Subject: Level 42 Digest, #245 ===================== * LEVEL 42 DIGEST * ===================== Digest 245 Tuesday, 11/22/94 98 subscribers Album of the week (until further notice!): Mike Lindup "Changes" Today's messages: Subscription base info and Thanksgiving treat! Phil Gould Interview ------------------------------ From: eric (Eric J. Hansen) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 94 18:48:03 EST Subject: Subscription base info and Thanksgiving treat! Hey: First, business matters: The following is the current subscribers base broken down by Internet country domain: Code Country Number of addresses ---- ------- ------------------- AU Australia 2 CA Canada 5 FI Finland 1 FR France 1 DE Germany 2 NL Netherlands 1 NO Norway 2 SE Sweden 2 COM USA commercial 42 EDU USA educational 25 GOV USA government 1 NET USA network 2 US USA generic 2 UK United Kingdom 10 Total addresses: 98 You'll notice that we are __very__ close to 100! I think I got requests for at least half a dozen in the past few days (it was probably that "blurb" post to rec.music.info I made...) Anyways, we blew right by "88" without stopping on it for one issue, but for the record, the 88th subscriber was ... You'll also notice that the number of USA commercial subscribers has really "levelled" out! ... So, now the surprise! Darrin Cresswel has graciously typed in an 11 (yes, _eleven_) page interview with Phil Gould. I don't know where this came from, but it should be *super*! Stay tuned! - Eric Administrator, Level 42 Mailing List ------------------------------ ------------------------------i------------------------------I------------------------------ From: cresswel @ no2sun.cray.com (Darrin Cresswell) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 1994 02:15:07 -0600 Subject: Phil Gould Interview And now for you reading enjoyment!!! This is an interview with Phil Gould that came from the Jan 1988 'Modern Drummer' magazine. One day I remembered I had it and I thought everyone would enjoy reading it. It should provide some more info about him for the FAQ. Also it should give us something other than Seal's scar to talk about!! Please excuse any typing/spelling errors. Enjoy! Darrin PS I almost forgot, my three faves are... 1> Dream Crazy 2> Fathers Shoes 3> Love Games This will probably change by next week! /=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/=/ Taken from "Modern Drummer" January 1988 Copied without permission "PHIL GOULD" By Simon Goodwin We are walking around the block from Phil's hotel to the concert hall. A car slows as it passes us, and some girls in it say, "Is it? Is it?" in loud voices. Phil says quietly, "Yes, it is." The car has pulled away by this time, but the girls' question didn't need an answer. It was rhetorical anyway. "It's the glasses," I say rather unnecessarily. Phil explains that he wears them for medical reasons and not as a trademark, but you can't ignore them. It is mildly disconcerting talking to someone who is wearing mirror lenses. What you see are two small reflections of yourself, and you know behind them there are unseen eyes looking back at you - or are there? It is easy to imagine that somebody who wears such things might be, on the one hand, an aggressive poseur, or on the other hand, diffident and withdrawn. Phil is neither of these things, He is a quiet, gentle sort of guy who is also highly intelligent and highly articulate. He is also the drummer in Level 42. I mention that last point because Phil said to me, "I admire people like Billy Cobham, Omar Hakim, and Vinnie Colaiuta, but I don't aspire to be like that. If anybody wants to hear drummer pushing forward the edges of what's possible on the instrument, then that person shouldn't come to hear me play. It's a mistake to come to hear me purely as a drummer, because I'm a songwriter and lyricist as well; it's all part of the process. It's all part of getting the idea across to people, whether it's a melody, a groove, a chord progression, and atmosphere, or a lyric. I don't wish to be seen as a drummers' drummer. I like to talk about any single aspect of music, but always in the context of the whole thing. If I'm talking about toms and cymbals and things, I like it to be in the context of the music. I'm not trying to apologize for this, and I don't want to appear modest or anything like that. I just think that too many drummers detach themselves from what is really important." Right. So Phil is the drummer in Level 42, and for anybody who is aware of the high musical standards within that band, these are credentials enough. There was a spate of musical bands who began to get exposure on independent record labels in the late '70s and early '80s in Britain. This, in many ways, represented a musical backlash against the anti- music values of punk, which was then in its death throes. Of all the emergent bands from that period, Level 42 is the one that has lasted and progressed in terms of creativity and success. That success really arrived in 1985, after five years of hard work. Three of the band's members: Phil, his elder brother Boon (guitar), and the virtuoso bass player, lead singer, and focal point for the band Mark King come from the Isle of Wight; they were joined by Londoner Mike Lindup on keyboards and vocals. That is the band, although there is a "fifth member," Wally Badarou, who is involved in the writing and arranging and plays synths on Level 42's records. Also, the band is currently augmented on stage by singer Annie McCaig and sax player Krys Mach. Phil's drumming is often