Life with Bryan 

 Modesty in a man used to stadium drum risers is not perhaps what you'd expect. 
 Mickey Curry reveals the secrets of his soul...

To come across a drummer who has not read the Editorial in last month's Rhythm is surely a rare occurrence (what do you mean you didn't read it either?). But to discover one who is, without benefit of the earthy rational contained therein, prepared to offer up Ringo Starr as the greatest influence on his formative years, is quite remarkable. Mickey Curry is just such a man and although a further list of his heroes does include Elvin Jones, Buddy Rich, and Tony Williams it is typical of his modesty - and honesty - that he admits his real debt of gratitude is to drummers in the mould of Bernard Purdie, John Bonham and Marvin Gaye.

Marvin Gaye!!!??

"Yeh, Marvin Gaye was playing drums on a lot of early Motown records. He was actually a Motown session drummer before he started singing; I think he played on some of his own material too, but I'm not absolutely sure."

Well you learn something new every day, as they say, but then, when talking to a drummer with as impressive a track record as Mickey Curry, you are bound to learn at least a few new things...

A highly respected session drummer for many years he came to prominence in the early eighties through his work on stage and in the studio with Hall and Oates. This eventually led to his long standing involvement with Bryan Adams, with whom he is currently on tour. All well and good but I'm still intrigued as to why he quotes Marvin Gaye as an influence on his drumming?

"Well I've always kind of leaned towards guys like that, guys who really felt a groove, the old Motown drummers: you know the King Curtis records and the Aretha Franklin records. All those soul drummers...because the way they felt what they were playing. Or John Bonham, for heavy music, for rock'n'roll, the way he felt a track was just phenomenal.

"I kind of go through phases of who my favourite drummer is, but I think my biggest early influence was definitely Ringo. I remember being about seven years old when the The Beatles hit the States; it was 1963 and I thought 'God, what is that!' It kind of hit me in the gut, you know? I loved music and The Beatles really opened things up for me, I took up drums and started playing. I had a teacher in school who told me I should stick with it because he thought I was pretty good, but I never used to practise. The only way I studied was to put headphones on and play along to all my favourite records, then I'd have to cram ten minutes before my drum lesson, I'd go through it and try to figure it out...then I'd go in and get yelled at."

Either the cramming did some good after all - or the yelling did - because Mickey is now in the enviable position of being one of the most in demand session players in America. A list of his credits to date includes Tina Turner, Debbie Harry, Tom Waits and of course, most recently Bryan Adams, who has enjoyed massive success in this country since the release of the '84 album Reckless and the hit single it yielded, 'Run to You'.

Before 'Run to You' we hadn't really heard much of the Bryan Adams band over here; how long had you had a following in the States?

"There were a couple of albums recorded before Reckless, his first album was just him and his songwriting partner Jim Vallance; they wrote and between them played most of the instruments on the album. I came in on 'You Want It, You Got It' in 1981 and played on subsequent records after that. 'You Want It, You Got It' had quite a good following, Bryan was touring by then but 'Cuts Like a Knife' really set him up in the States. Then 'Reckless' just went through the ceiling, and from that 'Run To You' was the start of a run of huge hits for him. The two previous albums had been kind of a build up, then 'Reckless' really took it over the top. They had to re-release those early albums which was quite a thrill, but I was busy with Hall and Oates at the time so I couldn't do the tours.

"I was on the road with Hall and Oates in 1983, that was the 'H2O' period, and between recording with them and doing the tours I was real busy. It worked out so that I'd be off the road for a month or a month and a half and Bryan would be ready to go into the studio with his stuff. So I'd fly out to Vancouver, stay up there and work at the studio a week or two then come home. Unfortunately, I couldn't go on the road with Bryan but we maintained contact the whole time over the phone...'cos we're really good pals know?"

You say 'unfortunately', do you still enjoy touring or has it got to be a bit of a pain?

"Oh yeh I do. One of the main reasons I decided to do this tour, besides the fact that I love playing Bryan's music - it's some of my favourite work - was that I was itchy to get out on the road again. I really missed playing live, that contact with the audience and the energy levels you get.

"I'd been playing live so much, for five or maybe six years solid on the road, after that I'd take maybe a year off. Then I was in the studio all the time and it really felt like something was missing so I said to myself...well I think you wanna play live again! So I decided to talk to Bryan about maybe doing this tour, and it's been great; we've been having just great fun, especially here in Europe where the audiences are fantastic."

Surely it's not all a bed of roses on tour, things must go wrong occasionally?

"Well every once in a while you have one of those nights when nothing goes right for you. You forget what you're playing or you forget arrangements. There was a show when my seat broke, I fell off the kit and had to finish the song standing up. I felt like Dave Clarke.

"And on our first night at Wembley one of my floor toms collapsed and fell on my leg. I was trying to play my bass drum and kick this drum off my right leg at the same time. I have two bass drums so I should have gone to the other one but I didn't. Hopefully nobody noticed."

A lot of people dislike extensive touring because of the toll it takes on them physically. Do you find this a problem?

"I think I'm actually healthier on the road than when I'm at home. When I get home all I do is eat, I just lay around the house and eat. But when you get back out there you have to take care of yourself, you have to stay fit.

"People have a misconception about musicians, that it's a crazy life style, that you get drunk, you get high and you just run around crazy, go to parties and stay up all night, but it's not like that. I mean, there's work to do for two hours every night - that's a lot of hard work."

