The drummers of David Bowie
By Chris Burke (Rhythm) The great sticksmen who’ve kept the beat behind Bowie
David Bowie certainly knows how to pick a great band, and his drummers are no exception. From Woody Woodmansey, currently back with the Spiders From Mars band, via Dennis Davis and beyond, we round up some of Bowie’s best drummers.
Honorable mentions must go also to John Eager (David Bowie, 1967), Terry Cox (David Bowie, 1969) Andy Newmark (Young Americans, 1975) and Hunt Sales (Tin Machine, 1989; Tin Machine, 1991).
SKF NOTE: Def Leppard drummer, Rick Allen, talks about re-learning how to play the drumset after losing his left-arm in a car accident.
DEF LEPPARD’S ONE-ARMED DRUMMER, RICK ALLEN, IS ALSO A PROLIFIC PAINTER
BY DAVID MINSKY
TUESDAY, JANUARY 12, 2016
Rick Allen
What was/is the hardest part of learning how to play drums again following the accident?
In many ways, it was quite inexplicable, the experience that I went through. I realized that I could do things with my right hand that I could never do before. At a certain point — because I kept going, I kept doing it, I kept playing — the learning curve takes over. I guess now I’m in the learning curve stage of my experience, my recovery, my forward momentum, as it were.
You’re still in the learning-curve stage 30 years after the accident?
Absolutely. I can’t help but move forward. I don’t want to stand still. I find new ways of doing old things. I’ll discover something a year or two ago that I couldn’t do, and all of a sudden, I can do it. I still have the capacity to improve.
Rick Allen Art Work
Are you able to mimic your old drumming style?
Yeah, I can mimic it really well. Where I can’t do things cleanly, let’s say, is consecutive beats on one particular drum. So then I’ll play a game of substitution. So I’ll play right hand, left foot, and then I’ll add kick drum. So what I do is I substitute one of the beats that I was going to play, or that I want to play on one drum, and I’ll substitute those beats with other drums so that I can play something that sounds very similar. It’s not exact, but it sounds very similar to what I would have played before.
What’s your drum setup like?
When I’m performing live, it’s more of a hybrid drum kit that is a combination of electronics and acoustics. All of the foot pedals that I use, everything that I used to play with my left arm, I now play with my left foot. I have a series of foot pedals on the floor that help me to do that. Then, when I’m in the studio, a lot of the times I like to play acoustic drums.
Saturday Jan 09 2016 A destiny of drumming: World-renowned drummer Simon Phillips and his band, Protocol, perform Wednesday
By: Carol Guild, Features Editor – carolg@goldcountrymedia.com
[Simon] Phillips’ music has encompassed rock, fusion and jazz. What he performs with Protocol is a style removed from his music with other groups. “I would categorize it as instrumental rock with heavy jazz influence,” he said.
[W]hat is important is the delivery of a song more than technique.
“It’s all about composition,” Phillips said. “I don’t care what you’re playing. I always prefer composition over technical ability.”
“I used to love listening to and watching Tony [Williams] play, compositionally,” Phillips said. “I look for that in every musician.”
Let go and just play
Sometimes the best composition happens when you just let go and play.
[One] example was during a recording session. “Peter Erskine was playing drums,” Phillips said. “I said, Peter, let’s not try to impress each other.”
The best time for music
Phillips said the problem now is finding good music. “The technique of creating music is available to anybody,” he said. “Now everybody is a songwriter. But it also opens the door to some really creative stuff, too.
“We just have to adapt to the times,” he said. “I do wish the attention span was a little bit wider. I wish people would give more time to hear the music.”
SKF NOTE: Is it time to retire ding-dinga-ding-dinga?
Jon McCaslin’s drumming blog, Four On The Floor, is among my favorites. Dr. McCaslin posts unique drum videos that say something. A recent video is from new-to-me drummer Joe Farnsworth‘s master class in Italy.
At one point in the video, Mr. Farnsworth tells attendees it is important to practice keeping steady time on the ride cymbal with quarter notes. Only when drummers can do that, says Farnsworth, can they keep steady time playing the standard jazz ride rhythm ding-dinga-ding-dinga.
That brought to mind a couple of my drumming ideas. (And this is not a dig at Mr. Farnsworth. Watching his video simply triggered a memory. It could have been any drummer’s video.) I think it may be time to retire ding-dinga-ding as the foundation of modern jazz drumming.
When I play the drumset, when I listen to others playing the drumset — I hear melodies, musical lines, musical sounds. I don’t hear stand alone rhythm. When trying to imitate a drum beat or concept — I first try to imitate the sound(s). I don’t dash for pencil and staff paper to musically notate what the drummer is doing with his right hand, left hand, left foot, right foot — and then try to duplicate the sound from my written notation.
Is that a long way of saying I play by ear? No. I think we’ve all grown up with the idea that drummers who play by ear are never quite as good as drummers who read/write music. People who can’t read or write their native language are illiterate. Drummers who can’t read or write music are…musically illiterate? I think the stigma holds true. It is the root of most drummer jokes.
Yet, Max Roach told me of a Ghanian drummer who teaches separated from his students by a curtain. The teacher, said Max, does not want students imitating how he, the teacher, makes sounds. He wants them to listen and discover their own way of making the sounds.
Max, Alan Dawson, and Roy Haynes are a few great drummers who spoke with me about hearing Papa Jo Jones’s hi-hat playing on radio or record. They had no way of seeing Papa Jo unless Count Basie came to town. But they wanted to play their hi-hats like Jo Jones. So they worked at making the sound they heard.
Which brings me to my second point. Ding-dinga-ding on the ride cymbal hasn’t always been with us. It was preceded by press rolls on the snare drum. Indeed, ride cymbals weren’t always with us. They too were preceded by snare drum press rolls. Press roll timekeeping transferred to the hi-hit, then to the ride cymbal. And each transition kept the press roll rhythm Baby Dodds used.
Plus, even the early great jazz drummers — Baby Dodds, Chick Webb, Jo Jones, Gene Krupa — didn’t play slavish ding-dinga-ding.
Meanwhile, most of the great drummers I listen to don’t play locked in to ding-dinga-ding. I hear them — on the whole drumset, not just their ride cymbals — playing melodies, musical lines. And what about the rock and latin cymbal beats that are part of the modern jazz drummer’s language?
Are there times ding-dinga-ding is appropriate? Yes. Is ding-dinga-ding valid for drum student use in developing independence and coordination? Yes. But I think it is time drum teachers stop insisting students always play ding-dinga-ding as the one right way to play jazz. Really? Ding-dinga-ding is a right way to play some styles of jazz — but all styles of jazz?
“Not everything I play has a name,” said Roy Haynes. I love that idea. It reminds me that we, as drummers, might better serve upcoming drummers by giving more emphasis to the drumset as a musical instrument; using the drumset not just to play beats and licks, but to play music.
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