here’s the back story.
SKF: You wouldn’t do that?
DW: I don’t know. Who can say what you should and shouldn’t do? People are people, and you have to find out what they are, first. I like to do that anyway. A lot of people in the business have very strange attitudes sometimes. I got a lot of feedback from people one time saying, “Well, this guy plays great” — talking about certain people in the business or younger guys coming up — they’d say, “He plays great, but his attitude is terrible.”
And that’s so important. You’ve got to have the right attitude. You’ve got to have enough sense to know how to act around people in the business, and around your audience, mainly. Around people that you’re playing for. Because if you don’t have that much — then you don’t have anything.
SKF: Was there a time you can look back on when you were a jerk?
DW: No, not really. But there was a time in my real young days when my dad always used to say, “You’d better work on your attitude.” I don’t remember what it was about my attitude that he was referring to. But I remember working on it.
I’ve always been an impatient person. Everything’s got to happen yesterday. And if it didn’t, it put me in the most disgusting mood, just because I was frustrated at myself for not having done something already. And things weren’t going as fast as I wanted them to.
Once I got away from home, I think, and was able to look at myself, and see what was actually going on, I could work on those things and say, “Hey, just because something’s bugging you, don’t be such a jerk to let it effect everybody else around you.”
That’s hard to do. For some people more than others, I guess. You want to treat people like you want to be treated.
Peter Erskine
SKF: We can trace your initial phone calls to Peter Erskine, to the time you met him and gave him the drum head, to the time he offered you the gig with French Toast — where you met Anthony Jackson — to Anthony Jackson recommending you for the Simon and Garfunkel tour.
So in a very real sense, the way you first handled yourself on the phone with Peter led to the Simon and Garfunkel opportunity.
DW: That’s what I’m saying. I was trying to handle those phone calls as getting to know Peter as a person. The only reason for [my] calling was because I loved the way he played.
It’s like seeing a girl. You see this fantastic looking chick and you say, “Wow. That’s great.” Then it gets to the point where you want to know who they are. The outward appearance of something isn’t always what it’s about.
I’ve heard so many people say, “This guy could’ve had so much going for him, but his attitude screwed him up.”
SKF: Were there other drummers who auditioned for the Simon and Garfunkel gig?
DW: Not that I know of. Anthony Jackson was basically responsible for that. That’s the one thing of getting people to respect you for what you are. You can’t act like something you’re not. Basically, try to form yourself to be something that people will respect and like. You’ve got to work at that. You’ve got to look at yourself from the outside in.
The more people you have on your side, obviously, the further you’re going to get, and the better you’re going to be. This business works on recommendation.
SKF: Do you think your attitude is as important, or more important, than your technical ability?
DW: It works hand-in-hand. And at times, attitude can outweigh your talent. And I’ve seen attitude work against somebody who’s an outstanding player. They’re great, but for some reason they’re not working. And you ask, why? And the answer is often times, “Ah, he’s got a strange attitude.” That’s really it.
Once you get to know these people, and they know you as a person, and they can see that you’re not a jerk, that you’re the responsible type, then, of course, your ability has to be able to back you up. That’s when all the years of woodshedding come into play: When you’re thrown into the situation of, “Okay, this guy trusts me. He’s going to recommend me and put his reputation on the line.” That’s when you have to be able to back up what everybody’s talking about.
SKF: What was [your] Simon and Garfunkel audition like?
DW: Well, Anthony recommended me to Paul Simon. I was working downtown with Barry Finnerty. Paul actually came down to check it out. The office had called me a couple of weeks before and said that they were looking for a drummer, and there were a couple of people they were interested in. They didn’t mention who.
They said they wanted to check me out, and asked if I was playing anywhere. So I expected somebody to show up, but I didn’t expect Paul to show up.
It was funny, because I didn’t say anything to him. I didn’t go up to him. He was there for a purpose. He was there to see if I could play or not. He was there to see if he liked my style.
I figured if he liked me, and wanted me to work for him, then I’d get to know him then. I just didn’t know what to say to him.
SKF: How did you feel when you saw him walk into the club?
DW: I felt good that he had showed up. I thought that was really nice. I didn’t want to scare him away, or play a lot of shit, because that ain’t what his thing is about. My main concentration was just playing musically for the music. We were playing some funk stuff. And a little bit fusion oriented — but, not really. It was a good thing for me to be playing with, and it was a good band. I was mainly concentrating on groove, feel, and time, and sensitivity.
SKF: And Paul never said anything to you that night?
DW: No. We never exchanged one word. I felt weird about it, but I was just in that position where I didn’t have anything to say.
I figured, if he liked what he heard, and wanted me to work for him, then I’d hear from him.
