During the '80s, Mickey Curry was the drummer on many of Hall & Oats' biggest hits. Today, in between recording and touring with Bryan Adams, he plays with the cream of the pop and rock crop: Steve Winwood, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Richard Thompson, the Cult, Alice Cooper, Carly Simon, Cher, Tina Turner...It seems wherever you turn, it's Curry who's getting the primo calls. So what does a guy like Mickey Curry have to fret about?
"Bob kind of goes for the performance at the time, and if you get a great take, he would rather leave it alone, even if there are mistakes on it," Curry explains. "If anything is radically wrong, then you can fix it, but Bob goes for the performance. And he also gets a great sound - a very live, ambient drum sound, which he applies to whatever project he's working on. But Richie makes very commercial records. Initially we tried to go for making pop songs and getting the hits, but the songs just didn't lend themselves to that, and (guitarist) Billy Duffy and (singer) Ian Astbury were both kind of fighting the commercial aspect of it." Duffy and Astbury were also having a heck of a time trying to communicate what they wanted. They seemed to know what they didn't want - and the things they were getting, they didn't want. Mickey couldn't help but begin to take it personally. Nothing was gelling, and the vibe was tense. With all of that, though, Curry is glad he stuck it out. "It really had nothing to do with me," he says. "It was just Billy and Ian having the problem of following up a big record. That pressure is incredible. Seeing guys go through that is not easy. "We used three different drumkits in the first four days, just trying to get a sound they were happy with," Curry continues. "We first got the big-room, rock drum sound, kind of what I'm used to getting, but they hated it. They wanted something drier and wetter sounding. A 'wet' drum sound to me always sounds like you're hitting a pillow or something stretchy or soft, like a snare drum with a really loose head. 'Dry' would mean flat with no echo and absolutely no effects. We ended up changing drumkits, moving them in the room, and using different heads. We did a lot of experimenting with mic' placement and stuff like that.
"We ended up with kind of an early '70s thing - dry and flat - but really upfront, as opposed to ambient and special. We used bigger toms, a bigger kick drum, Emperor heads, and fewer mic's. We didn't close-mike anything. We just used a couple of overheads. I was really happy with it once we got rolling. It was just difficult to try to second-guess what they wanted. They knew what they wanted to hear, but they just didn't know how to tell it to me. Unfortunately, when there's something wrong, I'm one of those people who always thinks that it's me." Mickey isn't alone. In fact, most professionals experience what is known as the Imposture Syndrome, the fear that you really are an impostor and will eventually be found out. It's a phenomenon so common that psychology magazines publish stories about it often. It's just that few people are honest enough to admit they've experienced it. "My biggest fear - and maybe I'm being too open here - but I'm always afraid that I won't be taken like a legitimate guy. I don't want to come off like a phony. It's like, when are these people going to realize that I'm not the guy they want? 'Call Jeff Porcaro, because he's the guy, or call Jim Keltner, because he's legitimate.' "When I went to Nashville recently to work on David Mullen's record, I had never met any of the people, and I thought, 'I ain't gonna cut it.' These guys hired me because they think I'm some hot-shot guy. But I'm going to get there and not make it." And for the first three hours of setting up and getting drum sounds, I was a wreck. That is the biggest fear for me: that I'm going to get into a situation where I won't live up to what it's supposed to be or that I won't come up with that new legendary drum fill that everyone wants me to come up with." Fortunately for Mickey, the Mullen project turned out to be a great personal success. He does, however, recall one incident where he didn't cut it. "It still bothers me to this day," Curry admits. "I got a call in 1986 to do a track for David Sanborn's A Change of Heart album. Phillipe Saisse was producing, and David had written this thing that was really complicated. They had a chart for me, and David, (bassist) Anthony Jackson, and I spent all day on it, but I just couldn't cut it. It was too complicated for me.
