For the love of music, drums and life-long friendships, Part One: 1965 - 1987.
As is often the case, as I’m writing this I’m listening to Full Sail by Loggins and Messina, which was released in 1973, when I was 18 years old. Back then, we would find the album in our collection (often in a bookcase or milk crate), look at the album cover (a cool picture of the young Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina, on a sail boat somewhere in the Caribbean, or the Hawaiian Islands), take out the inner sleeve (which sometimes had the lyrics printed on it), get the LP record out of the inner sleeve, put the record on the turntable, use a special cloth to wipe the record, put the needle on, and crank up the HiFi system! Boy, those were the days! Now, I just find the record on YouTube and play away…
Caveat; when I mention dates below, they can be taken by a grain of salt; after all, we are talking about stuff that happened 50-60 years ago! However, the dates are probably correct, given a year or two. Also, this is my recollection of events and dates; if your recollection is different, please let me know and we can talk!
Furthermore, when it comes to playing drums, I’ve probably spent twice the amount of money on equipment than I ever made playing, so I’m definitely the quintessential musical hobbyist! You know what they say about playing drums; if you spend more money on equipment than you make, then you are a hobbyist. If you break even, then you can be considered a semi-professional, and if you are a professional, you are living in your mom’s basement! What do you call a drummer that just broke up with his girlfriend? Homeless!!!!! Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha!!!! Furthermore, I am indeed left handed, so I set up my drums as a lefty.
Also, I’m a firm believer that the drums are an ensemble instrument, made to be used in a band setting. I love live music, and I love playing live, which never fails to excite me. I know that in this day and age thousands of drummers make a living posting covers on YouTube, with them playing along with some drum track, but to me that’s not what it is about; we become our best when we play with other musicians, especially when we have a chance to play with people who are better than us (and in my case, that’s pretty much everybody, ha, ha, ha!) If I’m the best player in the band, then we probably don’t sound very good!
My love of music really started on August 17, 1965 when I got a suitcase gramophone player for my 10th birthday, complete with a speaker in the lid. It kinda looked like the one below:
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| What a suitcase gramophone player looked like in the 1960s. |
The thing played 33 1/3 rpm LPs, 45 rpm singles, and I think it even played the old 78 rpm records as well, but I think you had to change out the needle. The needle? Well, back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, and troglodytes like myself were doing our hunting and gathering, a record player had an arm with a needle attached, which transmitted the information in the grooves in the record to the amplifier and the speakers. Now of course, there is a resurgence in vinyl, and millennials are singing the praises of the “warmth” of a vinyl record, and drool over first pressings. When I bought my first CD back in 1986 and traded in my little LP collection for a Zildjian crash cymbal, I never thought that vinyl would come back, but here we are!
Anyway, my 10th birthday present also came with my first record; the single Save Your Heart for Me, by Gary Lewis and the Playboys (Gary Lewis was the son of comedian Jerry Lewis). So, that’s how it all began!
For the next couple of years, I would spend whatever little money I had on records; Rubber Soul, Help and Revolver by The Beatles, and I would also buy their singles without even listening to them. Back then we had a little record store in Hokarangen, the suburb of Stockholm where we lived. A really cool place, they had kinda like a bar, with some 4-5 turntables, and you could listen to the record before you bought it, via what looked like old style telephone handsets, without the mouthpiece. I could spend hours in a record store, browsing the album art, and checking out the latest releases. BTW, Rubber Soul and Revolver are still some of my favorite albums, hands down! Keep in mind that all during the 1960s and 1970s when I was forming my musical tastes, Sweden had a government-run radio and TV system, so we were limited to the Sunday Hit Parade to hear some new stuff, or we could tune in to Radio Luxembourg to hear some new hits, if we could find the station. It started to change a little bit by the late 1970s, but when I moved out to California in early 1981, the ability to listen to a bunch of radio stations with all kinds of music was absolutely wonderful!
