The bass drum was a bastard. Picking it up was one thing. Walking with it was another. But carrying it the 1/2 a mile up the steep hill to Chris’s house was an undertaking that required about 6 stops, huge lungs, bulging biceps and a clear head from the night before. I could manage the 6 stops but, this sunny, Saturday morning, none of the rest.
Saturday morning meant band practice. Chris’s parents would always go out, until mid-afternoon, so their large front room was our rehearsal space. We ( my younger brother and I ) lived at the bottom of a quiet cul-de-sac, in a leafy, Surrey town. Chris’s house was at the very top of said cul-de-sac. This meant that guitar amp, guitar and drum kit had to be carried, bit by bit, piece by piece, up the hill.
Set-up took forever. Bloody ages. I could set up the kit in 20 minutes. Quick? Clever? Naah! Tiny kit. But the rest took for-bleeding ever. Amps wouldn’t work, guitars wouldn’t tune, mics wouldn’t work.
I had no knowledge of how any of them worked anyway. Phil, my 14 year old brother, knew how stuff was wired, how stuff should be connected, how stuff worked. 16 year old me could assemble my kit and then drink Pomagne.
These were the early days of Allergy. Rehearsal was a slow blues, All Right Now, a couple of Bad Company covers and Honky Tonk Women. And repeat. We were a four-piece; Phil & I on lead guitar and drums, respectively, Chris and his younger brother, Steve, on rhythm guitar and bass. These Saturday rehearsals attracted a few friends, a couple of girlfriends and the odd person who would sit in the corner, drink cans of Skol and, after a couple of hours, be confronted by Chris because no one in the room knew who they were. It happened every week. They were also some of the happiest days of my life.
I fucking loved being in a band. Four years later, when we were called Whiskey Bottle, we had a rehearsal in a mate’s flat, and played The Faces’ Stay With Me, over and over. Several times, it was fantastic. I mean, really bloody amazing. I had become a very good drummer. Simple, uncomplicated but solid as a rock. And dynamic. I understood how to drive the band, how to push the rhythm and the speed, how to slow things down. We had supported Frankie Miller in a pub in Guildford once and, after our set, I had gone downstairs to the bar. Frankie was talking to Chrissy Stewart, his bass player. I was standing behind them, trying to catch the barman’s eye. Frankie said,
‘No bad, those kids. Drummer sounds like Simon Kirke.’ I walked away, my ears buzzing, my face going red, my feet slowly leaving the ground as I floated, levitated, with the praise. Simon Kirke was my hero, the drummer I had copied, had spent hours listening to, the drummer that I had taught myself to play drums to.
We rehearsed. We played a handful of gigs. We got support slots with Frankie and Bebop Deluxe, and a few lesser known names. It lasted four years, until I left home, moved to Nottingham and gave my kit to Marty, my even younger brother. I think about those four years constantly. I am a much better drummer now, but only in my head. I haven’t sat behind a drum kit for 38 years.
Do I miss it? Not every day. Just most days.
Another lovely piece, Niall. If you’re as lucky as I was, Santa might bring you an electronic drum kit (I got a gently used Yamaha kit) . You can hook up your iPod and a pair of headphones and thrash the shit out of the kit without disturbing a soul.
I played drums in a band back in the day and I hadn’t sat behind a kit in probably 30 something years until a couple of Christmases ago. It’s like riding a bike! I fell off once and skinned my knee but eventually it all come flooding back to me.
You know you want to…
Thanks @billybob-dylan . I have a great story about sitting behind an electronic kit, for 60 seconds, 25 years on. It won me a bottle of champagne (not the story, the 60 seconds.) I might put it up here sometime.
By the way, this is what I was banging on about. Simple, uncomplicated, but dynamic drumming.
http://youtu.be/OKHLu7D7JKQ
Oh, and how good is Andy Fraser?
Great stuff again, @niallb. If you go on like this you’ll have written a book!
I haven’t played in a band (by which I mean one with gigs and bookings etc, not a one-off pick-up band) since I was university, and I still miss it. I’ve got to the stage now where if I’m playing with someone I go off into a dream and lose the thread of a song…not advisable, obviously. I need to find a select bunch of beardy old bastards to play with.
I miss the posts of Backwards 7 from the first website but have to say your posts are highly entertaining, well written and always seem to set off a wistful air of nostalgia in me whenever I read them. We come from the same era and you have a knack of transporting me back to a time I loved.
Never been a drummer (or any other sort of musician for that matter). However I have often yearned to sit behind a drum kit and have a right good bash. This is an itch that one day I know I will have to get rid of but for now your story was just fine. Thanks.