I think it was a week or a week-and-a-half before I heard anything. I was walking around in nervous anticipation, trying to figure out what was happening. I was talking to Anthony in the meantime, and he didn’t even know if he was going on the tour yet.
But, about a week-and-a-half later the office called and said they wanted to use me for the tour.
That was the audition.
A lot of times the rehearsal for the gig is the audition. For a lot of rock groups, you’ll sit in at an audition and play for the group. When you get up into playing with studio musicians for a gig somewhere, or you get one cat who wants to play, and they’re just getting a bunch of musicians together — which, most of the time is studio musicians — it’s all recommendations. Nobody would recommend somebody that they’re going to put their reputation on the line for, and chance messing themselves up.
SKF: [Is there a formula for] the transition from qualified, obscure musician to getting the big break?
DW: Well, don’t have any bad feelings about your playing at all. You’ve got to be confident that you can handle just about any situation. That means, before you even attempt to try to make the scene, you’ve got to have your act together, and you’ve got to be real confident about it.
The number one thing to do is try to get in front of people that are playing all the time. Hang out at clubs. Get to know them. Make phone calls. Call them up. Have your act together and get recognized.
That’s not easy to do sometimes because, unfortunately, it costs money to go and hang out. Most kids coming up today don’t have the opportunity to go and spend $15.00 a night to go and hang out every night.
SKF: But [that’s] necessary if you’re serious about making it?
DW: That’s where it becomes a thing of making sacrifices elsewhere.
I started making sacrifices when I was real young, in practicing. When all of my friends were out goofing around, and yelling and screaming outside, I was inside beating and practicing. The sacrificing started then.
As far as your money goes, you’ve got to realize what you want to spend it on, and what’s important to you. You’ve got to have a balance. You’ve got to have a good time, too, and things that will make you happy too.
It all depends on what you want, and how bad you really want it. If you want to do it bad enough, then nobody really has to say anything to you.
SKF: Is it necessary to be either on the East or West coasts to make it in the music business?
DW: We just came back from the first leg of the tour. I was in Minneapolis and I saw a band there that was real good. The drummer was smoking. He was playing left-hand, right-handed. The time was good, and he was playing good.
There are players in St. Louis who are unbelievable.
It’s just a matter of: How bad do you want it? Do you want to take the risk of going out on your own and trying to make something? It really depends on what you want to do. If you want to make it as a musician, and that’s where your heart lies, and you don’t want to do anything else, then you’ve got to go after it.
And nobody really has to tell you that.
I think anybody that does really make it, they probably really thought about it at first, and it was probably a pretty scary move if they had to go from the middle of nowhere to either coast. But that’s just what you’ve got to do. It seems to be either the East or West if you want to really make the scene.
There is a lot of good music all over the place. It’s just a matter of how far you want to take it.
SKF: Did you ever regret moving to New York?
DW: I’ve never regretted one move yet. I wouldn’t have done anything over yet. A few things didn’t happen as fast as I wanted them to. I was very impatient. I wanted to hit early. I thought about Peter Erskine playing with Stan Kenton when he was 17.
But the more I listened to myself on tape, that calmed me down real soon. I just said, “Look. Cool out and get it together first. There’s plenty of time. Don’t be in such a big rush.”
You go out and try to do something, and get thrown into a situation that you can’t handle. The only way to get better is to get kicked in the butt. Playing with more mature and better players than you. That’s a very important thing relating to how quickly you advance.
But you’ve got to make sure that you don’t go in totally uncomfortable in a situation. You’ve got to be comfortable with that type of playing with yourself. Even if you’re not up to the level of maturity of the rest of the players.
SKF: You were 4 years old when Simon and Garfunkel released Sounds of Silence.
DW: I remember swinging around a lamp post with some friends, singing, Feeling Groovy.
DW: On the last album alone there’s Steve Gadd, Steve Ferrone, Jeff Porcaro, and John Robinson too, I believe. I didn’t even know who was playing on Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover until a couple of years after I started getting into Gadd, and finding out what else he played on.
SKF: How much leeway did you have to create your own parts for the songs?
DW: Basically, a lot. The rhythm section, under Paul and Art’s supervision, would give us suggestions. But during the first two weeks of rehearsal, Paul was really the only one there, because Artie was doing studio work.
We were taking all the older tunes and revamping a lot of them by putting different grooves in. Paul always wants to do something different if it fits, and if it works. He’s really a great musician. He’s a lot of fun to work for.
But the rhythm section would come up with our own grooves for different stuff. We had chord charts, but I just basically took the tapes and listened to see what was going on. I listened to the Central Park concert album, and tapes of a tour they’d done in Australia with Carlos Vega on drums.
SKF: Did you find any of the music challenging?