quoted as being a prime example of the "laid back" approach, which so many musicians would like to have from their drummers but often don't get. But if anybody thinks that this style of playing can be boring, I would urge that person to see Phil at work. There is an economy in his playing. He co-wrote most of the songs and knows exactly what is required for each of them. The sounds he produces are clear and musical. There are also interesting sparks of originality in his use of crotales, electronics, and the remote hi-hat. Phil has developed a technique for playing standard hi-hat and cable-hat simultaneously with his left foot, while riding on both of them and bringing a hand across for the snare drum backbeat, but as with everything Phil does, this is for the sake of the music, not for the sake of demonstrating dexterity. As is so often the case, the interview with Phil covered more ground than there is space to reproduce here. He told me about the struggle he had when, as a lyricist, he was torn between the desire to put across the conservationist message that he strongly believes in and the need to produce lyrics that every body else felt more comfortable with. He mentioned the time when Mike strained his larynx and couldn't sing, so rather than cancel a dates, Annie sang Mike's parts, and Phil (who these days doesn't sing on stage) sang Annie's (high) parts. This was something he took in his stride, because he knew the songs from a writer's viewpoint. Then there was the time that a large, heavy bolt from the lighting rig about 30 feet above his head fell and landed on his floor tom. It says something for the strength of Pinstripes that it bounced off, but if it had been Phil's head.... Yet another occupational hazard of being a rock star. PG: I'm at a point now that is very different from where I thought I'd be when I left the Isle of Wight to come to London. I had different ambitions. I really wanted to be a serious musician and arranger - something like Deodato. Having grown up, musically, in the post 'Bitches Brew' era, with the Mahavishnu Orchestra and all the jazz fusion of the mid-'70s, I was infected with a basic seriousness about music, I felt that you really should learn all you could learn. It wasn't until I went The Royal Academy of Music, in London, that I realized I couldn't be taught. I was a self-taught player, and I found that I didn't trust teachers. I rebelled against the whole thing, which may have been rather stupid, but I wanted to find things out for myself. The best teachers allow their pupils to discover things. They don't just ram it down their throats. I didn't want to have a textbook way of expressing myself. I wanted the freedom to do it my way. SG: But doesn't the training give you the technique and vocabulary to express you ideas? PG: Of course it does. Wynton Marsalis said that the greatest musicians always have the best technique, like Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis. There is the creativity combined with the ability to put it across. But I used to identify with pop music as well as jazz. I was always interested in songwriting and lyrics. I believe that people will remember you for what you say, rather than the way you say it. Stewart Copeland isn't the greatest drummer ever, but he will be remembered for being Stewart Copeland. Lenny White probably doesn't have the greatest technique in the world, but he is a great drummer because he sounds like himself. That's what I wanted to do - be myself. SG: Did you pass the audition for The Royal Academy as a self-taught percussionist? PG: Well, I had reached Grade Five on piano, but I had only had six months of percussion lessons. I had part-time lessons at The Guildhall School of Music. I only had one lesson on timps. My teacher, Bob Howes, made me aware that what's important in these situation is to present yourself to the examiners in a certain way. So I learned the first half of each piece _immaculately_ and the second half rather sketchily, because Bob said that they always stop you half way through. [laughs] I saw the examination report, and they were giving me B plusses and A's. And I was thinking, "How can they give me such good marks, when there are all these kids who have been doing youth orchestras and stuff like that for ten years or more?" It's presentation and probably making them think that there is the potential there to be developed, but I realized that the standard isn't so high after all. That made me disillusioned. SG: Did you gravitate towards specializing in drumkit after becoming disenchanted with The Royal Academy and its classical "no drumkits" policy? PG: No, it had been important to me since I was 15. The seminal thing was when I picked up the "Fragile" album by Yes. There was a picture of Bill Bruford sitting behind a gold Ludwig kit. The snare drum was flat, and the tom-toms were almost flat. I didn't know much about it at the time. I'm not sure whether I even knew what a snare drum was, but I could see myself in there somehow. It was in my mind for about a year that I wanted to be a drummer, and then my brother formed his first band. They wanted a drummer, and I put my hand up. My mother bought me a secondhand Olympic kit, and that was it! Within the first week, I was beginning to see my life mapped out before me. It was a folk-rock band, so that was my first influence, I started listening to Fairport Convention, and my first drum hero was Dave Mattacks. I learned a lot from listening to him. For instance, I tried to work out how he got that snare