1967 changed everything when The Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band record came out. Ringo’s bom-bom-pa, bom-bom-pa beat made me wanna play the drums, like millions of kids all over the world. Being a 12-year old kid living in an apartment, getting a drum kit was out of the question, but I got some drum sticks and a Ludwig practice pad, which I put on my chair, and I would bang on the back of the chair like a ride cymbal, and beat on the practice pad as a snare, and just stomp my left foot to mimic a bass drum:
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| My old Ludwig Practice Pad, a piece of rubber cut to the Ludwig Keystone stapled to a wooden base. This was my first "snare drum"... |
The late 60s were of course the golden days of music, when the music of the time helped shape the thinking of us baby boomers. In around 1968, my friend Chino and I got to play at his friends practice cellar, and I remember playing Creedence’s Suzie Q for a couple of hours. Chino was playing through a full stack Hiwatt amp to left of me, and my left ear was pretty much deaf for three days afterward. But we were rockin kids, so who cares!
This is probably when I got drumming lessons at school, as
an extra-curricular activity. The school
had what I believe was a four-piece Japanese kit, and once a week I got
lessons, taught by a nice old dude.
However, since I didn’t have a kit of my own (we were living in an
apartment, mind you), I probably never practiced, not even on my practice
pad. I think the lessons only lasted for
one semester, and after all that I still couldn’t read drum notation.
Since our apartment building had room for some small businesses in the basement, for some reason, and for a short while, there was a sort of music store at the end of our apartment building. They had an old Ludwig kit set up in a sort of sound-proof glass enclosure, and I remember trying out the kit for a couple of minutes, before they told me that time was up. It was probably pretty evident that, being a twelve-year-old, I was not a real customer… But I had gotten a taste of playing drums, and the rest is history!
Also in the fall of 1968, Chino and I went to see The Hollies and The Small Faces, who were playing in Stockholm as part of British Week. Later on, when Steve Marriott went on to form Humble Pie, the album Rockin the Fillmore (which came out in 1971) became one of my favorite albums! Steve Marriott was truly a rock legend, and like many rock stars, met his maker way too early.
1969 was yet another great musical year, The Beatles Abbey Road, and Led Zeppelin II were both released. Led Zeppelin II was again a game changer for kids who wanted to play drums; we had never heard anything like John Bonham! Ringo had his style, but it was laid back and he used his playing to support the song (as we all should), and Charlie’s playing was kinda sloppy, but John “Bonzo” Bonham was different, his incredibly powerful and inventive playing did not just support the songs, it took the songs to a whole other level. Also, we had never heard anybody play triplets on the bass drum before, and that was simply mind-blowing (when I saw Led Zeppelin live in 1973, it was like a religious experience, with Bonzo starting off the show at 8PM precisely, with his signature beat for Rock and Roll). Also, besides the big band cats from the 40s, nobody played a 26” bass drum, but John did! Both Ringo and Charlie played 20” or 22” bass drums, and now came John with his massive Ludwig kit, big toms and big bass drum, and two timpani drums as well! Crazy! Also, if I remember correctly, with my money from my summer job at PostGirot I also bought my first Stereo System, complete with turntable, separate speakers and an amplifier/tuner.
1970, and life was great! I had saved up enough money from my summer job to finally buy my first drum kit, a well used Premier four-piece with Imperial Inch heads, which meant that it was difficult to get heads for this kit; “normal” US Remo heads did not fit correctly. I think it was wrapped in yellow contact paper, which I proceed to strip off. It probably came with Zildjian cymbals, crash, ride and high hats. 20” bass drum, 12” rack tom, and a 16” floor tom with a no-name snare, It probably looked something like this:
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| Vintage British Premier kit, 1950-1960 |
Nevertheless, I was still living in an apartment with my parents, so I really didn’t have any place to practice. Around 71-72, I got to use a little spare broom closet in my high school where I set up my drums, so at least I could play without driving my parents and neighbors crazy! Also in 1970, my buddy Chino and I went to see Jimi Hendrix with Mitch Mitchell on drums (Mitch was also a drumming genius) and Billy Cox on bass, and we also saw the Rolling Stones for a brief while (they were playing at a soccer stadium, and a bunch of us kids stormed the stage, so the cops shut down the show). Furthermore, a bunch of cool records were released; the Woodstock album (which I played ‘till the needle came out on the other side of the record), Led Zeppelin III, the Who Live at Leeds (nobody, and I mean nobody has ever played like Keith Moon!), The Beatles Get Back, and The Rolling Stones Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! What a great, great time!
