SKF NOTE: Remembering my phone conversation with Mel Lewis when he was explaining to me his cancer diagnosis.
Mel said the cancer was a result of his playing while holding his right stick wrong all those years. The butt of his drumstick, Mel told me, consistently press against the palm of his right hand. Over time that movement prompted a cancer in his hand lymph nodes or vessels.
Holding his right stick that way, said Mel, was “wrong.” But, continued Mel, it was the way he played.
SKF NOTE: This is a photo of the envelope I used to send Mel Lewis his first Modern Drummer interview transcript. The glued postage stamp is long gone.
It reminds me of when I started freelancing writing about drummers, before submitting my interviews for publication, I would send my finished manuscripts to interviewees for approval.
Early on, Levon Helm, Jaimoe Johnson, and Butch Trucks told me about interviewers inventing quotes and stories in their published pieces. As a freshman freelancer, hearing about such unethical practices was appalling. I couldn’t imagine making up quotes.
Sometimes drummers would make small changes to the manuscripts I sent them. But they really appreciated the gesture. And my policy ensured no surprises when the interview was published.
I still use that fact-checking method.
SKF NOTE: The four pages below describe my duties as Modern Drummer‘s Managing Editor. My dim recollection is that I wrote this circa 1983. Had I written this job description in 1980, when I was first hired as MD Managing Editor, it would be different. Several aspects of the job came about over time as MD grew to a monthly magazine from nine issues a year.
Why did I type out this detailed job description? I can only guess. As I said, I have only the slightest memory of this document. But in 1983, the MD employees primarily responsible for putting each issue of MD were the Features Editor, Art Director, Sales Director, Publisher, and the Managing Editor.
MD‘s support staff, and our freelance writers and photographers were also essential to producing the magazines. But the core production team was MD‘s Publisher, Features Editor, Art Director, Sales Director, and the Managing Editor.
Other than Publisher Ron Spagnardi, I had been on MD‘s staff longer than the Features Editor and the two Directors. When I learned the Publisher was paying me less than the others I was hurt, a bit angry, and puzzled.
I wanted to ask Ron why he was paying me less.
Before doing so I wanted to build my case, to have my full job description at the ready.
Also, I wanted to know what percentage of MD feature interviews and stories I’d written as Managing Editor. I was surprised to discover, between 1980 and 1983, I’d written 48-percent of MD‘s features.
Spagnardi told me he was paying the others more than me because they had college degrees and I didn’t.
My response was, “So what? In addition to my Managing Editor duties I’ve written almost half MD‘s features. I’m doing the work.”
In the end I was given a $2,000 raise. My pay went to $14,000 per year from $12,000, and I began thinking about working elsewhere.
I should clarify some points so what I wrote in 1983 will make more sense.
First, I was writing about publishing a magazine pre-computers and before the digital age and the internet. Modern Drummer was built with typewriters, land lines, audio-cassettes, literal cut-and-paste magazine layouts, and non-digital photography.
The Managing Editor duties described here are in chronological order. That is, MD‘s editors outlined issues at Progress Meetings, followed by several acts until each magazine was published.
Features Editor Rick Mattingly and I did quite a bit of “off the clock” work. After hours phone calls, homework, and interviews. We both loved what we were doing. I viewed the after hours work as an opportunity, and also as part of the gig, although the after hours work was not part of the gig.
MD might have been quite different if we insisted on limiting our work the magazine’s official 40-hour per week schedule.
Finally, the knowledge Rick and I brought to MD about drummers and drumming was not insignificant. I’m sure that’s why I mentioned it in this job description.
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.”
I stepped down as MD’s Managing Editor in October 1983. So this was a freelance assignment.
Neil Peart’s 1986 interview was by telephone. I scrambled last minute to make it happen. Normally I would have made sure I had 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.
What I had not planned on were desk phones and 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. Neil and I talked over the other phone in the other room.
After transcribing and editing our conversation using a typewriter, I submitted this finished manuscript for publication to Modern Drummer.
SKF NOTE: My friend and former Modern Drummer Features Editor, Rick Mattingly, long ago mailed me these photocopies of drummer Dave Tough advice columns. Tough briefly wrote columns for Metronome magazine.
Tough’s columns are fun and instructive reading. Here’s my list of advice or topics mentioned that caught my attention.
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