drum sound. I had a 4 1/2" Royal Ace, and I kept tightening it up, but I could never get that top that he seemed to be getting. Then I realized that he was playing across the rim as well as hitting the head. That was my first major breakthrough. The next stage was hearing the Mahavishnu Orchestra for the fist time. Getting into Billy Cobham was a life-changing experience, The first really good drumkit I had was a Ludwing Vistalite, which I bought from Drum City in 1973. At that time, the first copies of Spectrum had started to appear, and all the drummers were talking about Billy. There was a picture on the cover of this big black guy with a clear kit; it was as if the space age had arrived. I played that album every day for six months. As far as anybody can do anything new on an instrument, I think that Cobham was doing it at that time with the drums. It had a far-reaching effect; it started to change everybody's attitude towards the drums. It was good for me and for a lot of people of my generation, because there was this thing "jazz," which so many of us had kept at a distance, but he had come form jazz. so after getting heavily into people like Cobham and McLaughiln, I began to explore the lineage: through Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and even as far back as Louis Armstrong. It was good to open the door. Too often people try to segregate music. SG: A lot of the people you have mentioned are front-line players, not drummers. Does this indicate that you were interested in the whole musical style, rather than just drumming tradition? PG: Yes, it was the overall effect of the music. I was impressed with drummers, and I bought everything that Cobham put out. Then I heard "Big Nick" by Tony Williams' Lifetime. It was madness on the drums, but it was so musical. Listening to Tony Williams taught me more about being musical on the drums than anything that had gone before. He always seemed to be in total harmony with the other musicians. If he had a low-key bass player, he'd move out a bit more, If the bass player was moving around, he'd cool off. Drums are a fantastic instrument, but they aren't something you should deal with in isolation. There are great soloists, and there is a lot you can do with drums outside the group situation, but I don't particularly identify with that, I don't see the point in doing clinics or going to see clinics, because I don't want to see drums put in that light. When I was listening to people like Charlie Parker and John Coletrane, I was listening to the melodic and harmonic structures and asking myself, "Why the hell are they playing those things? Why?" It wasn't enough just to sit there and let it sweep over me. I wanted to understand what it was all about. Drummers can be such a weird breed sometimes. You know that old joke: "How many drummers does it take to change a light bulb? One to do it, and four to talk about how much better Steve Gadd would have done it." There are so many drummers who like to sit around checking out other people's chops, but they don't really hear things musically. They are not aware of the chord changes, the key of the song, or anything. I think it's a mistake to enter music on that basis. You have to think musically. When I was playing in semipro bands in the mid-'70s, I found that the gap between what I was playing and what I was listening to was so great that I decided that I had to learn to be what I wanted to become. It was then that I started working on piano Grades, studying for "A" Level music, and thinking about going to music college in London. SG: But having achieved that goal, you didn't see it through. PG: Well, as we were saying earlier, right or wrong, I decided that the sort of musical education that I'd become involved in wasn't really for me, and I had a burning desire to actually get out there and play. SG: Which brings us to Level 42. PG: Yes. You see I first met Mark around 1975. We both lived on the Isle of Wight, and he was a drummer, too. There was a time when we were playing in the same band - two drummers. Then for some time, we found our paths crossing: I'd be in a gig and leave, and he'd take over, or he'd be in a gig and leave, and I'd take over. There was a bit of rivalry, but a close friendship grew up. We played together in '77 for a Greenpeace benefit concert with myself on drums, and Boon and Mark switching between guitar and bass. We didn't get much of a response, but it was the first time that that lineup was used. In 1978, we all moved up to London for different reasons: I went to college, Mark worked in a music shop, and Boon went up to find work playing. After about two years of trying to find our way in, or what we thought was in, we began to realize that we were the only people we could communicate with. At the end of '79, we started jamming together, and Mike Lindup got involved. There were quite a few independent record labels springing up around that time, so I got the owner of one to come and hear us. He agreed to put up the money for our first record, and I left college to concentrate on the band. SG: It seems that, if Mike hadn't appeared when he did, you might have become the keyboard player and Mark could have been the drummer. PG: It was a strange situation. Mark was a drummer who became a bass player and started singing. Mike was a percussion student; that's how we met! My brother Boon was a bass and sax player who became a guitarist. And although I loved drums and percussion, I still had visions of myself on stage behind a grand piano. I wanted to be