Impressive Drumming Feats (As Recounted In Interviews): A Repository

Steve Vai on Vinnie Colaiuta: "He's one of the most amazing sight-readers that ever existed on the instrument. One day we were in a Frank rehearsal, this was early '80s, and Frank brought in this piece of music called "Mo 'N Herb's Vacation." Just unbelievably complex. All the drums were written out, just like "The Black Page" except even more complex. There were these runs of like 17 over 3 and every drumhead is notated differently. And there were a whole bunch of people there, I think Bozzio was there. Vinnie had this piece of music on the stand to his right. To his left he had another music stand with a plate of sushi on it, okay? Now the tempo of the piece was very slow, like "The Black Page." And then the first riff came in, (mimics bizarre Zappa-esque drum rhythm patterns) with all these choking of cymbals, and hi-hat, riffs, spinning of rototoms and all this crazy stuff. And I saw Vinnie reading this thing. Now, Vinnie has this habit of pushing his glasses up with the middle finger of his right hand. Well I saw him look at this one bar of music, it was the last bar of music on the page. He started to play it as he was turning the page with one hand, and then once the page was turned he continued playing the riff with his right hand, as he reached over with his left hand, grabbed a piece of sushi and put it in his mouth, continued the riff with his left hand and feet, pushed his glasses up, and then played the remaining part of the bar. It was the slickest thing I have ever seen. Frank threw his music up in the air. Bozzio turned around and walked away. I just started laughing."

“I was working with Larry Mullen, Jr., on one of the U2 albums,” Eno told me. “ ‘All That You Don’t Leave Behind,’ or whatever it’s called.” Mullen was playing drums over a recording of the band and a click track—a computer-generated beat that was meant to keep all the overdubbed parts in synch. In this case, however, Mullen thought that the click track was slightly off: it was a fraction of a beat behind the rest of the band. “I said, ‘No, that can’t be so, Larry,’ ” Eno recalled. “ ‘We’ve all worked to that track, so it must be right.’ But he said, ‘Sorry, I just can’t play to it.’ ”

Eno eventually adjusted the click to Mullen’s satisfaction, but he was just humoring him. It was only later, after the drummer had left, that Eno checked the original track again and realized that Mullen was right: the click was off by six milliseconds. “The thing is,” Eno told me, “when we were adjusting it I once had it two milliseconds to the wrong side of the beat, and he said, ‘No, you’ve got to come back a bit.’ Which I think is absolutely staggering.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/04/25/the-possibilian

Cool story from http://www.drumforum.org/threads/spirit-ed-cassidy-drum-kit.70261/

I saw Spirit in 1972 who had the unfortunate task of playing right after The Mahavishnu Orchestra tore the roof off of Cincinnati's Xavier University Fieldhouse.
Ed was playing his gargantuan Psychedelic Red Ludwig set with matching Psych Red concert bass drums to his left and right.I think he may have had a triple tom set-up on the bass drum in a pyramid formation.Pretty sure he had 2 floor toms as well. The snare drum I couldn't see yet I was standing in the front row center stage.How many cymbals I can't remember.I do remember this though: there was an 11PM curfew.Spirit was in the middle of a tune when the power was cut and the house lights came on.The band didn't know WTF was up.Ed Cassady took charge of the situation and began playing a solo which saw him play every drum and cymbal,rims, and ultimately after getting up and walking around his kit while playing,he crouched down and played the stage...he lead the rest of the band off the stage still playing.

No encore.No explanation.Now go home.

Bryan "Brain" Mantia:

Josh (Freese) is a sick drummer, but he’s not on the album (Chinese Democracy). It’s mainly you playing. How did you approach his parts?

With Josh, we’re two different players. It’s just like Tim (Alexander) and I. I get hate mail from Primus fans that say, “You ruined the band. You made it simple,” or “you made it funky,” or whatever. “Tim’s a better drummer.” I’m like, “Yeah. Tim is a way better drummer for what they’re doing.” We’re friends. He does his style.

It’s kind of the same with Josh. I’ve sat behind and watched him play with Devo. He’s an amazing technician. I saw him with Nine Inch Nails. It’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen, just technically and how he can play something so fluid and perfect. But my style is way more hip-hop, way more funk. I have good technique, but it’s a whole different style. Axl said, “Brain, re-record the songs as you.” I said, “OK.”

There’s one song where there’s a bunch of 16th notes going by. Every time he’s doing the fill, he keeps the kick drum going, doing eighth notes. It’s the Keith Moon style. My style is way more Wu-Tang. When I did that beat, I did it like the GZA from Liquid Swords. He came back and was like, “Uh-oh. There’s too much space. I don’t think Brain doing his thing will work.”