Lovely, Niall. It’s never too late to get back into music. Between 2003 and 2011 I had no band, and much of that time, I now realise, was a sort of mourning period. My old band was called Idiot Bear, which might ring a bell to anyone who remembers my original Word blog name, and was composed of me and my three best friends in the world. It’s hard to get past six years of gigging and making music with your closest friends.
I tried out with a few bands in the interim, but nothing was ever good enough, and then the Word blog came along and we had the idea of starting a good-time covers band, which was fun but ended up being about original songs, which I didn’t want to do (ironically, as it proved) so I stepped back. Then I ended up tinkling about with an idea for a Christmas song, called Katy – who’d been in the Word band – and there we were, a band. A duo, anyway. It happened quite by accident, but I couldn’t be happier that it did.
Nothing beats making music with someone you connect with in that way. Pick up yer sticks, man!
That makes it sound like the song was called Katy. Oh for an edit feature! I meant that I had the idea for the song, AND THEN called Katy, on the TELEPHONE.
I’m back in the studio (actually a garden shed, but a very well-equipped one) for the first time in ages, with a friend from a band from even longer ago. Strumming around recently, I suddenly recalled a song I’d half written and abandoned in the early nineties. Half an hour later it had a bridge and a third verse and I was on the phone to my bandmate from back then, who took my rough demo and is turning it into something wonderful.
My contributions will be well hidden in the mix, as my chops have blunted and was never terribly sharp in the first place. Doing a studio vocal is a sobering lesson in how deluded you can be about your singing ability. Turns out I can barely hold a note any more. Fortunately there’s technology for that sort of thing now.
At this rate we should have an album out by, oh, around 2048.
Lovely post, Niall. I hope that you write more of this kind stuff (and also share it with us).
Supporting BBD … wow. Did you get to meet Bill Nelson?
Ooops …. that should have read: ‘this kind of stuff’.
I’ve been kin bands, off an on, since I was 14 and am in two now – a folk/roots duo with a fiddle/mando player, and a 4 piece jam band style doing mostly original material and loose jam style philosophy. I cannot imagine not doing music TBH. Oh and I’m currently going through hell mixing a CD of original songs. Why do we do this to ourselves?
Thanks @raymond. I wrote about the BeBop gig on the old site. Lost in the ether now, I’m afraid. To précis, he blew the gig, at 5pm, because he had a large spot on his nose. When the seething promoter told us he looked straight at me. I had the worst acne you’ve ever seen. So, in truth, we were BOOKED to support BBD. It just never happened. The final dagger to my heart was that the promoter got the top local band, Peaches, in at short notice. We had to use their P.A. Our last song had been pinched, almost wholesale, from one of theirs, 6 months earlier. Halfway through it, they pulled the plug on us.
The 4 of us and my brother driving the van got paid a fiver.
Between us.
That is a wonderful, nostalgic post Niall. I have yet to find a better experience than being on stage with my guitar and feeling the power of a tightly synced kick drum and bass blowing right through me. Better than sex. Better than drugs. Better than sex and drugs. Just rock ‘n roll.
Great piece Niall. I caught the bug early, watching the Pretenders on TOTP and wanting to be them – any of them – instantly, because they looked like a gang, and a gang that had fun instead of hanging around drinking cider on a bandstand.
Since my schooldays I’ve been a bass player, then a guitarist, then a reluctant frontman. The music’s gone from blues rock to baggy to power pop, almost by osmosis. Now I’m back to being just a bass player, in a rock’n’roll band of fortysomethings. It’s harder to organise and keep up the energy levels, but nicer to have decent gear that isn’t held together with tape and prayer. I no longer have the need to be in a gang, and found out the hard way that being in a band with friends can be tough when someone has to be sacked. But as I am fond of saying, as hobbies go, it beats the shit out of collecting stamps.
I love your writing Niall. I’ve said it before, but you really should put all these stories in to a book.
Do yourself a favour, buy yourself a drum kit and relive the joy.
Life’s too short.
Ah … I remember that post now that you mention it, Niall.
I can’t help but feel that Bill must have been just a tad precious to have cancelled a gig because of a spot on his nose. Rock, and indeed, roll!
‘Precious’ wasn’t the word that Pete The Promoter used. It had less letters, as I remember.
Please, give the book idea some thought. I reckon you’ve got 2 sales you can bank on.
I can manage a few chords on the guitar and keep time on the drums but I’ve only ever played with…. er…. myself. Guitar lessons meant overcoming anxiety about playing in front of others which I’ve never really been able to get past. The Rock n Roll Fantasy camps appeal to me in theory but I know I’d be the guy at the back playing the triangle whilst those with the chops have a great time. I had a few lessons with Aynsley Lister, a man who I had paid money to see live and even bought CDs of, but when sat with him 1:1 I just froze. Not helped by the fact that en-route to one lesson I’d tipped a large latte down myself on the train, rendering me very damp and smelling a little more sour than usual.