Keith Jarett. We were all slightly reluctant in our roles. I started writing lyrics one day, because nobody else wanted to. But there was that chemistry between us; it's hard to define. SG: How did the style evolve initially? PG: That's just the way it was. Someone else called us a jazz/funk band. We were jamming and writing songs together, and the style was that of four particular individuals coming together in that situation. SG: What about the musical relationship with Mark? You have played together as drummers, but he has become something of a monster bass player. PG: He is a great natural musician. When we used to do percussion things together, I always used to do the top line. For instance, we'd be doing a thing with Roto Toms, and he'd use two large Roto Toms and a floor tom while I'd play the higher stuff. We did this on the "Official Secrets" album for M - just two drummers and a click track. Everything else went on afterwards. The roles in Level 42 can change, because Mark will be filling every eight bars, like a drummer, so I can find myself doing what the bass player does: just locking things together. Some of the stuff is played with bass and snare drum together - four on the floor, or just one bass drum beat instead of a pattern, because there's not a lot of room for much else. There's a lot of syncopation in the top-line stuff as well, so the drummer in the band has to lay it down, It is restricting sometimes, but we share the same rhythmic concepts and we enjoy playing together. I wouldn't do what he does on bass if I were a bass player, and he wouldn't do the things I do on drums if he were a drummer, but it works the way it is. He could play with a tighter drummer like Steve Ferrrone or a more technical drummer like Omar Hakim, but there's something about the way I play that lets him do what he does. It's something to do with letting people have enough space to do what they want to do. I believe in _the groove_. There is a clear progression from African music to jazz. If you listen to West African music, you can see the lineage - the way they went to America and picked up the trumpet and piano instead of the kora and kjembe. Jazz, like African music, is all about repeated cycles - the grove. It's like life: repeated rhythms always turning around. It's not one idea followed by the next idea. I think that the groove is a more essential aspect of music than the harmony. Rhythm is the driving force. That's where you can lock in with other musicians. SG: Coming to the subject of your own playing: I notice that you sometimes play left-hand ride on the hi-hat and sometimes right. There must be situations in which you favor one over the other. PG: When I play left-hand lead on the hi-hat, it is usually something straight: 8ths or 16ths. When I play with the right hand across, it's usually because I'm looking for certain effects. For instance, in "Hot Water," I do a pattern that involves playing groups of three 16th notes, but the cymbals are open on the middle note of each group. I can't get the same effect with the left hand, so I cross over. Whether I'm playing on the hi-hat with sticks or not, I nearly always have my foot moving on the pedal. This gives a metronomic effect, and it also keeps the cymbals opening and closing slightly. I'm not a left-handed drummer, but sometimes it makes more sense to play that way. SG: When you do fills from a left-handed lead, you still lead off with the right. PG: I haven't analyzed it. I've purposely tried not to do that. I can come out of a fill with either hand. I might want to play a crash on my right, or on my left, or maybe both together. Not a lot of thought goes into it. You just go for certain effects. Sometimes you hear things and you think, "How did he do that? How did he get that sound? How did he get out of that?" You think about it and work it out. Then you program your body, and you forget about it. Your body remembers, and when you're playing, it just comes out. It's like being "on line" - being a computer. You press the button, and the information flows freely. SG: So did you, at some time, program yourself to lead with either hand, or did you, as a self-taught drummer, just fall into the habit of playing ambidextrously? PG: I'm definitely right-handed, but I think that people who can't play left-hand lead are probably just _telling_ themselves they can't do it. I said that I am self-taught, but I did have three lessons in the first week to start me off. I had been trying to work out the drum part on "Alright Now" by Free, and I found that it was easier not to cross my arms, but to play the hi-hat with my left hand and the snare drum with my right. But then the drum teacher came along and said, "Look, you are right-handed, and on a right-handed kit, you've got to play like this!" It wasn't until I heard Cobham, about a year later, that I realized that there _are no rules_ - no restrictions. I kept going back to that in my mind, but I wasn't strong enough to do it. When we started touring with the band about six years ago, I found that I was playing very simple drum parts that had developed in the studio. We were writing in the studio, and it often wasn't until after we had been performing a song for a while that we would realize what could really be done with it. We weren't always getting the best out of the rhythm tracks. So there I was playing these very simple drum parts. What could be easier than playing hi-hat with the left hand? I found that I had a lot of freedom of movement with the right hand. I could do