He came back and said, “Why don’t you keep your feel and what you do, but do all of Josh’s parts.” I was like, “Well, I’m not going to transcribe all this stuff,” even though I could do it. So we took a stack of CDs to Sony and went to their editorial department and found some dude that’s a master transcriber for orchestral stuff. We just said, “Dude, here’s all the songs that Guns are doing. Transcribe them.”

I literally had five (music) stands of the whole piece, of exactly what Josh played. I played it with my feel, but his parts. Towards the end, we started throwing the charts away. Then I started doing my own thing.

Lol

“I was working with Larry Mullen, Jr., on one of the U2 albums,” Eno told me. “ ‘All That You Don’t Leave Behind,’ or whatever it’s called.”

Producer Gary Katz on Steve Gadd:

There was no big deal about making arrangements. I picked up the phone. I remember Walter one day saying, “Why don’t we call Illinois Jacquet,” who is kind of a well-known jazz player. He said, “Nah, I don’t want to do that.” But he’s the only one ... “Aja” that has some really interesting anecdotal material, that song. Especially with Steve. We’d never worked with Steve. I’m too embarrassed to go into the reasons why, but we’d never worked with him. When we got to “Aja,” my cadre of musicians as far as drummers wasn’t up their alley. It wasn’t for Jeff Porcaro, it wasn’t for (Jim) Keltner. It was obvious who was going to play that track, just for the 32 bar drum solo. None of my guys were going to do that. We did this out in L.A. at Producer’s Workshop and it was just a fabulous band. Victor Feldman and Chuck Rainey and Joe Sample. You know, all of our guys who we loved. Steve knew them like they were corner buddies because, with all of these guys, it’s a clique. So when he walked in, it was his guys. These are guys he’s known for 30 years and played with. I went out and actually had to introduce myself because I had not known him. The chart was long. It was 16 pages. So they built a horseshoe of music stands for Steve, to put all of the pages around the drum kit.

After a little while, Steve said to Joe and Chuck, “Just play it so I can hear how the song goes and I’ll make some notations on the chart for myself.” Donald went out as he usually did and stood in some corner and would sing a scratch vocal low, so the guys could hear it while they are playing. Walter and I were in the control room with Bill Schnee, a very famous engineer and producer at Producer’s Workshop, which was really his studio and he was the only one who knew how to make it work. He said, “Okay, let’s do one.” The track you hear is the only time he played it.

Once. As it’s going on, both Walter and I (are looking at each other). For whatever reasons each of us had, we had never hired Steve (before this session]). And as we got to the end, it was just so fantastic, Walter turned to me and he said, “Maybe we’ve made a mistake.” That’s the only time he played that track, was the first time. Months go by and we were mixing in New York because we’re not particularly fast about how we do things. We were just about finished with the mix of “Aja” at A&R with Elliot Scheiner. It’s as good as you can imagine something sounding on those speakers in the control room. It was magically great. Someone walked in and said, “Hey, you know Steve is down the hall, he’s playing with Michael Franks.” I said, “Oh, cool, Donald, I’ll go down and let him know we’re here.” I did that and he was finishing up. When he was done, he came in and said (his greetings).

He was feeling good. I said, “Sit down, I want to play you something.” We played him “Aja,” which was finished. He sat right between the Altec 604 Utility (speaker) cabinets. It was great sounding. The track ends and he said, “Wow, who is playing drums?” Donald, Walter and I, Roger Nichols and Elliot, are just looking at each other. Because he wasn’t kidding. I say, “You are, stupid!” He went, “Really? I’m a motherfucker!” It’s the best laugh we had in all of the years.

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/gary-katz-steely-dan-aja-interview-2022

Anthony Jackson on Steve Gadd reading everyone else's charts and laying down a drum part that incorporated all of them -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW2MA3NR-tE

Andy Newmark on Jim Gordon:

I sat 5 feet away from Jim Gordon, in the drum booth at Trident Studios in London, as he recorded Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain in 1972. I was Carly’s road drummer and played on a few tracks on her No Secrets album, however I wasn’t cutting it when we recorded You’re So Vain. So Richard Perry, the producer of that album brought in the heavyweights. Jim Gordon, Klaus Voorman, and Nicky Hopkins to record You’re So Vain. Carly’s road band, which included me, was sidelined for half the tracks on that album, except for Jimmy Ryan who played on everything and played that great guitar solo on “You’re So Vain”. Anyhow, I was totally cool with Richard Perry’s decision to bring Jim Gordon in. I was in London for the duration of that album, as road bands often were back then, on call at any time. I saw this as an opportunity to watch Jim up close. I had been listening to Jim Gordon and Jim Keltner ever since Mad Dogs and Englishmen. I asked Jim if he would mind if I sat in the drum booth and watched him play. He was totally cool with that. So I watched Jim do 40 takes (Richard Perry was famous for doing a lot of takes) of You’re So Vain. You see, back then the live performance in the studio had to contain all the magic in the basic backing track. There was no fixing it or replacing parts after the track was recorded. You could repair little things but the vibe and groove had to be all there in the performance. Perry pushed players right to their limit. I liked his style. He had a vision and wasn’t going to stop till he got it out of the musicians. He made great bloody records that all stand up today under scrutiny. He always used the best players on his records. As a player, working for Richard Perry was a step up the ladder in session world. It meant something. Anyhow, I watched Jim like a hawk for 4 or 5 hours, playing that song over and over again. It’s one thing to hear a player on a recording but to see a player playing live is a whole different ball game. Body language reveals so much about where a drummer is coming from. Seeing Jim play up that close, and fine tuning his drum part, was like getting intra veinous Jim Gordon…his DNA being injected into mine. And I got it, big time. I saw what he had and what I didn’t have. But not for long. I really understood where his notes were coming from and went away from that session knowing what I had to do to improve my act. Jim never played a rim shot on 40 takes of You’re So Vain. He hit the middle of the snare drum so hard that the head was completely caved in, in the middle. It was a 6 inch crater in a perfect circle. He hit the exact same spot every time he hit the snare drum.

Loving these

Mike Campbell on Keltner:

One day as Tom and I were listening to a playback of “Refugee” with all my parts added, Jim Keltner appeared. I turned around and he was standing in the doorway.

“You know what this song needs?”

“What?”

Jim held up a little egg-shaped shaker, a Latin percussion instrument that sounds like a maraca. He shook it to the beat. It filled out Stan’s drums and sat perfectly in the mix. Jimmy added it to the track and then started adding percussion all over the record, making it even thicker and denser.

Indirect but ... Sammy on Alex Van Halen:

They would wake up Al about twenty minutes before show-time. There was always a case of tall Schlitz cans. He would shotgun three or four beers and get his buzz on. He would walk out onstage with a couple more cans in his hands, pound those, and drink the rest of the case during the two-hour show. The crew would put out these big rubber trash cans for him to piss in during the show. After practically every song, he’d piss in the trash can, pound a couple of beers, and start playing again. Sometimes he’d really be fucked up. In the middle of a song, he’d just get up off the drums to take a piss or chug a beer. Eventually he started wearing one of those helmets with beer holders on the side, and straws. At the end of the tour, he needed some help.

Geddy on Neil Peart's audition:

Neither Alex nor I had ever been to an audition before, let alone held one of our own, so it was awkward as hell. I remember nothing of the first candidate, I’m afraid, but I know the next guy was Gerry Fielding, a good steady player we knew and liked, and that two others were scheduled. After Gerry left, a Ford Pinto pulled up to the loading dock and out popped this lanky, goofy-lookin’ guy with short hair and no shirt and his drums in garbage bags—a Rogers drum kit, I believe, with twin 18-inch bass drums, the smallest kick drums I’d ever seen; when he sat on the throne behind them he looked like an effin’ giant. I remember him carefully checking their positioning, then the rest of the kit, then starting to play triplets, which with those teensy bass drums sounded like machine gun fire. Those were eye-popping triplets! A grin spread from one of my ears to the other, and as we ran through some songs that grin never left my face. Man, he was so good, and so powerful. I suggested we jam on the same piece I’ve mentioned that John wasn’t into, and he nailed it. I mean nailed it. I didn’t need to hear anyone else.

His name, of course, was Neil Ellwood Peart.

There was no effin’ way I was letting him escape. After his audition we lay down on the floor and gabbed away about a variety of things—The Lord of the Rings, Monty Python, stage wear and more—excited to find we had so much in common with him, and even more that he could play double bass drum triplets in 7/4 time! Alex was quiet, however, upset with me because we’d agreed beforehand not to select anyone before hearing each and every candidate, and there I was acting like Neil had already got the job. Later, I had to apologize and agree to hear the others. It was all such a role reversal for us; Alex is usually the one who wears his heart on his sleeve, while I’m generally the methodical decision maker. But I couldn’t contain myself. Here was the drummer of our dreams.

