Oscar Wilde once said
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation".
A few days ago I was thinking about all the influences that make us what and who we are. From the day we arrive here it starts with our family and our immediate environment. We learn by watching and listening to what is around us; our first utterances are simple repetition of sounds we have heard, repeated with only the most basic of understanding. Over time we hear different voices, different dialects, different opinions. Opinions that are not our own, figures of speech that are somebody else's, vocabulary that is rote learned and repeated without always understanding the meaning, much less the etymology. (That's a bit of an in joke for all the people who think an apostrophe is used to indicate plurality).
All the essential life skills we pick up from our immediate environment; talking, feeding ourselves, washing, dressing and learning to walk: unless you are a bass player in which case you should learn to walk by listening to Ray Brown.
Learning to play an instrument is the exact same process.
Give a child an instrument, and he or she will attempt to produce a sound. Let that child know *how* that instrument is supposed to sound and they will progress via imitation. so it was that some of the first sounds my young ears would pick up on were Joe Morello playing 'Take Five' and 'Sounds of the Loop' as well as my Dad at his Premier duotone practise pad.
All kinds of music provided the soundtrack to those early years, pop as well as jazz, and I would listen to our old radio all day long. This was largely a diet of middle of the road music thanks to the superior quality of Radio 2's VHF transmission. Radio 1 in those days was only available on the relatively low fidelity medium wave band and finished at 5pm.
I've told the story of my Dad's B & O hi fi system being my introduction to Buddy Rich's big band music countless times so no repetition is necessary. This was the beginning of a life long affinity for large jazz ensemble music, which was an early career goal for this young drummer. I wanted to be good enough to play that kind of music myself. So I studied Buddy Rich very closely. Louie Bellson and Kenny Clare too, as well as Butch Miles with the Basie band. There is a close link stylistically between these four drummers, but when I actually started to play in big bands my young brass and saxophone playing colleagues would talk a lot about Mel Lewis, whose approach was entirely different.
This proved to be a key turning point as I began to understand and (at times grudgingly) accept that people's tastes and viewpoints were different from mine. That's a simple, fundamental and ineluctable fact of life although you would be forgiven for thinking that just of late society has slipped into a state of collective amnesia in this regard. But I digress.
A highlight of my adolescent performing career was to play Buddy Rich style drum solos the duration of which would have won the admiration of the late Ken Dodd (with apologies to non UK readers). Great and novel in its own way though that is, it had absolutely no bearing whatsoever on any viable career path into the professional music world of the day. So I had to broaden my range and put all that other stuff completely to one side. It did come in handy again about 25 years later but this too is a matter of record. So I added a couple of roto toms, a female singer I particularly disliked said how well I was playing, and so the wheel began to turn. Slowly.
In the blog post The Imitation Game a couple of years ago I touched on this. It's perfectly natural to want to be like our heroes but it's also important to know when it's time to grow up and to speak for yourself. I have witnessed amazing drummers who had every Buddy lick down, but could not play effectively or meaningfully, in any other style at all. I too was in danger of going down this route, but some early onset pragmatism brought me to the viewpoint that in order to take advantage of such opportunities in the professional world that were open to me I needed to be whatever kind of player the industry of the day required me to be, a universal truth which holds good to this day, irrespective of music's ever changing fads and trends.
Anyway; the drum industry has fashions and trends of its own; fashions and trends which are very often unwittingly inspired by those players at the very top of the tree, who are admired the most. So it was that the slavish imitation of drummer idols continued. In the early/mid 80s numerous players went into hock for drum sets that looked like this.......
and sported a hairstyle somewhat akin to this.......
(Incidentally; having been born with naturally curly hair and over my lifetime spending many thousands of pounds to tame it I have always been baffled as to why anyone would inflict this upon themselves).
As the 90s dawned tastes changed once again with this drum finish rising to supreme popularity.......
with the coiffure of choice being along these lines........
But you know what? All of this is fine. Not only is it completely harmless and quite a lot of fun, it is also an invaluable part of the process of maturity. When you discover that the replica, signature drum set doesn't actually meet your needs you've grown a little more and learned another lesson. Quite possibly you've also started a vintage drum collection of the future, so it's all good whichever way you look at it.
Anyway the thing I learned from my at first very limited (highest possible quality, lowest possible quantity) range of drum icons, was that they had listened to the broadest possible range of players. So I began to investigate who my heroes' heroes were. (Apostrophe reference again).
People are quick to flag up omissions in this collection of estimable drum legends. Sometimes they are correct and there has been a genuine oversight, Equally frequently though the omissions are deliberate. There are all kinds of amazing players I have chosen not to include, as amazing though they are, their playing didn't cause me to change anything about what I did. Just like when I first discovered Mel Lewis (who became a firm favourite and major influence) it's a really good idea to check out the players your peers admire. Also though it's important to have the confidence not to like a certain player merely because they are flavour of the month. You don't have to like music just because your friends do, Make your own mind up. Decide for yourself.
Sometimes it's just a tiny detail you might take from another player. It could be Duffy Jackson's ride pattern, Don Lamond's bass drum sound, a groove alchemy inspired by fragments of Purdie, Porcaro, Garibaldi and Clark, but the sum total of all this input is laying the groundwork for your personal lexicon of drumming, from which will come the vocabulary of your own voice.
You've probably spotted by now that almost all of my personal drum icons either come from the past, or of those who are contemporary they are long-established. There's a good reason for this and it isn't that I don't listen to the current favourite and emerging players. Far from it. I'm constantly checking out what is happening at the vanguard of the international drum scene, both for my own benefit and that of my students. However, whilst I continue to add new layers to what I do, I'm not going to be falling into the trap of the self-reinvention midlife crisis. I've seen one or two great players make this mistake, when in middle age they have renounced a well-established voice and identity and tried to completely change their approach and sound. It's a bit like getting a sports car, much younger girlfriend, facelift etc. I'm not one for wrong headed goal setting ("If I'm not in a signed band by the time I'm 23 I'm giving up" sort of nonsense) but I sincerely believe that in your younger years it's a very good idea to develop a strong sense of your own playing self. Get to know who you are as a musician. Carve out an identity in your early decades, stick to it confidently, but constantly add new layers and different dimensions to what you do.
You've seen 80 players who I have admired in all manner of ways. Have a think about who means the most to you. In the vast majority of cases most will be entirely different to my selections, which is entirely as it should be.So to begin with imitate those you admire the most. Then paraphrase what they are saying. Then parse what they are saying, and once you have done that reassemble the resulting component parts as many different ways as you can think of. Don't fall for the limitations of Oscar Wilde's quotation at the start of this article, and most importantly don't ever be afraid to be yourself. That's who we're waiting for.
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