Let’s not forget Disco; my buddies Chino, Lennart, Thomas and myself had started to go to Disco’s around 1968-1969, using fake school IDs to get in to the clubs (remember, we were 13, 14 when we started going out, but we were pretty tall for our age, and with our fake IDs the bouncers would usually let us in). Our favorite Disco was Cat Ballou on Sturegatan 12 in Ostermalm, a swanky part of Stockholm. One of the most popular disco songs of the time was Venus by Shocking Blue, which came out in 1969, and we would continue to frequent the Stockholm Discos probably until 1973-1974, when pretty much all of us got drafted into the compulsory Swedish military service. On Wednesday nights you could get in to Cat Ballou for half price before 9:30PM, so on Wednesdays you would see a line of teenagers outside of the club lined up to get in! Julle the bouncer had a sweet spot for the young ladies, so they usually got in! That Lady by the Isley Brothers which came out in 1973 was yet another of my favorites; I remember a couple doing The Bump to that song, what a riot! After about 1975 we just threw parties at our apartments or parent’s houses, and the Disco craze kinda died out by the late 70s.
In 1971(ish) Chino and his brother Maffi started an original band “Syndikatet”, and they played around Stockholm. Lennart and I were recruited as roadies, we were dressed in matching pink full overalls, hauling around three full stacks of Marshalls. We would ride in the back of the van, and we were coooool, because “we are with the band!” Around this time I had my ABBA moment; Lennart and I were with the Syndikatet boys at a car dealership in Stockholm looking for a tour bus, and Bjorn Ulvaeus showed up in a rusty old VW bug with some blond girl in tow. We knew who Bjorn Ulvaeus was, since he had played with the Hootenanny Singers and he had also been a substitute teacher at my school, but we didn’t know who the blond was (the blond was Agnetha Feltskog, who became a member of ABBA. In 1974 ABBA won the European Eurovision song contest with Waterloo, and the rest is history…).
Also in 1971, I remember Chino and I putting together four speaker cabinets for Syndikatet’s PA outside of Chino’s parents apartment on Russinvagen in Hokarangen; Chino had got a carpenter to cut out the speaker cabinet pieces out of Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF), and Chino and I put the cabinets together using screws. The band had bought eight 12” speakers, and we put two speakers in each cabinet, and wired it all together. Chino or his brother had bought Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells a Story, and we had put the speakers in the window so that we could hear the record outside; every 15 minutes Chino had to run back into the apartment and turn the record over! Later, I bought those speakers for our band Synd ock Skam (more on Synd ock Skam later) , and I used those speakers for various bands up until 1979-1980, when I finally sold them (or gave then away, I don’t remember).
Also in 1971 a bunch more musical stuff was happening: Who’s Next, Tapestry, Led Zeppelin IV, Every Picture Tells a Story and Rocking the Fillmore were released. Also around 1971 we started wearing handmade platform shoes and platform boots, made popular at the time by British acts like Slade and Elton John:
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| Slade in their heyday: Jim Lea, Noddy Holder, Don Powell and Dave Hill |
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| Elton John’s platform boots |
One of the DJs at Cat Ballou was a Britt, and he set up a shoe store in Stockholm to sell platform boots and shoes, handmade in London. We used to go to his store every two weeks or so, to check out the new stuff. I ended up buying a pair of brown platform shoes, complete with silver toes and 4” heels. The idea was to wear bellbottom pants wide enough and long enough to cover the platform shoes, a crazy fashion!