Prompted by your warm prose, I’ve gone to the room at the top of the house – moved some boxes about – and set up my kit and had a play around for an hour or so. Hadn’t touched it for about a year or so and happy to report I’m as crap a drummer as I was when I first bought a kit – from the drummer of “seminal” Manchester punk band “The Worst” back in the late 70s.
Here it was in all its turquoise glitter glory at an early Fall gig.
http://www.punk77.co.uk/groups/worst2.htm
It was later trashed when I left in a rehearsal room in the Leadmill in Sheffield but picked another kit up five years ago – a small (and apparently rare) Tama jazz drum set from a car boot. It’s trashed really but have added some nice Ludwig toms and cheap Paiste cymbals and its good to go. Thanks for the reminder – and would recommend buying one. Highly therapeutic.
Mrxsg says life’s too short.
Morrison says highly therapeutic.
Billybob says you know you want to.
Bob says pick up yer sticks, man.
I like the old adage: when you’ve got an instrument, you’ve got a friend. How true.
Next stop: get some drums, Niall. Everything else follows on.
Thanks @disappointmentbob, that means a lot. I love the stuff you and Katy are doing. Keep at it, you’ve really got something worthwhile. I envy you.
Thank you, Niall. I really appreciate that. 🙂
My son has a Roland kit with mesh heads which he loves. They also make electronic hi hat cymbals which go on a regular stand. The Roland stuff sounds great and doesn’t annoy the neighbours although if you’re in a flat then the pedals can still be heard downstairs. They make a “noise eater mat” which they claim helps.
Thank you all for your nice comments. I am writing stuff – that is where this came from – but it tends to be short form pieces like this. I am just searching for the gel that binds it all together. I’ve got the opening chapter and the closing one, plus loads of ‘bits’. I must send something to a publisher, just to see if I’m going in the right direction, or wasting my time.
Having said that, I find it very therapeutic. Which, considering my mental history, is probably the perfect reason to keep going.
Thanks again. Your comments have made me very happy. Which is another good thing.
Lovely, as always, niall.
I’ve never been in a band, nor wanted to. Growing up surrounded by musicians rehearsing around me had a negative effect on me, I was the first (and only) child in our family to refuse to take any lessons in playing an instrument, the very idea to play the same stuff over and over again made me feel quite ill (as did hearing that going on in the house non stop).
I played, but preferred improvising and experimenting to being told what to do (no, I didn’t enjoy school either…) Also, not a group type personality, I would have lasted a week before telling the band that I quit!
The closest I’ve been to being in a band was writing lyrics for my brother’s thankfully short-lived band.
I met Chrissy Stewart a few times and always found him to be a most convivial fellow. In 1976-78 I was keyboard player for Dino & the Dolphins in Belfast, and their lead singer Dennis “Dino” Stewart (now sadly deceased) was Chrissy’s younger brother. When Frankie Miller came to Ireland in 1977 and 1978 we were his support band. The first time I met Chris was at sound check at Belfield College in Dublin. After that he jumped into our transit and we drove back to the Jury’s Montrose Hotel in Stillorgan. Chris was a big bear of a bloke, with long dark hair, and wearing a big Afghan coat. He had a half-drained pint of guinness as he stepped out of the transit. He put it in his coat pocket, negotiated his way through the revolving door, and then recommenced quaffing in the lobby. I thought that was the coolest thing I’d ever seen
He was a proper rock monster and could drink and ingest stuff without it having the slightest effect on his playing which was always full on, powerful and right on the money. I’d noticed at the soundcheck that he had a box on top of his amp. It was about the size of a shoebox, but stood upright, and it had a huge moving display, a bit like you’d see on an old fashioned stereogram. I’d never seen such a thing and asked him in the hotel bar what it was. He told me it was a tuner, and he’d bought it after seeing Rick Danko use one. The conversation went something like this:
Me: “Whaaat??? Rick Danko of The Band???”
CS: Yeh, I’ve met all the guys, Rick, Robbie, Levon. I’ve hung out at Shangri La, but of course they’re all out of it most of the time so they don’t do much playing”
Me: “Really? I thought they were, you know, organic?”
CS with a smile “Rather more chemical I’m afraid”
I was really deflated to hear this. And of course he was right. I loved The Band but had not been aware of their dug problems
By 1978 we had a residency at The Bridge Bar in Lisburn. Chrissy was over visiting his Mum one time and called in to see us play. We played a fair bit of Frankie Miller Band material and got him up to play one. He used our bassist’s instrument and amp, and sounded exactly like Chrissy Stewart
Oh, @vince-black, I want to kiss you! *anecdote of the year award*