"After that," Mickey says, "I made it a point to get my reading chops together, but at the time, I didn't even think about reading. I'm sure if I went in now, I could do it and it would be fine, but at the time my reading was bad, and I also thought I had to give them exactly what was on the chart, note for note. If I had approached it from a different angle, I could have played something and made it work. But I didn't do that. We ended up programming a drum part and putting my samples on it. "It was really embarrassing for me, but David made me feel fine about it, like everything was okay, and he thanked me for coming down. And six months later, they sent me a gold record, which was so cool. I'll never forget that. That's the kind of stuff that makes you feel good about working with people. It could have been disastrous, but he made it fine. "On a few projects after that," Mickey says, "I made sure people had stuff charted for me. I'd take the demos and the charts and go through them, practicing putting things together. I also have a friend in Connecticut, Mo Potts, who is a drummer who helps me now and then with things. He teaches, and he's good at breaking things down and simplifying them. Every now and then I'll run over to his place and say, 'Help me with this.'" Practicing - when time permits - helps Curry in the variety of work he gets called for. But some situations call for a little more than technical ability. "I played on a Tom Waits album called Downtown Train back in '81," Mickey recalls. "On the title track, he couldn't describe how he wanted the drums, so he described everything in colors. He was saying, "There's a kind of a green here and then a red here. I want that kind of brown thing in the middle.' It was unbelievable. But do you know what? I got it. I don't know how, because I really didn't think I understood at the time. But I came up with an idea where I would tune everything really low and play with mallets, and he loved it. I don't think it's a great drum track; it's kind of crappy, actually. But describing sound is not an easy thing."
Click for a larger version The Richard Thompson records Mickey's recorded, Daring Adventure (1986). Amnesia (1988), and Rumor and Sigh (1991), also come to mind when Mickey contemplates the diversity of music he plays. "With Richard, I get to bash on a couple of things and then do a couple of really creative, interesting things. Jim Keltner always gets the really good tunes, though," he laughs. "And then I listen to the records, and Jim always plays so beautifully that I go, 'What am I doing on the same record as this guy?' On these records (produced by Mitchell Froom), though, they go more for getting an emotion or a feeling, as opposed to just stomping out a solid drum part. A lot of that stuff is setting moods, and tones. It doesn't necessarily mean playing kick, snare, and hi-hat. There's a lot more expression through different sounds. I don't necessarily play a drumkit. I can remember doing a couple of things on Amnesia where I just tapped on my knees with my hand, and we put a mic' there. That was one of the percussion parts. I was doing a Sam Phillips record at the same time (produced by T-Bone Burnette), and we were getting into some really strange things like taking two snare drums and slamming them together. We'd also have these little noisemakers and whistles and plastic tubes, which, when you spin them around, make sounds. "T-Bone and Mitchell are kind of pals, and they both come up with some strange things. If noisemakers are laying around in the room, then that's what we'll use. It's a different brain. It's not me going in and thinking about snare drum sounds. It's going in and thinking about an actual part for this song to get the guy's point across. We have fun, and I just give them whatever it is that they need to hear." In fact, Alice Cooper once said one of the reasons he enjoyed working with Curry so much on Hey Stoopid was because of Curry's great sense of humor. "Uncle Alice," Curry laughs. "He used to come to the session every day with little goodies like cannolis and dole them out. He's one of my favorite people. He made me laugh more than anyone. He's a wonderful person, and he just let me go; whatever I wanted to do was fine with him. We went through pre-production without a hitch, and then when we got into the studio, all the tracks were two or three takes at the most. Some were first takes. "I wanted to keep that album rock," Curry continues. "I wanted to be true to my own simplistic playing. When I have to come up with innovative, creative things, I kind of choke because I'm not really good under pressure. But I played the less-is-more theory and just did what felt right. I kept the fills to a minimum. My main concern was getting a good sound because we were at Bearsville - which is a great room for recording drum sounds - and I wanted to make sure we got as much out of that room as we could. "We got a big rock drum sound. Peter Collins was producing, and the first day in, we set up the drums, placed the mic's, and taped some stuff. We got a great sound immediately, which was really encouraging, because sometimes you get in and it takes forever, like on the Cult record. And we just went from there. We had the songs so well rehearsed that the timing was perfect. We got into the studio just as the energy level was right. Everybody knew the material, but we weren't fried on it, and we just played." How does Curry get his famous rock sound? "I like to use as much of the room as we can get. Ambiance always works well. Compression also works well because my left hand always drags on the drum after I hit the backbeat. It takes away from the groove. So for the big backbeat, we use as much of the room as we can get and then we compress the close mic's so that all the little drags and stuff are down underneath. That helps a lot for the way things groove for me. "Every record is different. It depends on the project. On most of the rock records, I use a 22" or 24" kick drum. I have a whole variety of snare drums, although I've been using a brass piccolo snare on a lot of projects. It's just kind of like a gunshot, really loud and bright. I also have an old Ludwig 8" that I have used on certain things. It has a wood shell with a metal finish. I use mostly small rack toms because they get the attack - especially now in the studio, where sounds can be fabricated or enhanced. If you need a bigger sound, you can usually add reverb." As a footnote, Mickey adds that he OD'd a bit on the Hall & Oates electronic revolution while he was playing with them from 1981 through 1986. Since then, he's tried to stay as acoustic as possible.