Also in 1971, one of the most awesome records of all time (if you ask me) came out; Who’s Next, where the crazy but brilliant drumming by Keith Moon really stands out. In my opinion, Keith was never better than he was recording Who’s Next, and his influence is felt to this day, but nobody has come along to fully replace his style (Ringo Starr’s son Zac Starkey came close). Keith was like a demented jazz drummer, auditioning for a rock band! However, according to John Entwistle (bass guitarist for The Who, just in case you didn’t know), said that Keith never lost his place in the song, and musically he always knew where he was.
In the summer of 1972, Thomas, his girlfriend and her friend; Lennart, and myself used the EuroRail pass to travel around Europe for a month; we ended up somewhere on Spain’s Costa Del Sol, and at the little bar where we would usually eat and drink the British bar keep would play two records constantly; Every Picture Tells a Story by Rod Stewart and Tapestry by Carole King; to this day, those two albums are part of my favorite records of all time. Also, at the beach there was an impromptu bar, where the barman played American Pie by Don McClean constantly, so that’s another song that I won’t forget. Also in 1972, I saw Paul McCartney and Wings in Stockholm, who drew the largest crowd ever at Grona Lund, and I saw Free (of All Right Now fame) in Stockholm.
1973, what a great year! I had gotten my driver’s license in August, and promptly bought myself a black 1962 VW bug, which meant I had wheels! Last year of high school, and the world was my oyster! Chino, who had left school in 1971, had started working parttime at The Amplifier Doctor, a little music store run by Thomas Danko, where I met my friend Bjorn Skorge. Bjorn was also parttime, and he was a member of Synd ock Skam, my first band. Synd ock Skam was based in Vendelso, a suburb some 30 miles from Stockholm, consisting of Bjorn on bass, Janne Andersson on lead guitar, and Janne’s brother Sten Andersson on rhythm guitar. For some reason, they needed a drummer, and we started practicing in earnest in around late 1973, early 1974, with me playing my old Premier, which I recovered in a sort of red velvet covering. We practiced at Vendelsomalms school, in a sort of void basement, with a sand floor and no heating, and a rickety wooden staircase. Somebody (maybe Bjorn, Janne and Sten) had built a stage, so at least we were off the sand floor! However, by summer 1974 we temporarily disbanded, probably because I was going in to the Swedish compulsory military service, and my car had died in the spring of 1974, so I didn’t have any transportation. Also, in a fit of self-pity, I had sold my Premier drums, for really no good reason. Also in 1973, I saw The Who and Led Zeppelin in Stockholm. The Led Zeppelin concert was absolutely amazing, more like a religious experience than a show.
October 1974 – June 1975: Did my military service, didn’t play at all, but I sure complained a lot!
By the summer of 1975, I had gotten a little studio apartment, and enrolled at Stockholm University, studying Music Theory. I was pretty much a failure, and totally out of my league. Most of my classmates played piano, organ, guitar, sang in the choir, and had years of experience. I on the other hand loved contemporary music, had played drums in a little band, and I had no clue how to study. By the fall of 1975, I dropped out, and by early spring 1976 I started working full-time. Some other great musical news from 1975; Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run and Betty Davis Nasty Gal were released.
By the summer of 1976, I had saved up enough money to buy myself another old VW bug, and also buy my second drum kit, a wonderful British-made gold Hayman, a three-piece with a 22” bass, 13” rack tom, and a 16” floor tom. I also bought a Rogers Dynasonic snare, which I played for about five years. By the summer of 1976(ish) Synd ock Skam started up again, now with Helene Sjoberg on keyboards and vocals. Helene would play a borrowed Fender Rhodes 88 with a built in amplifier and speaker; now that was a heavy piece of equipment!