something on a tom-tom over on the right, without having to worry about how to get back to the hi-hat. SG: Do you still work the same way in the studio? PG: No. Actually, it's not as much fun as it used to be. It's a more controlled environment now. It's basically down to time. We don't have a lot of time in which to record. We did 'World Machine' in five weeks and 'Running In The Family' in seven, which by today's standards is quite quick. There's a lot of technology involved, usually to save time. We use sequencers and click tracks, and on the last album, we used a Linn 9000. With these kinds of restrictions, it isn't enjoyable; you're working to a specific end, trying to achieve something. You can't be spontaneous in that environment, so usually most of the creative thinking happens before we go into the studio. SG: What did you use the Linn for? PG: It's on "World Machine," "Lessons In Love," and "Children Say." I programmed the bass drum and snare drum parts on the Linn. Then I went out and played the hi-hat, the cymbals, and the fills on the kit. Some people might find this surprising, but there were reasons for it. I'm not altogether happy with them, but it is expediency at work. For instance, we had eight days, at one point, to record a single and we couldn't get a drum sound we were happy with for love or money. I'm still not sure how I feel about that, but I was able to get an interesting combination of sounds. I put a couple of snare drum sounds together and programmed that in as a basic backbeat. Then I went out and used the snare and hi-hat on the kit, and I was able to do some things with the snare that I wouldn't have been able to do if I had had to play the backbeat; I wouldn't have been able to get the same attack, because dynamically, it would have been impossible. So I get a much more interesting combination of sounds with the snare in the room and the snare on the Linn than if I had played the whole thing. The potential is there, and I'd like to get back to that sometime. I'd like to do it, not because we can't get a drum sound or we're short of time, but for _positive_ creative reasons. Drummers have to be aware that you have to be able to play with machines. Fortunately, I don't find it a problem, although sometimes it isn't as much fun. SG: How do you lock in with the sequencers on stage? Is there a click to bring you all in together? PG: There is often a click. It depends on whether everything starts simultaneously. On "The Chant Has Begun," there's no click; I count in, and Mike starts the sequencer on my count. It just start with a riff. "Hot Water" is another one like that. SG: Your count needs to match the speed on the sequencer, doesn't it? PG: Normally, we find that we've played a song so many times that picking up the correct tempo isn't a problem. It's a basic musical requirement anyway. I was at a Billy Cobham clinic in London In 1978, and someone actually had the audacity to ask, "How do you keep time?" A drummer actually asked that question! Time is a concept that you have to understand. It isn't something you discuss. SG: But there must be secrets for developing it. Surely that's what the person was after. PG: There are ways of developing your awareness of _tempo_. There were things they taught me at the Academy, like thinking of a particular piece of music that you know is at, say, 100 beats-per-minute. So you put that in you mind, and it takes you to that tempo. You can educate yourself to see so many beats-per-minute on a piece of written music and count yourself in at that tempo. I don't have that type of time, like I don't have perfect pitch, but when I have a musical idea in my head, I can always count that number in at the same tempo. Something like "The Chant Has Begun" sounds the way it does, because it is in a certain tempo and at a certain pitch. You hear the melody in that tempo and in that pitch, so you can sing it in your head and lock into the tempo. SG: Mike controls the sequencers, but you control the drum machine, don't you? PG: Yes, in the present number we are using it for, Mike plays the first two notes. I click the sticks to bring everybody in and start the Linn with a footswitch on the downbeat. There have been problems, actually. One night it felt too slow, and I went to check the tempo button. Now, one of the major design faults on the Linn Drum is that the tempo is set with a knob you spin around. It isn't something you can program into it, and the slightest touch can send the tempo up or down several beats. On this occasion, I tried to adjust it, which isn't easy while I'm playing. I knocked it, and it went flying off. It's very fragile. Even the vibrations on stage affect it. You might have it set at 118, but you can watch the display and see it wavering between 118 and 119 because of the vibrations. It doesn't give you a lot of confidence. SG: Your snare drum sound, particularly on record, seems to be much crisper than is currently fashionable. PG: That goes back to my very early days, trying to copy Dave Mattacks' snare drum sound, which turned out to be a rimshot. In the process of doing that, I tuned my snare drum up so high that I got used to it being like that. I've always liked my snare drum high. Over the years, it has gotten slightly lower, but I always hear snare drums up there. I have had some grief from engineers about this, because for years, the norm has been a _big_ snare drum sound. Drums have suffered from a swing away from the player having control of the sound. There was a time when they would