Although Curry uses double bass drums with Bryan Adams live, he says that he rarely uses them in the studio. "I did use a double pedal on the Alice Cooper record on a couple of things, and on the Sonic Temple record I used two bass drums on a couple of tracks. With Bryan, it's such a visual thing. Kids don't just want to see a band on stage. They want to see a show, and you have to do things a little bit bigger than life. Back in the Hall & Oates days, when they were having lots of hits, I thought I'd go with a bigger drumkit. It looks great, and at the same time, I was using the left kick drum to trigger different sounds. "I've gotten to the point now where I get out on the big stage and need the setup I've got. I'm really comfortable with it. I don't play a lot of stuff with the double bass with Bryan, but I do get to use it every now and then, and it's fun to do. It's just another drum to play, and it opens up a whole groove thing. You get a lot of bottom end, and it's fun to play. "Once I started going out with Bryan in '87," Mickey says, "I would spend some extra time just working out parts and trying to get rhythms and patterns together that I could apply. Bryan is not a big fan of double bass. His music really doesn't warrant that kind of thing, but it's fun to just throw the stuff in every once in a while. In my spare time, I like to work on it." Curry says that he has always relied on teaching himself. He didn't have much luck finding a teacher as a youngster and hated the emphasis on classical music in his elementary school. In fact, he went through about eight teachers in four years, until his senior year in high school, when he found Nick Forte, who gave him free rein. "Ned Tarrantino was my first teacher and the guy who kind of started me on drums," Curry recalls. "I studied with the music teachers in school, and it was just really basic rudiments and simple sticking. But I always wanted to play Led Zeppelin. I had a hard time only because I knew that I could sit behind the drumkit and play, and what these guys were teaching me was something I didn't think I'd ever use. Later on, though, I realized they had helped me a lot because I saw that rudiments were essential. A lot of drummers who haven't had formal training, like me, use things that they don't realize are rudimentary things. I think it's important for young people to study and at least get the basics together." Mostly, though, Mickey honed his skills by playing to records. "My early influences were guys like Ringo. I was seven years old when I saw the Beatles on TV, and I freaked," he says. "I couldn't believe it. 'Look at the guy swing!' He created an entire style of drumming single-handedly. He's one of the greatest ever. I think a lot of drummers who are really technically proficient have this kind of snobby attitude about guys who aren't technically proficient. But if you talk to, say, Vinnie Colaiuta, he'll tell you that John Bonham was the guy. It's got nothing to do with how fast you can play or how great you can solo. Drumming comes from guys like Ringo and Gene Krupa - the guys who created the stuff. "There were so many guys when I was little," Curry reminisces. "Danny Seraphine was it! I hear Chicago stuff on the radio and I still melt. He's such a great drummer. He was probably my biggest influence as a kid. I tried so hard to learn the first couple of Chicago records - all the little filler things he did. On the second album, one whole side is just a bunch of songs strung together, like one piece of music, and man, the stuff he did in between the tracks to segue the songs was killer. And every fill and every note and the sound he got...I would just wait until the next Chicago album came out. Bobby Colomby was a big influence on me as well. I got to meet him when I worked with Rodney Crowell, and he's such a cool guy." Mickey says that as he became more aware of the drummers on records, session guys became his idols. "My heroes became Jim Gordon, Jim Keltner, Jeff Porcaro, Bernard Purdie...Once I started playing on lots of different records, I started listening more to what they were doing. I was really into it and sort of into trying to follow this path of my heroes. So now I just go in and try to be like all my heroes wrapped up in one. John Bonham, Ginger Baker, Gerry Conway, who played on some of Cat Stevens' records - there's one song called 'Bitter Blue' on the Teaser And The Firecat record. Check out that drum track. Then I found out from Richard Thompson that Gerry was playing live with him for a long time. I was doing the records and going, 'What am I doing here? Why