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| My Hayman drums, playing with Synd ock Skam around 1976. |
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| Synd ock Skam, circa 1976-1977: Janne Y playing his Stratocaster (I think he still has it), myself playing my Hayman drums and Bjorn S playing his Rickenbacker. Bjorn had wired up my bass drum pedal with a switch, and we had put a light in the bass drum, so that with every bass drum hit the light would come on. A super cool feature, and well ahead of its time! |
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| Synd ock Skam, circa 1976-1977: Helene S playing the Fender Rhodes 88 (I think). |
We played a few gigs here and there, and this was the time I also became the PA guy, having bought some old speakers from Chino and Syndikatet, and an Accuset mixer and amplifier. But transportation was always a problem, since we didn’t have our own tour bus or van. Janne had always had the dream of playing professionally, and he got a gig with well known Swedish dance band; Harmony. Same with Bjorn, he also wanted to try to play professionally, and got hired by another Swedish dance band. So, by 1977(ish) Syn dock Skam was pretty much disbanded, but we did a sort of reunion gig in 1978, which was recorded on tape by Bjorn, and was restored back in 2022.
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| Synd ock Skam reunion, April 2024. |
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| Synd ock Skam reunion, April 2024: Janne Y, Helene S, myself and Bjorn S. |
Here are a couple of videos that we shot that day, I’m playing Bjorn’s right-handed Roland drums. No PA, just old fashion rock and roll:
By 1977, with Synd ock Skam disbanded, I had started playing with Svedala, a dance and party band based in Nynashamn, playing my Hayman kit. We played a bunch of gigs (since we had a tour bus), and one night coming home from a gig, I’m riding shotgun in the tour bus, and in the rear view mirror I see the back door of the tour bus opening up. My 13” Hayman rack tom fell out, and I see some random guy picking it up and disappearing into the subway station.
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Svedala, circa 1977. In the top picture, from left to right: Band leader CeGe Alkvist, guitar and vocals; Bertil Kindberg, percussion and vocals; undersigned on drums and vocals; Hans "Busken" Johansson, bass guitar and vocals; Mats Persson, guitar and vocals; and kneeling, Gittan Nygren, keyboards and vocals. Gittan was also CeGe's live-in girlfriend. The bottom picture is from our practice place in Nynashamn.  |
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| Svedala, in front of our tour bus, an old Mercedes; the news clip is from 1977-1978, talking about an upcoming new years eve event. One evening on the way to a gig, I was driving and I crashed the bus! Like an idiot, I pulled out right in front of a car and they smashed in to us. That may have been the last time I drove the tour bus... |
Well, my drums were insured, and in 1978 (or so), I replaced the 13” Hayman rack tom with two Tama Imperial Star concert toms; 13” and 14” in a Platina finish, which kinda matched the remaining gold Hayman floor tom and bass drum. It then expanded to a Tama Imperial Star monster kit (I never played the full kit); 10”, 12”, 13”, 14”, 15” and 16” concert toms, a 24” bass drum and a 18” x 16” floor tom. I usually just played it as a five-piece, 13” and 14” mounted concert toms, the 16” concert tom with legs, the 24” bass drum and my Rogers Dynasonic snare, or some other smaller setup. The remaining Hayman drums were traded in to buy more Tama drums! One of the cool things about playing concert toms is that they can nest, so you can put two toms in one case! I played this kit until I moved to California in early 1981 (wasn’t gonna ship the monster Tama to California), when I sold the Tama to an aspiring female drummer (which at the time in early 1981 was pretty unusual).
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| Tama Imperial Star with concert toms, picture taken from the 1976 TAMA Imperial Star catalogue. My kit kinda looked like this, minus the 6” and 8” concert toms, and minus the second bass drum. Still a monster kit! I also used Tama hardware, such as the heavy cymbal stands with counter weights. Heavy! |
Also in 1977, two of my favorite albums were released; Rumors by Fleetwood Mac and My Aim is True by Elvis Costello.
The bass player in Svedala was Busken (or the Bush, translated literally); why he had acquired that nickname escapes me, but we played together in a few bands after I left Svedala around 1978 or so. Busken was a driving instructor by day, and like the rest of us played music parttime. Busken also played a big part in my life, in what will be explained below. Also in 1978, three great records were released; Dire Straits first album (one of my forever favorites), Love Tracks by Gloria Gaynor, which included I Will Survive (which I still play with my current band Smack Dab, but we play the Cake version) and C’est Chic by Chic (Freak Out!).
