When I
started to go see bands in the early-1990s with my older brother he would
always point out the drummer. Initially I thought he was talking about the
“fish faces” that Fran Azzarto of The Gefkens was making or the fact that Terry
Glynn of The Play Trains played in bare feet. But now looking back at his
album collection that included Rush (Neal Peart), The Police (Stewart Copeland) and U2 (Larry Mullen, Jr.), I now believe he was placing the
spotlight on the drummer as the backbone of most bands. Other musicians
in a band rely very heavily on the drummer to provide a strong beat that will
keep a song together and in my opinion, a drummer who is off beat, or off
tempo, will lead the entire band astray.
In the
mid-1990s, I was introduced to the New Orleans, LA-based band Cowboy Mouth
featuring maniacal drummer/lead singer Fred LeBlanc. Cowboy Mouth is the quintessential New
Orleans rock band and they put on a great live show. Of course a lot of
that has to do with only having been to so many concerts in which the
drummer/lead singer climbs up to the 2nd floor of the club not using
the stairs while the entire time another member of the band keeps the kick-drum
going, but that is getting off track. At this point, I was continuing to
learn that you could take the singer, bassist and even the guitarist out of the
song and that the song will still have a backbone if you have a good drummer.
Recently
my father who is more of a classical and jazz music fan attended a Sammy Hagar
show. So besides commenting on how loud it was and that he did not
know/understand any of the songs being sung, he mentioned one highlight of the
show was Sammy Hagar’s drummer. At first, that caught me off guard,
was he talking about drummer
David Lauser who played on several of Sammy Hagar's solo albums in the 1980s or
Hagar’s other band The Waboritas? Maybe, with all due respect Lauser has
paid his dues, but his name does not come up often when talking about
influential drummers. So after doing some research, I realized that
the drummer in question for this tour is/was Jason Bonham (son of John
Bonham). Most often, Jason Bonham can be found leading Bonham - The LedZeppelin Experience (B-TLZE), but it has been said that if you close your eyes
while listening to B-TLZE you would testify that you are listening to the
original Led Zeppelin. In fact, on December 4, 1980, approximately
two months after the tragic death of drummer John Bonham, Led Zeppelin made the
difficult decision to break up. The
group had been preparing to go on tour \, but the surviving members decided
that it was not right to tamper with their legacy by bringing someone else in
to play drums.
As for
who I am and have been listening to, there is Questlove, the drummer for the rap
group—The Roots. He and his band
surprised the music world when they were confirmed as the house band for Late
Night with Jimmy Fallon, and now few fans can question how the drummer has led
the band into a new era of exposure and dynamic new music. There is also drummer Daru Jones who I recently saw in Jack White’s touring band. At the show at Stage AE in Pittsburgh and as
reported by reviewers everywhere from the Bonnaroo Music Festival to the show
in Tulsa, OK show – have agreed that Jones was “crushing everything from the
hard and gritty rock of the earlier White Stripes material to the brand new,
deep country material from ‘Lazaretto’”.
Again
this leads me back to a question asked of "Spinal Tap" member David
St. Hubbins (Michael McKean): How many "Spinal Tap" drummers have
died, in total? His answer “Well, we've lost count. It got spooky. We
decided we were going to make an entire album with no live drumming at all,
just a computer program. And you know what happened? The computer crashed. And
we said, "Walk away. Walk away." Or if “Spinal Tap” is not in
your wheelhouse, Henry David Thoreau stated, “If a man does not keep pace with
his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him
step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” Drummers
of today, please keep the backbeat going.
Thanks
for reading.
