[ ]Like my friend David D. Martin- gimme a Rock bio and I'll watch it or read it. Any music really. I'd watch a doc about the Banana Splits. Heck, I watched a doc about the Archies, and they were a cartoon band. I wish I had a dollar for every Rock bio I've seen. Talk about making a living from the music business. I'll watch a music bio about anybody and their auntie...I don't care who it is. But give me a bio of a band I love and it's like food or something. And when I can find answers to musical questions about this or that recording, even decades later, it's a real treat.
[ ]Back when ELP's stunning "Tarkus" album came out, there was a voice at the end of the impromptu Boogie-Woogie tune that was originally just a jam honoring legendary engineer Eddy Offord but was so good they used it on the record, and we didn't know what it said. It was a voice that obviously didn't belong to the band. It sounded maybe like a deep-voiced woman but it was hard to tell. It was a thick, drawl-y and heavy British accent. We thought we could make out the word "cheese" but that was about it. It sounded almost like the call letters and a nickname for a radio station, like maybe it said "W-M-O-Cheese." We didn't know what the hell it said, but you could hear somebody in the band (apparently Carl Palmer) repeat it and they all cracked-up as the song faded out, so it must've been funny.
[ ]Maybe 100 years later I read Keith Emerson's brilliant bio "Pictures of an Exhibitionist." He told the story about it and solved an ancient mystery. It turns out that the voice belonged to the cleaning lady who'd tidy-up the studio. Apparently she was a real character. She kept little stashes of booze hidden all around the place which they'd find but didn't care about. I guess it kept her jolly. Often in the studio they'd get rolling on a song and lose track of time and forget to order dinner. The only thing open was a nearby sandwich shop but they were about to close and usually had sold out of most things by closing time. They asked her to ring the shop and see what they had left. She said "They only got 'am or cheese." So THAT'S it! Sometimes I wonder why I get a boner for this kind of stuff but I do.
[ ]But I get an even stiffer Woodrow when I learn "secret" drum information, and when it comes to Bill Bruford, maybe the most interesting drummer to ever pick up sticks, it's a case of Elongatus Maximus. Bill was talking about recording "Close to the Edge," to me one of the most amazing pieces of music ever recorded, and for a million reasons, and the drumming (along with every other note from the other guys) is second to none. Since I got my first real kit I've farted along with that album probably a thousand times, hundreds anyway, and I couldn't play it perfectly if you held a gun to my head. Before you shoot...not many people could.
[ ]Everything about the album is incredible. Many Yes fans feel it's their best, and I can't disagree. There's nothing else like it, not even close. Again it goes for all the guys but it wouldn't have been the same thing in any way without Bruford. He was talking about the recording process and how the title track was recorded in sections over however many days it was, and spliced into one long song. I knew it was done in sections. The edits are flawless and noise-free. Back then they had to physically cut the 2" tape with a razor blade at a precise spot, not half a mm to either side, and then tape the tape back together. Nowadays they do it automatically by pushing a button.
[ ]I could tell it was edited because while the sections flowed perfectly into each other it was obvious that the whole sound had changed, and not just the instrumentation. The whole ambience changed. Although Bruford's snare had that trademark "POONK" sound going throughout the song, there was one spot where it sounded much drier, and it had more of a "POP" than a "POONK" or a "KANK." I thought maybe it was just room acoustics that day or sitars taking up the "ringing" frequencies, or the barometric pressure or biorhythms or the alignment of the planets or whatever, but it was less nebulous than that.
[ ]When they recorded "Close" they were still basically a "bar" band, although a successful one, and they still had to schlep their own gear. These days a drummer of Bill's caliber would have half a dozen kits given to him for free by whatever company he endorsed. with a dedicated kit just for the recording, but Bill used his one kit for everything. They were also playing regularly around England during the recording, and Bill would have to break down his kit after every session and set it up in a club somewhere and then do it all over again. To a drum dork that was interesting, but then he went further and said that he'd set up the kit for a session and the heads would be all beat-up from last night's gig, and he didn't change heads. That's why one part sounded different to me. He said that the snare sound was different on every section but I couldn't tell that until I went back and listened to it under the microscope. It was a trip and also nice to know they were human.
[ ]But what tripped me out, and I'm talking about completely fucked me up, was Bill's drumming in the intro, after the birds and the "boil" on the Hammond. I can't even describe what it is that makes that drumming so special, even to other drummers, but some of them know anyway. But in layman-drummer terms first and foremost it's frenetic and wild, but frighteningly on the beat. To this day I don't know how he played like that, even knowing it's Bill. He plays 16th-notes between the ride and the snare, which is a considerable jump, especially if you have a row of toms in between, like he did. It's so smooth and perfect it's like that's all he had set up on his kit, but then of course he comes in with the quirky-ass fills that come out of nowhere, because he can.
[ ]He'll be playing 16ths on every beat of the measure, which is all the notes you can play, but breaking it up into different patterns that weave around the beat and sometimes give the illusion that it's speeding up or slowing down (because of the amount of notes played), but the tempo stays the same. Bill will be flying along with flurries of 16ths and then out of nowhere do a fill that goes from 16 notes a measure to four or five, and then back into the main rhythm. It's like the song slams on the brakes and does a perfect tumble like a gymnast in a routine, lands perfectly back on its feet, right on the beat. That Bill.
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