don't you have Gerry Conway playing on your records?' Then there was Barry Morgan on Elton John's 'Burn Down The Mission.' Those are some great players. The kind of sessions I like are when people tell me to play whatever I think is right, and I play it and listen back, and it's really right. It works, it sounds good, and it's confident. It's when things just come out the way they should. The part is right, the sound is right, all the fills are good, and everything works for the song and the singer. You can do it in a couple of takes. When everybody is confident, happy, up, and positive, that's a really great feeling. I've made it a point to stay as positive about things as I can, because when things start getting heavy, you just want to shut down and go home. You have to keep things up and fun. I know that sounds kind of 'boy scout,' but it's true." Curry says that he always strives to give a producer exactly what he requests. "There are ways to play drum tracks where you can play the perfect track for the producer and the artist and still have you own little thing in there. If I drastically disagree with a producer, where I might want to play brushes or just do a snare drum track, then it's usually trial and error. I say something if I really think I have an idea that might work. But I'm really lucky, because most people say, 'Just do what you think is right, and if it's not what we want, we'll say something.' I do whatever I feel like doing on the initial run-through, and then it's always open for discussion. I'm not the kind of guy who usually takes criticism personally or gets upset because they don't want me to play something I think is interesting. It's okay with me. I find the easiest working situation for me is going in and having a producer say, 'We hired you because we like the way you play, and we want you to do what you do.' That happens most of the time, though there are those sessions where they go, 'This is what we want, and this is what has to be done.' Even that kind of situation, though, is a challenge and worthy of attack." When asked why he thinks he became such an in-demand session drummer, Curry has to think hard to answer. Finally it comes to what he's been intimating all along - that he gets along well with people. "I really think that's 90% of it," Mickey says. "You have to be able to play, though. You can't go in and be a nice guy but a mediocre drummer. I don't think my strengths necessarily lie in my drumming, though. I think they lie more in my getting along with people and trying to give them what they need to have. "I do have a good time," Mickey finally concedes, then reconsiders. "Well, it's not great, but it's decent. And I can play to a click track." Of his early days with the click, Mickey recalls, "I was really inexperienced in the studio, so it was difficult. I felt like the click track was hindering my ability. I couldn't play a cool fill because I wouldn't come out in time. But the more I worked with the click, the less I looked at it as a time thing - I began to deal with it as another instrument or sound. You get to the point where you hardly even hear it. Now you can have musical click tracks, so it's almost like playing to a sequenced part, and that's really easy to do. "Now I prefer having a click track so I know that the time is not wavering. You can also play around the click. You can make a song kind of sit and groove a little bit by playing just behind it a bit. Or maybe, if a song has got to be up, you can get in front of it a little. You can play with it and use it. That's something I think I've gotten better at. "I remember doing a Hall & Oates session where I had the click track so loud that it actually hurt my hearing," Curry recalls. "It was on the song 'Adult Education.' We had the drums really big in the headphone mix to get that effect. (Producer) Bob Clearmountain said, 'I want to do something really drastic; the drums are going to be really big, so they'll be really loud. Play them accordingly.' I couldn't hear the click track, so I kept having them turn it up. A lot of stuff was programmed to the click already because the drums were put on after, so I had to have the click track really loud, and it hurt my ears. That was a tough lesson to learn." While he had great difficulty coming up with a list of his strengths, Curry, like most, readily spouts what he perceives to be his weaknesses. "I would love to have better chops, like Dave Weckl chops - complete facility with the drumkit - but I don't. I'm very limited as far as technique." Is that really required for what Curry does, though? "I don't