Drum throne. Confessional booth. Same difference.
I wrote for Modern Drummer for over a decade. Backstage passes to the church of groove. I knelt at the altars of the real deal: Elvin Jones, Art Blakey, Terry Bozzio, Steve Smith, Jake Hanna (I mention Jake cause he was and is my favorite!) … the list goes on. Giants. Redwoods. First-growth forest. Sit with them five minutes and you felt the planet tilt a little, time signatures bending like light around a black hole.
Every one of them: Kind. Open. Generous to the bone. Laugh lines deeper than their pockets they created. They’d lean in, eyes twinkling like brilliant cymbals, drop a single sentence that rewrote your entire understanding of 16th-note triplets, then cackle like they’d just stolen your wallet and handed it back full of hundreds.
Then there were the others.
The wannabes. The second-growth saplings clawing for sunlight. Bitter. Small. Poisonous. Jealous little pricks who measured their worth in who they could shit on from a safe distance. Never played a note that mattered, never will. Spent their nights on forums typing “overrated” under videos of Vinnie tearing “Seven Days” a new asshole. Daytime: rude to waiters, rude to students, rude to anyone who might eclipse the dim bulb they mistook for talent.
Funny how the ledger balances. The greater the player, the lighter the ego. The louder the mouth, the emptier the pocket.
Canada gave us a few saints I need to name before the reaper erases the tape.
Bill Graham. Claude Ranger, Bob McLaren. Norm Villeneuve.
Different planets, same orbit. Bill—serious Jazz guy. Bob—the consummate studio cat. Norm—big heart. The biggest! And Claude, what can I say? To me, the best.
Hours in smoky basements, “drum hangs” we called them. Sitting. Sharing. Learning. Like a pagan ritual. Trading licks, trading lies, trading wisdom. Never once—never fucking once—did any of them slag another drummer. Not a word. You played something slick, they roared approval. You played dogshit, they roared louder encouragement. That’s grace under fire. That’s the code.
They’re gone now. Cancer, heart, old age the usual suspects. The kits are silent. But the echo remains: be good, be kind, be better than the assholes.
The wannabes are still out there. Still measuring, still sneering, still dying inside every time someone else gets the gig.
Fuck ’em.
Raise a stick to the real ones. The ones who knew the secret: the groove doesn’t care how big your dick is. It only cares that you show up on time, hit hard, and leave the world a little lighter than you found it.
Peace and love, boys.
Keep swingin’