put some mic's around the kit, and it was up to the drummer to produce the sound. Then all that changed, and the drum sound became the domain of the engineer. So you would like to take a drum into a studio, and the engineer would use his effects on it and completely change the sound. So it didn't really matter what sound you had there to start with. Then there was the Linn Drum mentality: People wanted to hear real drums sounding like a Linn and have been reluctant to accept anything else. Now, I like to think that people's ears are beginning to open up again and accept new influences. The groove isn't dictated by the fact that you've got a huge snare with a great big handclap on it. The groove depends on whether the musicians are playing music that _has_ a groove. It doesn't matter if your snare drum goes "tock" or "durf." If the music isn't grooving, the difference in a drum sound isn't going to help it. You can listen to things that Prince has done recently, and a lot of the snare drum sounds are _small_, like on the old James Brown records. I've always heard it like that, so if it becomes acceptable, I'll be pleased because I'll be able to tune it back up again. SG: You have a very open, melodic type of tom-tom sound. Is that something you have always gone for? PG: This goes back to the Cobham influence. I've always seen the tom- tom fill as a melodic statement. It should be as singable as the melody, the last piece of the solo, or the vocalist's last statement. I think that, if you think musically on any instrument, you will play musically. Take Talking Heads: Chris Franz isn't a particularly great drummer, but in the context of the ideas, his playing is musical. Anybody doing anything else in that situation wouldn't allow the ideas to come across to people. What you get from the music is the idea. There's no overembellishment, with stuff being thrown at you that you don't really need to hear. It's as musical as hearing Miles Davis play "In A Silent Way." You could say that less is more. Having said that, I _do_ like to hear a bit of [sings and mimes a busy tom-tom fill] sometimes. [laughs] SG: What about your use of Simmons? PG: Rather fragmented at the moment. In "World Machine" where we have the Linn playing a pattern that goes across the beat, I play off that on the Simmons. Mostly the ideas are based on things that happen in the studio. I do think that the potential for Simmons is great, though. I've got the MTM on the rack and the SDE, which I haven't set up yet because I haven't had the time. But I've been reading the manual, and there are lots of things I mean to explore. A drummer can play keyboard parts, set up a pad and play an arpeggio or hold a chord. It's going to be a big challenge to drummers in the future. SG: Isn't this getting away from the drummers role in music? PG: I'm really not a purist. I think that a drummer being able to sit behind a set of drums and have access to other ways of thinking can only be a good thing. A keyboard player can play percussion sounds and vice versa. Through MIDI, I can link up to a keyboard and get sounds from that. It only can be healthy; the nature of music is changing anyway. At one time, there was resistance to the electric guitar, and even now some people won't accept an electric bass as a bona fide instrument. Any limitation that is placed on people's musical thinking is a mistake. Okay, so it's easy for people without much musical knowledge or talent to sit behind a bank of electronic equipment and make something resembling music, but you can't ever take away the quality of ideas. Whether people are using technology totally or producing all the sounds acoustically, it all comes down to the quality of their ideas. Neither good technology nor good technique can cover up the fact that you have nothing to say. SG: Could we have a run down of your acoustic equipment now? PG: Right. I use Tama's Granstar series drums. The Granstar drums are normally produced in power sizes, but I specially requested mine in standard sizes. In other words, the 12" tom is 8" deep rather than 10" or 12" deep, and the other toms are of similar proportions. The head sizes on my rack toms are 11", 12", 13", and 14". The floor toms are 14" and 16". The bass drum is 16" deep by 20". The snare drum I'm using at the moment is the Artwood series, 8" maple. I have used the Bell Brass drum for a long time, which, if anything, is better for producing the top end that I like, but I am enjoying the Artwood for a change. SG: Did you say an 11" rack tom? PG: Yes. I used to have two 12" tom-toms, with the first of them tuned quite high. I tried a 10", but I seemed to lose something with it. So Tama offered to make me an 11", and it's a great sounding drum. It isn't so easy to get heads for it. That's the only drawback. SG: Why do you want standard-depth drums, rather than power sizes? PG: I like the attack with the shallower drums. I've got an Artstar kit, which is deeper. There's something about the sound that is not immediate enough. I was using a Superstar kit for six years, before Tama gave me the Artstar, and after a while, I went back to the Superstar. I'm just used to hearing and tuning that size of drum. SG: Tama has revamped all of its lines recently. Do you see the Granstar as an improvement in terms of sound quality, or is it mainly a matter of updated fittings? PG: There is a brighter quality to the tone of the drums. I put that down to a different finish on the inside. I had to put some very hard lacquer on my Superstar kit to get the extra