Just before he left, I overheard Neil talking with one of our crew over a smoke by the mixing console in the hallway. He asked Neil why he’d want to join our band, to which Neil replied, “I really like the raw materials.” For me that comment revealed not so much a respect for our musicianship as for his own ambitions. I could have taken offence, but I actually liked that he was thinking big—not just about taking a gig but being a part of something that could be molded out of raw material.

oh thats great <3

From personal experience:

1) I was young and went to a drum industry convention, and at the hotel bar there was a jazz trio that every famous drummer sat in with. By the end of the night they were getting worn out and more kids and amateurs were sitting in, and they were getting cranky with them. Jim Chapin (Harry Chapin's dad, known for being a big technique guy and educator) sat in to shame them a bit - called an old obscure standard they didn't know, counted it off at an absolutely ungodly fast tempo, and sang it while playing.

2) Seeing Chris Dave (the greatest) with Kenny Garrett before he was famous for being Chris Dave. They were playing an absolutely ungodly fast tempo, swinging burnout jazz with just drums and saxophone, and CD dropped his right stick. Literally without missing a beat he kept playing the same stuff with the left hand on the cymbal;

"Two years ago with Steely on Gaucho, I went to New York to cut the tune 'The Gaucho.' It was Steve Khan, Anthony Jackson on bass, Rob Mounsey on keyboards and Fagen, and I think that was all who were there. The plan was to rehearse the tune in the studio because Fagen and these guys are meticulous. You rehearse from 2:00 to 6:00, take a dinner break, and at 7:00 you come back to the studio, start the tape rolling and start doing takes. Well, this stuff is rehearsed so heavy that some of the spontaneity is gone maybe.

They demand perfect time and it's too nerve-wracking. Yet, I love it, and I guess there are some of us who love it. That kind of pressure with those guys is cool because from my point of view, their music is the most prestigious music that's ever existed and it's great to hear, no matter what. Some people can't stand the perfection, though. So we started doing 'The Gaucho' and they went through every musician's part so it was perfect. All they were going to keep at the end was the drum track, but most of the other musicians didn't know that. I just knew it from experience. Their idea is to get everybody else in the band and put them through all the shit in the world to make sure they play perfect, just to get the perfect drum track. And these guys are sweating—beads of sweat rolling down their foreheads—nerves, shaking while they're playing and they don't know what they're playing is never going to be used.

We went to 3:00 in the morning and I don't know how many takes we did. Fagen walked out in the studio and it was something like, 'Guys, does everybody know what this tune is supposed to sound like?' We're all looking at each other going, 'Yeah!' He says, 'Good. You guys know what it should sound like, I know what it's supposed to sound like, then that's all that matters. We're done.' And he splits. So we're all sitting there in the studio like, 'What?' So we all got pissed and said, 'Screw it, we're going to work on this track and get it!' So just Gary Katz (Steely's producer) was there and we continued to do five or six more takes. The final product on that album came from those takes. That's the kind of shit where most people would have packed up and split, but we just sat there feeling we had to get it, and we did."

This one from Nicko McBrain came to mind talking about taking a swim.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU_jhIv2vJY

Swang! Swang! Diggity diggity!

Posted elsewhere but I just love this scientific paper about the hi-hat sixteenth notes in "I Keep Forgettin'."

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4454559/

They missed out by not analyzing how the wrist motion used to play those notes (the sort of partial Moeller accent followed by getting a quieter note as a rebound or part of the upstroke) mimics or duplicates the waveform that's produced.

I don't understand this:

Clear evidence of LRC fluctuations in 16th note hi-hat intervals was found. To the best of our knowledge, this phenomenon has not been found in recorded drumming in popular music before, when no metronome was present during the recording, and when no individual drum tracks were available.

It's a masterful groove, but I don't get what they're saying is present here that you can't find in James Gadson's many classic one-handed 16th note grooves or in 'Funky Drummer'.

Sure, but they were really only looking at closed-hat onsets in that one song; one would have to do comparative work on the funkiness quotient on other drummers/songs as well.

I think in one of the cited papers there is a comparison of perceived grooviness levels for metronomic vs. not metronomic time. (Or maybe free vs. Quantized to a grid?)

That research is probably intended in earnest but might get coopted into supporting a stance like "drum machines have no soul." And from there to the efforts of drum machine programmers to introduce a convincingly groovy amount of wrongness. See the old Roland R-8 ads like "now with human feel (tm)" or whatever.

The Porcaro paper does seem to allow a "you can't groove with a click, maaan" / "metronomes bad" interpretation.

Of course whatever the researchers intended, some clown will conclude that since Porcaro speeds up and slows down, they don't need to have good time (despite not being, y'know, Porcaro).

