Jon Fishman: Jazz Was This Monster Around the Corner

Posted on August 25, 2015 by Scott K Fish

Relix.com
Little Drummer Boy: Local Hero Jon Fishman Reconnects with His Syracuse Drum Teacher
by Jess Novak on August 22, 2015

Jon Fishman

Jon Fishman

Jess Novak: You took lessons from [Syracuse, NY drummer] Dave (Hanlon) when you were 13. Why drums?

Jon Fishman: My mom took me to see Buddy Rich when I was 10. I was all [into] Buddy Rich at that time, but then Dave had a picture of Louis Bellson on the wall, so I checked him out and was introduced to this whole world of big-band drumming. Then Sonny Payne. I discovered all that through Dave.

JN: What about rock drummers?

JF: I heard “When the Levee Breaks” (Led Zeppelin) on the radio when I was a kid. Something about it—the articulation of that beat and how it goes with the song. There are a lot of Zeppelin songs where the drums go along so well with the melody. I was learning Zeppelin from the time I was eight to 13. Zeppelin, Hendrix, The Who. I was a closet guitar player, too. Zappa—all his drummers are their own category.

JN: What changed after you took lessons with Dave?

JF: When I was 13, jazz was this monster around the corner. It was an entirely different level of coordination. You know, “Jazz is the teacher, funk is the preacher and one without the other, you have nothing but the blues.” I think that’s true. For drummers, or any instrument, it seems like with jazz and classical, or Afro-Cuban music—you stretch your limits. You get independence and coordination you won’t from just rock drumming. I wanted to learn how to play a swing ride and the other figures you play on a snare and hi-hat. I went to Dave for that.

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Carmine Appice: Where My Style Came From

Posted on August 25, 2015 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: From my interview with Carmine Appice circa 1980-81.

carminenikon 114

Carmine Appice: Basically my style came from listening to a cross between Sandy Nelson, Wipe Out, and all that stuff, and listening to people like Krupa and Rich and Joe Morello.

My drum teacher, Dick Bennett, was a big band teacher. He taught me how to tune my drums real low and deep to get a real big sound out of them.

When I joined Vanilla Fudge we were called The Pigeons. They were the first band that I played with that — for that time — used big amplifiers. That’s when I first switched my sticks around to backhanded. I started developing these blisters which later turned into callouses.

From playing and studying I learned actual percussion. In school I played tympani, bass drum, snare drum, and all those instruments in the percussion section.

When we started getting into the Vanilla Fudge sound — that classical rock symphonic sound — I utilized the drumset as a percussion section.

I had the first gong in rock and roll in 1968. I started the big drum fad in ’68 also. The reasoning was, I figured if you had bigger drums they’d be louder and also sound more like tympani. I even had a couple of chimes hanging from a boom microphone stand. Nowadays, people like Neil Peart have the whole set of chimes.

That’s really where the style came from. A cross between the big band rock and the symphonic. I was studying big band, playing rock, and when I was in school I was doing all the symphonic stuff.

SKF Transcript of Backgrounder Interview with Carmine Appice

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Tony Williams’s Textbook Perfect Drum Solo

Posted on August 24, 2015 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: Tony Williams‘s drum solo on Moose the Mooche with The Great Jazz Trio [Hank Jones, piano and Ron Carter, bass] at the Village Vanguard, February 1977, is textbook perfect. Beautiful.

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Kenney Jones, Not Charlie, Playing on ‘It’s Only Rock ‘N Roll’

Posted on August 23, 2015 by Scott K Fish

How Kenney Jones Ended Up Playing Drums on the Rolling Stones’ ‘It’s Only Rock ‘N Roll’
By Michael Gallucci August 19, 2015 3:32 PM

Kenney Jones

Kenney Jones

Did you know that Charlie Watts didn’t play drums on the Rolling Stones‘ 1974 hit “It’s Only Rock ‘N Roll (But I Like It)”? The band’s regular drummer yielded his sticks to Kenney Jones for the song.

Apparently Watts was nowhere around in December 1973, when the group was ready to record his drum parts for the song….

It wasn’t uncommon for [Ronnie] Wood to just call Jones in to play whenever a drummer was needed. “It was quite late. He’d call me up and say, ‘Kenney, we haven’t got a drummer. Can you come around and play on this?’ I gave Ronnie one of my drum kits so the drum kit was permanently set up there in his studio.”

When Jones got there, Wood recorded the session, leaving Jones and Mick Jagger alone in the room to record the song. “It was just Mick Jagger and myself, guitar and drums, and we did the track. Ronnie Wood came in, pressed the button, picked up the bass and played on it. I thought it was a demo…. I forgot all about it.”

After some aborted attempts to record the song with Watts (“They couldn’t capture the feel,” Jones said), the Stones used Jones’ demo version on the album.

“When I found out later it was actually me playing on drums on it, I called Charlie up and said, ‘I didn’t mean to play drums on your album’,” recalled Jones. “And he said, ‘That’s okay. It sounds like me anyway’.”

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Karen Carpenter Award Upsets John Bonham

Posted on August 23, 2015 by Scott K Fish

152308_zeppelin_magazineSKF NOTE: Flipping through this 35-year old magazine yesterday, I stopped to read something in a news article I had underscored in red ink said by John Bonham. It had me laughing, so I decided to share it.

“I’d like to have it publicized that I came in after Karen Carpenter in the Playboy drummer poll,” roars Bonzo as I entered the dressing room at the Chicago Stadium. “She couldn’t last ten minutes with a Zeppelin number,” he sneers.

Source: Led Zeppelin Dances on Air, by Lisa Robinson, Led Zeppelin CREEM Special Edition, Winter 1980

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