At around 1979, Busken and I joined a “mature” band (no, this was not sex-related, the name refers to the music we played, geared toward the 50+ age group), playing a bunch of polka-like music, among some contemporary Swedish pop hits. By this time, Busken had started playing organ, a Hammond B3 outfitted with a special dolly with four handles, and an accompanying Leslie cabinet with the infamous rotating horn. It would take all four of us in the band to lift up the darn thing on the stage, and Busken had also bought a trailer just for the Hammond and the Leslie. Crazy times! Our lineup consisted of drums (yours truly), Busken on the Hammond, the band leader (whose name escapes me) who played an electrified accordion, and Leif Jergefelt on guitar (I think...)
Around the beginning of 1980, Bjorn S and myself formed a little band with our friend Ola Lehnert who played guitar, along with Leif Jergefelt, who was also the guitar player from the “adult” band that Busken and I were playing in (again, assuming I remember correctly). We rehearsed at Mortensbergsskolan, which had a more suitable rehearsal space in the basement of the school, as opposed to the sand pit at Vendelsomalmsskolan. We rehearsed a handful of times, and it appears that we did at least one show with our old friend Thomas Danko:
By the way, Ola Lehnert now builds custom "boutique" guitar amplifiers; www.lehnert-amps.com.
Janne from Synd ock Skam had moved to California around 1979, to pursue a music career in Los Angeles. Mind you, Janne and his family had lived in Lake Tahoe from 1960 (or so) through around 1972, when they moved back to Sweden. So, in the fall of 1980, my friend Anders (Helene’s brother) and I had decided to go and surprise Janne, who was living in Long Beach at the time. I didn’t have any available cash, but I had a good paying full-time job, so I asked Busken (who was very wise with his money, and quite frugal) for a short-time loan, at a reasonable interest rate, and Busken agreed. Mind you, back in Sweden we usually got paid just once per month, usually around the 24th of the month, so being a bit short on cash toward the end of the month was not unusual. So, in November of 1980, Anders and I indeed surprised Janne in Long Beach, where we stayed for around 10 days.
A little side note about air travel in the early 1980s; when
Anders and I flew from Stockholm to New York for our layover, the air craft was,
as was common in those days, separated into a smoking section and a non-smoking
section. The two sections were separated
by a curtain, so if you happened to sit in the last non-smoking row, I’m sure
you were breathing a lot of second-hand smoke, no question! Also, on the way from New York to Los Angles,
when we had reached altitude, they opened the bar in the rear section of the
airplane, with one of the stewards being the bartender. You just walked up to the bar, ordered your
drink, and paid with cash, no problem!
If there was any turbulence, I guess you just hung on!
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| Visiting California in November 1980. I think this was taken in Irvine, where Janne had an aunt. |
By the summer of 1981, Janne had joined a wedding band named Whiskey, playing guitar and singing. Again, they needed a drummer, and I found a guy selling a complete Rogers script badge kit; 24” bass drum, 13” and 14” rack toms, and a 16” floor tom, and a Dynasonic snare. The kit also came complete with a couple of crash cymbals, a ride, and a set of high hats, all stands and cases, so this kit was ready to play, and I joined Whiskey! Later I also added the obligatory Roto Toms; 6”, 8” and 10”. Later I modified the Roto Tom stand so I only had to shlep the 8” and the 10”, but they were still heavy. Nevertheless, back then you gotta have Roto Toms!!!!
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| My white Rogers script badge kit and the obligatory Roto toms, circa 1981. |
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| Whiskey around 1982: Ron Robins on vocals, sax and keys; Janne Andersson on guitar and vocals; Dennis McFarland on vocals and bass and myself on the drums. Dennis was the band leader and general manager, and he also had the van and the PA. |
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| Helen and Dennis McFarland; Helen did the bookings for the band. Whiskey practicing at Helen and Dennis’ place in Buena Park, CA, probably around 1982. |
Around 1982(ish) I decided to sell my Rogers kit including the Dynasonic snare, minus the cymbals, and get something smaller. I sold the Rogers to a buddy of mine at work, and bought the kit that I wish that I had never sold; a Gretsch stop-sign badge kit in a wonderful reddish lacquer. I paid $400 (yes, that is four hundred dollars), for a four-piece, 20” x 14” bass drum, 12” x 8” rack tom, 14” x 14” floor tom, and a matching 5” x 14” snare. This was the perfect bop kit, but at the time nobody (except me) wanted this sort of kit, when giant kits ruled. The kit was equipped with a Slingerland tom holder, since the original Gretsch hardware at the time was not very reliable.