edge, but the Granstar has it already. The bass drum is one hell of an improvement. For me, it's the best bass drum that Tama has ever made. I've had an Artstar bass drum of the same size, and I've listened to drums form other manufactures, but this one suits me best. SG: I notice that you use a 20", when most people in your situation would use a 22" or 24". PG: I have always seen the _snare drum_ as being the center of the sound. The bass drum is a solid, tightly packed sound down there, while the snare actually occupies more space. I like the Harvey Mason type of bass drum sound: wooden, almost like someone knocking on the door. It's the immediacy again. I have actually recorded with a 24" bass drum, but I didn't like it. It's so big that it makes me feel sluggish. I'm not a muscular drummer. I don't have the physical power of some players. I don't hit particularly hard, but I like the sound to be _there_ when I hit the drum. I don't want to have to wait for it. SG: On the subject of new gadgets, I see you are using the rack system. PG: Yes, the new Power Tower system. It's really good stuff. It's much more flexible than any other system that I know. You can have any setup you like with it. All the mic's and all the cymbal stands are on a rack with the toms. There's nothing on the floor except the bass, snare, hi- hat, and the stands for the rack itself. It gives the appearance of the kit much cleaner lines, but it also makes everything much easier to position. B.P., my drum tech, really appreciates it, because although it took quite a long time to set up initially, once it's there, you've got all the positions and angles already set. It's easier for the sound guys, too: The mic's can clip on in exactly the same position every time. SG: A problem that I would expect to find when you have drums, cymbals, and mic's mounted on the same piece of metal is one of sympathetic vibrations. PG: Yes, that could be a problem. The way we get around it is to have rubber mounts for the mic's. This negates any vibrations that go from the rack and up the shaft to the microphone. The toms are gated slightly to prevent spillage, and that helps. SG: What mic's do you use: PG: It's a Beyer 88 on the bass drum, AKG 414s for the crotales and bell tree, and Shure 57s for everything else. SG: What about sticks and heads? PG: The toms all have Pinstripes on top and clear Diplomats underneath. The snare drum has a C.S. Pinstripe batter and a Diplomat snare head, and the bass drum has a Pinstripe batter and a silver front head by Tama. My sticks are Pro-Mark 707, Simon Phillips model. SG: Cymbals? PG: All Zildjian. The hi-hat on my left has 14" Quick Beat top and 14" K bottom. The remote on my right has a 14" K top and 14" Z bottom. Then there is a 16" medium thin crash, a 16" paper thin crash, a 17" K, an 18" heavy crash, a 20" K heavy ride, and an 8" splash. We've mentioned the bell tree, and the crotales are tuned to F, E-flat, and B- flat. When I was in America, Colin Schofield of Zildjian asked Lennie DiMuzio to pick out some cymbals for me. I got some incredible K crashes and crash rides. I wouldn't use those on the road. Actually, I almost feel like locking them away; they are such wonderful sounding cymbals. It was at that point that I realized we had made an impression on people. I couldn't get a deal with anybody for love or money, for years, and when people start doing things like that for you, it must be some measure of achievement - something to be proud of. It took me back to a time when I just couldn't afford hi-hats. I'd just bought a new Ludwig kit, but for two years, I couldn't afford a decent pair of hi- hats to go with it. It's amazing that it seems like, one minute, you can't afford cymbals, new heads, or a bass drum pedal, and the next minute, people are throwing stuff at you. SG: It's the problem about endorsements: The companies need to give their products visibility and , therefore, credibility, but the paying customers are getting wise to the fact that, with all this stuff being given away, it pushes up the companies' overheads. So the prices in the music shops are higher. They say that half the money spent on advertising is wasted, but you can't tell which half. PG: Some companies are a bit careless, I think; also, some drummers take liberties. They go to the warehouse and just grab everything they can. They really go for it. Also, I know people who reluctantly accept new kits when they would really be quite happy with the old. But I've had two new kits from Tama in the last seven years, which I actually think is reasonable. I've been touring during that period with the name on my kit, so there is a point at which it balances out. The product is seen and heard by so many thousands of people each night. SG: What do you like to have in your monitors on stage? PG: I have a Meyer bin and two Meyer wedges at the back, and a wedge on either side. I have drums through everything, so that I can get an across-the-board sound, and I don't have to have anything too loud. I have a spread of keyboards and sequencers and the bass in the wedges at the side. I don't have vocals, guitar, or sax. I can hear enough of them anyway, and if I have too much stuff coming through my own monitors, it can get confusing. It's odd the way things happen with bands. As a band moves up, the situation changes. When you are playing in clubs, you might be competing with each other for the sound, but you're _hearing_ each other. You can't escape from the guitar bellowing out of the back of the amp. and the bass is