DW: All of it. I’d never played in a situation like that. The style of music was actually different for me. Some of it, anyway. It was all a challenge just because I wanted to play it right — even though some of it is very simple. Sometimes I’m just playing 16th notes on the snare drum with either sticks or brushes, and playing quarter notes with both feet. It doesn’t call for a lot, musically, but the sensitivity still has to be there. The feel has to be there, and the time still has to be there.
SKF: When you were practicing the songs did anything challenge you technically?
DW: No. I had to work out something new on Allergies. There’s two drummers playing the track on the album. Steve Gadd was playing the beat under Simmons drum fills by Steve Ferrone. There were two parts going on and I had to take the main ingredients of both and come up with a groove.
That was challenging because I ended up playing a left hand hi-hat part and Simmons fills with the right hand — while keeping the groove happening underneath. It was all the stuff that I’d learned from Gary Chester. If I have to do something left handed now it’s no longer a big deal. Because I went through a couple of retarded stages with [Gary Chester].
I’m still studying with Gary off-and-on now. But I plan on studying with him full-time again when I get off this tour. I’ve been studying with him about seven months.
SKF: How had you changed from your first lesson with Gary compared to the way you were playing seven months later?
DW: My concentration level had changed. It had gone up considerably just towards concentrating on what I was actually playing. I was actually hearing what I was playing instead of letting a little ghost note go in here or there.
Every time I walked in to a lesson I felt [like a novice]. [Gary] would come up with a different system every week. I’d go home and practice it and get it down so it was cooking.
I’d come back the next week and [Gary] would tell me to do something else with it that I hadn’t practiced — and make me feel [like a novice] all over again.
It was great though. His lessons are such a challenge.
At first I had no idea what Gary’s teaching was like. My friend, John, said, “You should go talk to Gary, man.” Because I was getting impatient. This was even before I’d gotten the gig with French Toast. I was spending a lot of time practicing, and I knew what I could do if just given the opportunity.
John said, “You should talk to Gary. He’s got so many connections. He could help yo out and get you into the studio.”
I said that I didn’t want to just approach [Gary] and say, “Hey, could you turn me on to some studio work? I can play.” I was just interested in taking a couple of lessons to see what he was all about.
Gary said, “Well, what I’m going to teach you I can’t really do in a couple of lessons. Either come study with me on a steady basis or it doesn’t happen.”
Gary Chester
So I agreed. I wanted to find out what was going on. I went up there with the attitude that if I could do whatever he wants me to do, then after a few lessons I want to talk to him about some studio work. And if I can learn something from [Gary] — great.
I walked in there, man, and after I was done I felt like I was starting over. On my first lesson! I was embarrassed to death. Any idea of me even talking to him about wanting to do anything just went right out the window after the first ten minutes.
He was laying this stuff on me that had to do with hand and eye coordination.
For instance, one of [Gary’s] systems is keeping a consistent bass drum pattern, keeping a consistent hi-hat pattern, and then there is a snare drum line to read in-between. And on top of that, you sing the quarter note, you sing what you’re doing with the bass drum after that. Then you sing what you’re doing with the snare drum. You do this left-handed and right-handed.
Then he comes up with all these other ways to play the bass [drum] line. It gets nuts. And that’s only one of the things [Gary] does.
The coordination thing is unbelievable because you actually have five coordination things going on when you’re singing something against it. That helped me out with my time so much. Not that I had terrible time before that. But it just made me concentrate on it that much more. I could actually feel and sing the quarter note to myself — or sing the eighth note, or whatever — to help me really concentrate on what was going on.
If you’re able to do that and play against it, it’s unbelievable how much it helps lock it in so much more.
SKF: So [Gary Chester’s] is a very valid teaching system.
DW: Oh yeah. It enables you to take a line — something you hear in the music — and what you’re striving for from all this is to be able to play it any way.
Say, for instance, that a producer comes up to you and says, “I’d like you to play this type of thing.” The idea is to be able to say, “Okay,” and do it. Not to then sit down and work it our for an hour while you’re trying to figure out what to play.
A lot of people get hung up on reading. They say, “I just can’t read that well.” And a lot of times they can read rhythms fine. A lot of it is having the coordination to fit those rhythms in along with the beat, and try to make it all groove, and try to make the music happen.
You have hot to be able to see that whole thing and be able to see the beat as you’re playing.
Excerpt from Don Waterhouse’s liner notes: [Joe Newman] was booked into New York’s Webster Hall to record for the giant RCA-Victor. He took with him an octet built around a nucleus of fellow Basie-ites (Ernie Wilkins, Freddie Green and Shadow Wilson) and completed by a team of seasoned exponents of the swinging Kansas City style — a formula he would retain for most of his subsequent recording dates. The arrangements here are mainly by hornmen Ernie Wilkins and Al Cohn, but Manny Albam also lends an appreciable helping-hand.
Scott K Fish 
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