Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: This interview starts with Michael Shrieve’s quick “no” response to my question, “Do you ever think about playing drums (or drum solos) with the fluidity of a saxophone player?”

But then Shrieve tells us how he does approach playing drums. “I see it as a flow of energy. Let’s say the rhythm I play contains a flow of energy that isn’t locked to the rhythm,” he begins.

In this first of a two-part interview, Shrieve talks about lessons learned from drummer Pete Magadini, such as, “One of the things about white drummers is they always try to play too much. They don’t feel confident enough to just let it sit. Let the magic of the groove happen.”

Shrieve talks about, “Sustaining a rhythm. Like jazz drummers do, but in a pop context.”

We cover Shrieve meeting all “his heroes” at a young age. “It’s good to meet your heroes because then there’s nowhere else to go but with yourself. After awhile you find that music is so transparent and so naked (in) how much it reveals the person. What you play is what you are,” he said.

At about 10:07 we paused recording to collect our thoughts.

The remainder of this part of the interview focuses on “drum questions.” Shrieve’s studio drums vs live drums: drum heads, tuning, bass drum pedals, cymbals (a 24″ crash cymbal????).

We talk a bit about Shrieve working Santana percussionist Chepito, and about how Shrieve might approach staging drum clinics.

This recording has a few spots or glitches where moments of our conversation were cut. Maybe the sound at those spots disappeared during background noise removal. Or, perhaps they are casualties of age. This interview was digitized from a cheap 45-year old cassette tape.

At any rate, none of the glitches break the flow of the conversation here. And I want to thank my friend, Jason J. Carey, for his great work in cleaning up this sound file.

Michael Shrieve was easy to interview. He was a very likeable human being.

However, the Modern Drummer feature interview we were creating was not easy to finish. Remember, this was pre-internet. So the lag time between when MD interviews happened and when they were published was often many months.

We met after Shrieve launched his pop group Novo Combo. I think we met three times to button up Shrieve’s MD interview. This interview took place in a NYC restaurant. Shrieve had been in-and-out of his group Automatic Man. Also, he was no longer with his amazing band, Go, with Stomu Yamashta, Al DiMeola, and others.

Michael Shrieve’s heart, it seemed to me during our interviews and private conversations circa 1981, was more comfortable with more experimental musics. His music with percussionist/keyboard player Stomu Yamashta is a case in point.

Shrieve introduced me to music healing, of the relationship of sound and color. He introduced me to New Age musician/author Steven Halpbern.

And so, Michael and I would finish an interview, and then the music project Shrieve was working on at the time of our interview would be replaced by a new project, prompting an amendment to our initial interview.

My Shrieve interview came out – finally – in the July 1983 Modern Drummer.