Does this desire to keep up with the job physically extend to mental preparation; is there a psychological aspect to your approach?

"I'm not a very confident person; I have a tendency to back off in my initial approach to new songs, new musicians or playing in a new room. And because every night you're playing somewhere else, I have a tendency to play very safe. Once you do build up a bit of confidence you can take some chances, loosen up a bit and throw some things around. Just getting up that confidence is the important thing, but without getting cocky, that's when you screw up, or you come off like a flash player and I'm not into that at all. I'm the last guy in the world who could play a solo, I just don't have the technique to do that. Ever since my early days I've had a different approach to drumming - to set it down and let the guitar player take the solos."

A laudable attitude indeed.

"I'd much rather play less than more, but every now and then I step on somebody's toes and that's when I have to tell myself to sit back and kind of let it be what it is; do what I do best, and that's to not really play. It's the old saying 'less is more.'"

Speaking of less being more, the subject turns to technology, and why Mickey is using less of the stuff these days rather than more.

"We use a click track with Bryan, and on a couple of tracks there's a Linn percussion part running through, just to get kind of a feel on 16th notes, or maybe on an upbeat thing, like all the 'ups' need a bit of a kick, so you've got to kind of cop a feel on what the machines are doing and I'll play along to that. But for the most part with Bryan it's all live drums with a click track, because a lot of times there are synthesizer parts or a sequenced part running right through the song, so the time has got to be perfect. I have a tendency to sit behind a click track a little bit and I think that maybe adds a live feel to some of Bryan's stuff...gives it a bit more rawness.

"With Hall and Oates there was tons and tons of electronics, my live rig with them was just so complicated and complex. We had two Linn machines running with two Simmons brains - a 5 and a 7 - all run through a Dr Click. We had triggers on all the drums, two kicks, snare, three rack toms and two floors were all triggered for certain songs. We would use MX1s and MXEs for the tie ins, for the triggering effects. Vince Gudman, a guy in Chicago, put that together for me, but it was very complex for its time - things are much simpler these days because the state of the art has changed so much.

"I found it actually affected my playing too, I hated triggering; it was horrible because if you didn't hit a drum with a certain intensity it wasn't heard, it's very mechanical and very stiff and I just don't play that way. My left hand was always riding my snare drum and none of that was coming out, none of those little grace notes were ever being heard and I think that's half of my playing. After a while though I worked it all out and it did really help me with playing in time, or with time, you know sitting behind it or maybe pushing it a bit.

"With Bryan though there's less to think about and I get to play more, to feel the thing and so every night it's a little different. We all kind of work together on it as opposed to letting the machines set the time and going with that. It's a little less studied I think."

With a series of very successful encounters already under his belt, are there any plans for the future, any further ambitions?

"Well I'll tell ya right now I'm looking at being pretty busy and I'm kind of amazed at that because when Hall and Oates stopped I freaked out and said, 'Well what do I do now? I've been with these guys for so long.' Bryan of course helped me out immensely by taking me in which was great, but I think the end of this tour will be...I think we'll be done with it in February.

"I just did a T-Bone Burnett record that will be out in January, he's talking about maybe a short little three or four week tour in America with just a small band. That will be a lot of fun to do. I think I would like to get back into the studio and work with a few more people, Steve Jones is talking about doing another record..."

(Yes, that is Steve Jones of Sex Pistols fame. I told you, this man gets around...)

"I worked on Andy Taylor's record Thunder and Steve Jones of course co-wrote and co-produced most of the songs with Andy, and he played guitar on the record. We got along just great, jonesy is a great guy you know and we had a lot of fun working on Andy's record, so when he said during those sessions 'Look I've got a deal, I'm going to do my own record' I said please don't call anybody I'd love to do it."

Are there any thoughts for a solo album?

"Uhh...it's something I think about quite a bit and in the end never pursue, but I am getting itchier about it. I don't know how I would approach a solo project, I think it would be more of a player' kind of record. If I ever did do a solo I think I'd call in all my friends you know."

When you consider the sort of friends that this man has acquired during his career, this may prove to be a drummer's solo album with something going for it. In fact, so exhaustive is the list of luminaries that Mickey has worked with he seems to have trouble bringing them all to mind. However, he does manage to come up with a few.

"I played on most of the last Los Lobos album, I actually played 'La Bamba'. For that I was literally in and out of the studio in an hour. I think we did two or three takes and they just said 'we'll pick one'. So they picked one, and that was it."

That record was a huge hit here and in the States, did its success come as a surprise to you?

"None of us could believe how big it went, and it hit here before it hit in the States. But that was one of those sessions where you knew that it was going to be good, it was all done live in the studio and it was just great fun, and really, really exciting. I worked on the last Steve Winwood album, I played one track on that, I played with Tina Turner and Carly Simon, Steve Jones and Andy Taylor, you know? And Roy Orbison, I played with him just last month, I don't know when that will be out...uhhh I'm trying to think of some big names."

Surely they don't come much bigger than that?

"Well I guess not, but I've worked with so many people it gets difficult to remember them all. A lot of work I've done, a lot of my favourite stuff has been with people you've probably never heard of over here. I did some stuff with a Canadian Heavy Metal band called Helix, and I played on a Tom Waits track, 'Downtown Train' from his album Rain Dogs...I've worked on so many projects over the last couple of years."

Even with the omissions it's an impressive list by any standards...

"Well I don't know, people call you up and say 'can you come in and work?' What am I going to say...no I can't I'm doing my lawn?"

source: www.bryanadams.com