Barmy O’Riley

Two cartoons. In both, a man stands, watching a drummer. In the first, the performer is half-hidden, surrounded by a huge pile of drums and plentiful cymbals. Arms and legs akimbo, he thrashes out what is obviously a brilliant and complex solo. ‘You’re amazing’, the man says. In the second image, a different drummer sits behind a modest kit, playing ‘boom cha, boom boom cha’. And the man says ‘you’re hired’.

It’s a joke, hiding an eternal verity. People want drummers to keep the beat, not the bad company, as Dire Straits almost sang in Romeo and Juliet, possibly the finest love song ever written by a Geordie. (I don’t think ‘I’ll be Watching You’ really counts). All the hours we spend practising our paradiddles and ratamacues, our flams and drags, beating out our mammy-daddy rolls, all count for nothing when the song begins and everyone wants you to be safe and steady. It’s true that a bad band can have a good drummer, but no good band ever had a bad one. And for all the Buddy Riches in the world … let me re-phrase that, for there has only ever been one Buddy Rich, the best drummer in history, a fount of creativity anchored on extraordinary technique, albeit a rather horrible human being … for all the show-off geniuses, there are thousands of drummers who hide their lightning technique under a bushel of modesty, and are the more praised for it. When it comes to keeping the rhythm, less is definitely more.

Except …. when it’s not. Some bands would not be who they are, with a modest chap doing the minimum to keep the groove. To be specific, The Who would not be the who they are, without drumming excess. Which is why I gaped in astonishment this week, reading about their latest kerfuffle. They are, in my humble opinion, the best and most under-appreciated of the Sixties behemoths, as creative as The Beatles but with more oomph (and longevity, obviously), and much more interesting than The Stones, hilariously described by Roger Daltrey as ‘a mediocre pub band’. From the raw power and anger of their mid-sixties stuff, the My Generation and I Can’t Explain time, when the Kids Were All Right but angry as hell, a time when there was no Substitute for raw energy despite the cost in broken instruments, on to the modernity of Won’t get Fooled Again and Who are You, leading to the funky groove of Eminence Front, which sounds like the Cocteau Twins mixed with Prince, they combined authenticity and creativity with a kind of ‘we know who we are’ up yours attitude to life, so very removed from the middle-class art school-ness of Mick & Co., who basically just took R&B and copied it. And key to all of that, the power behind the drum throne, the driving force? Keith Moon: madman, subversive, probably bipolar, definitely a handful. And not really a man to go boom cha, boom boom cha. He never knowingly underplayed, as the British department store John Lewis might have put it.

So when Rog and Pete decided to fire Zak Starkey last week, Ringo’s son who has been channelling Keith’s original percussive barminess for years, it came as a bit of a surprise that the reason given was ‘overplaying’. It’s like complaining that the Mona Lisa didn’t smile, or that Jaws and The Omen were a bit scary. That’s the point. Overplaying is what the drummer in The Who is supposed to do. So, Rog and Pete, you stood in front of Moonie for decades listening to him destroy drums with his mad antics, knowing they were a large part of what made The Who such a big thing, and then you wanted Zak to play less? Like, subtly? Seriously?

I saw them live two years ago at Jazzfest in New Orleans. (Never been? Do yourself a favour; it’s like heaven, with better gumbo). They had the orchestra, which was a bit of a shame, but started the show with Who Are You, which made me cry with joy. Townshend did his arm whirling from the very start, and everyone dropped their popcorn, mainly in amazement that his limbs still work at his age, and in the middle of the stage, sitting behind an odious gold drum kit gurning like his predecessor, was Ringo’s firstborn. He was good, and did what was necessary to honour the originals, but he wasn’t exactly over the top. He was under Keith Moon’s top, anyway. And he sat there and said nowt while Townshend, who was a grumpy old man when still in nappies, and Daltrey, the world’s best known singing fisherman, argued and swore at each other on stage. They didn’t seem entirely harmonious in each other’s company. You didn’t get the sense they were itching to get onto the band bus and swap jokes after the gig. Apparently Zak’s demise started a week or so ago at the Royal Albert Hall (not filled with brass bands, as in my piece last week, to be clear) when Roger couldn’t hear himself sing over the sound of Zak’s drums. So he turned round and said they were going ‘boom boom boom’. I could have sworn they tend to do that. It was the onstage equivalent of a neighbour banging on the wall and shouting ‘stop that racket’. ‘We’re not gonna take it’, said Rog; and Zak was out.

And I thought hmmm. This, after all, was the band which had the world’s loudest studio monitoring system, which literally made your ears bleed, according to the woman I met, formerly their long-suffering PA, who told me she was dragged into the control room while the whole band giggled unkindly at the impact those absurd decibels had on her, blood dripping from both sides of her head. And they’re surprised that drums sound muddy? It seems that Daltrey, emulating the Pinball Wizard himself, is increasingly deaf, rather dumb, and blind to irony. That’s what happens when you don’t die before you get old. Discernment f f f fades away.

Anyway, apparently it was all a storm in a cymbal cup, and they are now the best of friends again, and far be it from me to suggest it might all have been something of a publicity stunt. If there’s any other reason, I can’t explain. (You better? You bet). Anyway, they no longer need a substitute, and hopefully Zak won’t get fooled again, and the kids are all right. But if they want a drummer to play less, not more, they’re welcome to give me a call. I’ve played since 1969, the year they released Tommy, and these days tend to play ever more minimally in every genre, largely through fear that if I do a mega drum fill, as was my wont as an immature teenager, I might fall of the drum stool. And I do have an age-appropriate drum kit, a 1961 Ludwig Super Classic bought in 1979 for seventy-five quid (or roughly five thousand dollars at today’s Post Liberation Day, tariff-inspired exchange rate) from a man in south London. He was the second owner, and told me he bought it in 1968 from a guy on a housing estate. He’d just handed over the cash when a gold Rolls Royce drove up, and Keith Moon got out. ‘I want that kit’, said Moonie, ‘and I’ll pay you more than this geezer’. Those were the days he was nailing bass drums to the floor and destroying a drum set per gig. ‘I know who you are’, replied the first owner, ‘and I know what you’re doing to drums. You can’t have it’. So my kit was saved for posterity, and just waits for the call up from Rog and Pete. They’re not my generation, but I know all the tunes. And I promise to play quietly.