right here. Because of the closeness, it's easy to lock in together. But when you play in larger places, you are more spread out, and even with all the sound equipment to help you, you hear things differently. There are occasions on stage now when I _assume_ that Boon is going to be on the beat with the guitar chord, and I assume that Mark is hitting the bass with that bass drum beat. I _sort of_ hear these things, but not in the way I used to. It comes down to the years of experience we have had playing together. SG: Is keeping fit important to you? PG: Generally, the sets keep me fit at the moment. When we get out to Europe, Nigel, our "minder," is going to get us all swimming and doing a bit of running. At the moment, I do about 20 minutes of streching before the show. It's some basic yoga that I've picked up. Playing the set is definitely a physical workout; I come off drenched in sweat. Before the current tour, we did about six weeks of flying about on promotional things, so we weren't in the best of physical condition before we started. It has taken a bit of time to get from practice-room chops to stage chops. That takes about twice the energy, and the muscles can tense up. I'm not a particularly powerful guy. I think that Omar Hakim and I are the two skinniest drummers in the world. [laughs] SG: It's the second time you referred to your build, but I would say that you use a rock technique rather than a jazz technique. Are there any tricks you have found for developing this? PG: It's stick control. The kit is all laid out so that, if I close my eyes, I know where everything is. I don't have to look where everyting is. I just bring the stick down. It's wrist action, but the weight of the stick is very important. That delivers the power. I hold the stick quite far back, so that I can get a lot of forward motion from the wrists. Actually seeing Omar Hakim play made me sit down and appraise myself. He's so loose. It made me realize that I had been burning off a lot of energy needlessly, when all that was required was to lift the sticks higher and be more fluid in my movements. SG: Do you think that you are, generally, able to assess your achievements and the effect that they have had on you and on other people? PG: There was probably a time when we thought we knew more than anybody else, but now we realize that we are just one of thousands of situations that are going on all across the globe. We're just part of the picture. When you take things in that context, you get a little more humility and become more realistic. For me, making a record is a year-long process. It's all the thinking that goes into it; I'm building up ideas over the course of a year. Most of these things come into play when we get down to doing the album. I'll call on all those trains of thought and chance encounters. Then when the albums start selling two or three million instead of 300,000, it's very satisfying because you know that you are getting through to a lot more people. There are people who hear it in their cars, on the radio - not just the people who buy the record. But you have to keep the perspective that a pop record can only enter someone's life for three and a half minutes, or on and off for a summer. You are only there as part of the backdrop. SG: I think you underestimate it. With a lot of people, it can be a driven force in their lives - certainly for periods in the lives. Like the girl who was at last night's concert is going to tonight's concert and is spending today standing outside the stage door to catch a glimpse of you. It looms large for people like that. PG: There are a lot of people who have an idea of what we're about or what we are as people, and it's probably far from the truth. You can go down to Italy and have thousands of kids all jumping all over the car. Why? It's the myth of the music business. There's a glossy picture of you on an album cover or in a magazine, and they think that you are something different and special. I respect that, but maybe in the course of time, they'll come to realize that we are just human beings who have something to do. The important thing to remember is that, when you are putting out an album with messages to people of 16 or 17 who are evolving in their own way, you have to frame it in a responsible way. It's easy to use an album as a soapbox or a confessional. You can preach to the world, or you can pour your heart out. It's important to do it in such a way that people will understand that we don't have any answers; we can only raise certain questions or tell a story. From our own point of view, we must be aware of these responsibilities as well as the commercial responsibilities to the record companies, but we must enjoy what we do. We have to believe all the way down the line that _we know_ what the shit is an nobody else does, because once we have to go to other people for advice regarding the music, we are in serious trouble. We may need financial advice, and we may need to go to a designer if we want some flashy clothes for a video, but when it comes to the music, we have to take the rap for our decisions. When we go out on stage, we have to believe the way we play to be right. You can refine things so much that you refine all the joy out of you playing. It can become too robotic, and then it's just like "a job." There are some numbers that do restrict what I do on stage, and some numbers that, frankly, I don't have a lot of pleasure playing because I just have to be so aware of the sequencing, _but_ it's still the best fun I ever had.