From the Mike Campbell book:

At the end of the session, as I was slipping the Broadcaster into the case, he walked up to me.

“‘Boys of Summer.’ That’s you.”

I latched the case and stood.

“I just wrote the music.”

Bob gave that statement a quizzical look and shook his head.

“Drum machine.”

“Yeah.”

He leaned over and spoke low out of the corner of his mouth, like he was putting a crew together for a heist.

“You know how to use it?”

“Yeah, that’s my beat on it.”

Bob nodded, thinking.

“That sounds pretty good.”

“Thank you.”

“‘Boys of Summer.’ That’s a big hit.”

He looked around. He leaned forward. He spoke under his breath.

“You still got it?”

“The drum machine? Yeah.”

“Same one?”

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you bring it next time?”

“Okay.”

“Yeah, bring it with you next time. Bring that drum machine. I wouldn’t mind having a big hit too.”

A few days later, I put the Broadcaster and the LinnDrum in my trunk and drove back over to Cherokee for another session. We worked on a new song of Bob’s called “Trust Yourself.” Keltner played a low rumble that swayed in time with Bob at the mic. Bob had his back to me, and I watched him motion—to Benmont, to Jim, to the other musicians—guiding them through the song. Benmont watched Bob like he watched Tom, listening and responding to Bob’s nods and looks and gestures with organ splashes and slash chords and simmering, sustained notes that answered Bob’s phrasing. Bob glanced back at me, holding his Strat tight to his ribcage with his forearm as he fingerpicked. He smiled like Pops Staples. I leaned forward and tried to play it like “Stop Breaking Down,” and as Bob nodded to the beat, my right hand naturally moved with him like we were boxing or dancing.

We played the song a couple more times, then Bob waved it away with his hand. He looked to the control room window and told them to erase those takes. In the Heartbreakers, the tape started rolling ten minutes before we walked in, just in case, and we saved every second.

I said, oh no, don’t do that. Bob shook his head.

“I’m never going to listen to that. Why keep it?”

Bob asked me if I had brought the drum machine.

I set up the LinnDrum in the main room. As Bob showed me the tempo and changes of a new song he was working on, I programmed a simple beat. Bob strummed his guitar to it softly.

Bob called the rest of the band back into the studio. I got the beat pulled up as everybody took to their instruments. Jim Keltner appeared in the doorway and watched with a small smile, like he knew all along what would happen.

The LinnDrum beat started and Bob strummed along. We all fell in with him. After a minute or so, Bob started to fall a little behind the beat. Within a few more measures, he was way off. Nobody knew whether to stay on the LinnDrum or to follow Bob. We sounded like three pairs of sneakers in a dryer.

Bob raised his arm to bring the song to a close. I stopped the beat on the LinnDrum. Benmont and I exchanged a look. Bob nodded. He wanted to hear it back.

The engineer rewound the tape and pressed play. We all watched Bob. He listened, nodding his head softly. Then he heard his guitar go off the beat. He looked at me and furrowed his brow. He cocked his head and listened closer. When we got to the part where he had strayed badly, Bob had the engineer stop the tape.

He turned to me.

“That ain’t right.”

“No,” I agreed.

Bob waited for me to expound. There was a tense silence.

“Well, yeah. You kinda went off the beat a little there, Bob. You gotta stick a little closer to it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You gotta follow the drum machine a little closer.”

“I have to follow it?”

“Yeah.”

“It doesn’t follow me?”

“Uh, no, Bob, it doesn’t.”

Bob shook his head.

“Then what good is it?”

(That's Bob as in Dylan, btw.)

lololol

incredible

one would have to do comparative work on the funkiness quotient on other drummers/songs as well.

Sure, but then how can you include a sentence like "To the best of our knowledge, this phenomenon has not been found in recorded drumming in popular music before"?

Anyway, Jeff "Tain" Watts talking about Art Blakey:

Art could just do anything. He probably just heard cats doing it and he would just do stuff to show people he could do it. I remember taking a van ride with him to Atlantic City. We were in the van and we’re riding and he’s like, Yes, Jeff. Polyrhythms, you know, it’s no big deal, polyrhythm. You do six over here and you do five with your foot like this. And he was just doing it! You just do that and then you can play in between, you know, playing three over here. He’s just like a natural virtuoso blues musician or whatever.

EI: I heard from Joanne Brackeen that they played him a Tony Williams record, I think Miles Smiles. Then the next night he casually played a bunch of Tony Williams during the Messengers set.

lol at Dylan and the drum machine, I knew where that story was going. He's always required a lot of attentiveness from his players.