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| My Gretsch drums, which I bought for $400 back in 1983(ish). Today, a used kit like this would sell for some 2,500 bucks... |
Almost immediately, I ordered a 13” x 9” matching rack tom, and proceeded to violate the wonderful Gretsch bass drum by installing a giant Tama double tom holder, and I also installed new bass drum legs, instead of the flimsy telescoping Gretsch legs. A little later I added a 10” x 8” tom, to fill the kit out. Can’t leave well enough alone! I still played the same cymbals that I had bought with the Rogers kit.
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| Whiskey around 1982-1983: Ron R on vocals, sax and keys; Dennis M on vocals and bass; Linda (who’s last name escapes me) on guitar and vocals, and myself on the drums. By this time Janne had left to pursue his own music, and Linda had replaced him on guitar. |
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| Whiskey around 1983, playing a wedding (I’m sure) with Linda on the guitar, and I’m playing my four-piece Gretsch kit. |
Whiskey was based in Buena Park, and for about two years, we played a bunch of weddings and corporate functions around Orange County. Dennis was the band leader, had the PA and the van, and his wife Helen booked all the gigs. We were going strong until about 1983, when Dennis had a terrible accident. Dennis was an iron worker by day, building skyscrapers and other metal buildings. One day he was up 16 feet, and apparently a bolt broke and he fell pretty much on his head. From what I understood at the time, a 16 foot fall is really bad; it probably won’t kill you, but you could be seriously injured. Due to his head injuries, Dennis was never the same; he couldn’t play the bass anymore, and he passed away sometime between 1985 – 1988.
Even though Janne had left Whiskey, we remained good friends (to this day, mind you), and I remember helping him building a recording studio isolation booth in his studio apartment in Long Beach. This was wooden both, probably measuring 7' x 7' x 7', built from 2”x4” studs and MDF sheathing. I also remember dragging my Gretsch kit to Long Beach to help Janne to lay down a drum track, so the booth was large enough to house a small kit. Later, Janne’s isolation booth became the inspiration for my drum cave that I built in 2011. Janne, being much more interested in function over form, didn’t care that the isolation booth took up at least 50% of his studio apartment, he just wanted to record his own songs! In around 1986, Janne and I formed a little band along with our bass player Alan Earl, playing all originals written by Janne and Alan, and I used the expanded Gretsch kit. We named ourselves Zane in Zane, and played a few gigs around Orange County. We were pretty serious; I remember all three of us going up to Melrose Avenue in LA to shop for stage clothes!
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| Janne Andersson, playing with Zane in Zane, circa 1986. We practiced at my house on Ward Terrace in Anaheim, CA. |
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| Alan Earl, our left-handed bass player and song writer, playing with Zane in Zane, circa 1986. We practiced at my house on Ward Terrace in Anaheim, CA. |
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Yours truly, playing my beloved left-handed Gretsch kit, with Zane in Zane, circa 1986. I sold the kit in 1987 for $900, complete with cases, hardware and cymbals, and I’ve regretted it ever since…  |
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| Zane in Zane, around 1986 – 1987; general flyer designed by my wife Kathy, who also designed the logo. The picture was taken at the back of our house in Anaheim, complete with graffiti on the wall! |
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| Zane in Zane, around 1986 – 1987, Playing at Goodies. At this time, flyers were designed by true cut-n-paste, by pasting actual snippets of paper and then running copies on a copy machine. This flyer was again designed by my wife Kathy. |
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| Zane in Zane, around 1986 – 1987, Playing at Mugsy Malone’s. |
Here is a little Zane in Zane video:
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