know," he answers. "I'm just saying that if I had my choice, I'd like to wake up tomorrow with those chops. "I don't want to have to spend ten hours a day working on it, though," Mickey laughs. "It would just satisfy me knowing that I had them. You get into certain situations where you cut the tracks, but you know if you were a little bit more well-versed with the drumkit, you could probably come up with something real cool. You're never really satisfied with what you've done, and you always think, 'Gee, if I only worked on this thing a little more, I could have probably done something better than what I did - which happens on most projects I do. "I always hear the weak spot or where I was in doubt," Curry continues. "I'll hear a song on the radio, and it'll come to the bridge and I'll go, 'I wish I had changed that.' You hear that couple of bars where maybe the hi-hat goes just a little off. But nobody else would ever hear it. And, of course, you're not making a record for yourself; you're making it for someone else. If it's okay with them, then it's got to be okay for you. "As far as weaknesses, I don't take a lot of chances when I play. I don't go for the cool fills or the technically proficient thing, because I'm afraid I'll screw it up or that it won't work," he admits. "So I have a tendency to do what I know will work. Then again, it all depends on who I'm working with. Some guys really push me to go for it, and they want me right at the edge." Curry says that Bryan Adams definitely pushes him to that edge. "He wants the absolute best that I can give him. When I finish a project with Bryan, I'm amazed at some of the things he's pulled out of me. He gets me to play things that I really don't believe I can do. I listen back think, 'Wow, I did that?' He knows how far he can take it."
Mickey says that his favorite recorded work with Adams (or anybody else, for that matter) is probably the 1987 album Into The Fire. "I think I just played better on it, " he explains. "I think the songs were more geared toward how I like to sound on record. We recorded it at Bryan's house, with the drums in the dining room. Bob Clearmountain was engineering. Bryan had just had a studio put in, and it was like everyone had new toys. It was a whole new environment, so the ideas were fresh and the playing was fresh. There was alot of energy, and it all worked toward a really good performance record." Mickey explains that the record was cut live with the guitar, bass, and keyboards in the living room. "I was in the dining room, and there was a big French door between me and the living room, so we were all visible to one another. Bob was downstairs in the basement, which was the control room, but we had video cameras with a screen so we could see each other. "There's a song on that album called 'Victim Of Love,' which is a really good drum track," Curry says. "We pieced together the end of it because they wanted all these big drum fills for the fade. Instead of me just going in and playing a million different fades, we did a bunch of different drum fills and slotted them in. I listened to it all pieced together, and then I went back through and we kind of patched it all up. So the end of it is just a hodgepodge of drum fills and edits. I'm used to just going in and playing a track from start to finish and then fixing up the spots that are wrong. But on this track, we did it from start to finish and then came up with that idea." One fact Mickey wants people to understand is that he didn't actually play on Bryan's Waking Up The Neighours album. "Mutt Lange did all the programming," Mickey says, "though much of the stuff came from my original ideas. A lot of the parts were played and then put into the synth. The only physical thing I did was doubling all the cymbal tracks, because the machine just sounded like shit." With his vast studio experience, what tracks would Mickey say best represent his playing? "Probably some of the Richard Thompson stuff, although I can't remember specific tracks. I felt that the song 'Fire Woman' from the Cult's Sonic Temple record was a good drum track. It was real simple, and it was one of those driving tracks - a real straight-ahead, kick/snare kind of thing. It's a Motown kind of drum track, and it grooves really well. That was a first take. A lot of the tracks I play that seem to work well are usually the first takes. The song 'Somebody' was one take as well. 'It's Only Love,' the Bryan Adams duet with Tina Turner, was also one take. "There's also a track on the Alice Cooper record called 'Wind Up Toy' that I thought was a good track," Curry continues. "We had all these ideas for sound effects and things, and the song became more of a visual thing as opposed to just a song. The lyrics were about a little kid having a nightmare and not being able to go to sleep because he thought things were under the bed and in the closet. We all had that in mind when we played the track, and it all came out sounding great." The mention of Los Lobos' "La Bamba" also conjures up a story from Curry's memory: "I was rehearsing in Vancouver with Bryan for the Into The Fire tour, and Mitchell Froom had been trying to find me. I called him back and he said, "Can you come to L.A.? I need you for an hour." I said, 'If you really only need me for an hour, I can come.' So I flew down the next day. I got in at about noon, and I was at the studio by 2:00. We did two takes of the song, and they edited it together exactly at the middle breakdown. We didn't use a click track, and I was really nervous. I kept saying, 'Mitchell, it's not going to work, but I don't have time. Can we just do a bunch of takes from start to finish?' And he said, 'No, this will work. Stick around for five minutes, and we'll do an edit.' He did an edit on the song and you couldn't tell. I got back on a plane, and I was in Vancouver for an 8:00 rehearsal. Of course, I hear the original Richie Valens version of the song, and I just melt. If I had listened to it and studied it a little more, I probably would have been able to do it better." Mickey also cites some of his Hall & Oates recordings as favorites as well. "Of course 'Adult Education,' with the huge drums at the end, is a favorite. There's also a song called 'Say It Isn't So,' which I think is a good drum track. It really grooves, and the fills are simple. They're not really fills where you go around the drumkit; they're kind of one-note, quarter- or 8th-note things that are real simple and basic, but they groove really well. That was another one that was one take. And I really like 'Family Man' as well, for the same reason I like 'Fire Woman' from the Cult. It's just a straight-ahead groove with very few drum fills, just kick and snare, and it works. I remember reading an interview with Steve Gadd where he said, 'I try not to think of what I should play; I think of what I shouldn't play.' So the idea is, where can I leave things out?" With all the studio work Curry has been doing, going on the road and the length of Adams' current tour was somewhat of a risk. "There are a million reasons why I should have gone - and then of course a bunch of reasons why I shouldn't have. I think the reason I decided to go, first and foremost, was because I'm comfortable with Bryan. I didn't have to relearn anything. I didn't have to go into a strange situation and get acclimated to a different environment. It was just a matter of learning some of the new songs, so it was easy. It's a safety thing. I can go out and play songs I'm used to playing, stuff that I came up with myself. I don't have to go out and cover someone else's parts. "The live thing is still the best playing for me," Curry declares. "You go out and play on stage in front of 20,000 people, and there's nothing like it. For self-satisfaction, though - just me trying to keep myself happy musically - the studio is the way to go. I can rework and rethink things until they're right where I want them. But there's still something about the spontaneity of playing live - the excitement and just throwing the stuff out there, playing whatever comes out and getting the audience response that we've been getting. There's nothing like it." Mickey does concede that playing the same songs every night can get monotonous, but, he says, "When you're out there on stage in front of all these people, you can't not have fun. Recording work, though, can be downright nerve-wracking for Mickey. Since his last Modern Drummer interview, in 1985, when his main gig was Hall & Oates and becoming a session player was more of a dream than a reality, Mickey's situation has changed radically. Yet Curry claims that success has made it harder on him, not easier. "I'm probably
less secure now than when we did that first interview," he
confides. "In 1985 I was playing with a band that had had number-one
hits back to back. I was very confident in the fact that I had a
gig and I was making money. It was all new and exciting. Now that
I went through that and have expanded my experience - like doing
different studio records and taking a tour here and there - it's
just more angles to have to be concerned with." source: www.bryanadams.com |
Mickey Curry
Modern Drummer August 1992
by Robyn Flans
