Spicy Chops Rhythm Magazine By Nick Armington and Lars Lofas An uncanny knack for finding himself in the right place at the right time helps drummer Mickey Curry walk softly and carry a (pair of) big sticks.
By now you know the feeling. Perfect day - sunny, warm, and dry. Big fast car at your command, hugging the road as you take the curves. Then the radio DJ stops yapping, and throws on a Bryan Adams song. The results are predictable. Heart racing just a little faster, you crank the tune and slam down on the accelerator.
Almost hyperkinetically, your fingers come alive, tapping along with the beat on your steering wheel, and waving to the traffic cop asleep at his post. Good tunes, good times - it's great to be alive. And somehow, subconsciously, you give a little bit of thanks to the guys in the band who made this all possible, fulfilling the potential of a perfect summer's day...
Somewhere, somehow, in the bowels of a richly-wooded recording studio hidden in the sprawling jungles of Manhattan, Mickey Curry is smiling behind his drumkit as we attempt to flatter him with this picture. As the chief timekeeper behind both Bryan Adams and Hall and Oates, Curry's got good reason to be proud of his work, yet you'd never picture him as a rock 'n' roller if you met him on the street.
At 33 years old, Mickey Curry has had the distinction of playing on many of the past decade's most enduring projects. Just to give you an idea of his range - remember Los Lobos' remake of "La Bamba"? That's him on the skins. Same thing on Carly Simon's haunting "Let The River Run", with its polyrhythmic tom-tom and percussion parts.
In between, Curry has also played on projects with Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Steve Winwood, Paul Carrick, Honeymoon Suite, Richard Thompson, Marshall Crenshaw, Tina Turner, Debbie Harry, Jocelyn Brown, Steve Jones (ex - Sex Pistols), Roy Orbison, Jude Cole, Survivor, The Cult, Dion, Ian Hunter & Mick Ronson, and more recently, David Bowie and Ric Ocasek, plus dozens of others.
Although he's experimented across a broad spectrum of styles and genres, there's a formidable solidness to his playing, augmented by rough-hewn fills that plop themselves comfortably into your conscious substratum and don't let go. More simply put, the guy's got more hooks in his back pocket than Captain Ahab.
Over time, Curry's down-to-earth playing has won accolades from both his fans and his peers, best represented by the sheer magnitude of studio work that he does, though he quickly (and frequently) exalts the more technical players who often grace the covers of this and other drumming magazines.
When we caught up with him, Mickey Curry was busy laying down basic tracks for singer/songwriter Willie Nile's latest album, working with producer (and longtime Hall & Oates bandmate) T-Bone Wolk, while awaiting the completion of the new Bryan Adams record, which Adams is co-producing with producer Robert "Mutt" Lange in England.
Though much of his time is spent as a session player around the country, Curry is heavily involved with environmental activities, including Greenpeace, the Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Fund and the Audibon Society.
He and his wife Susan (a high-school sweetheart, he fondly acknowledges) live in southern Connecticut, where both were born and raised, and maintain, in Curry's words, 'a ridiculously low-key, non-rock 'n' roll lifestyle that involves a lot of baseball games and riding my lawn tractor.'
This last statement provides a strong clue to the mettle of the man behind the sticks. more so than anyone these authors have talked for quite a while, Mickey Curry's candidness and honesty left a strong impression on us. He's a guy who's not afraid to say exactly what he thinks, and certainly doesn't take himself too seriously. That's refreshing in this business.
Hey, besides - we'll drop our objective notepads for a moment and admit that he's also topped our list of favorite drummers more than once. So if you (like us) find yourself casually air-drumming while breezing down the freeway sometime soon, don't be surprised if Mickey Curry's behind it all.
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RHYTHM: Do you remember what gave you the motivation to become a professional musician?
MC: I guess the thought was always kind of there. I started playing when I was about 11, using some sticks and a pad that my mother bought me, because she said it was the cheapest thing to get started on. And I did play a lot throughout my high school years, in a bunch of bands, doing great stuff - Cream, old R&B, those kind of things.
Anyway, when I started going to the University of Bridgeport, I decided to study Music History. I figured that if I couldn't play drums for a living, then at least I could be a music teacher. Then in college, I auditioned for a local group called the Scratch Band, and got the gig. When we started making money, I quit school, so I ended up playing with them from 1975 to 1980. We worked just about every night, all around the New Haven area. G.E. Smith (for years, Hall & Oates' guitar player, and now leading the Saturday Night Live band) was the guitar player, and Paul Ossala was the bass player.
At the same time, the manager of the Scratch Band also owned a recording studio, so I ended up being the session drummer for the place. I was also coming into Manhattan because I had some friends in town, so I could pick up a jingle or two here and there. My reading was just good enough to get me through.
RHYTHM: That seems to be a popular route for breaking in to the business, or at least one we've heard about a lot from other drummers.
MC: When you get right down to it, most jingle work isn't too tough. It's really a matter of timing - you have to end at exactly 58 seconds, no matter where you are in the bar. Anyway, in 1980 I was coming in and out of New York a lot, doing studio work. My first major album project was the "Tom Dickie and the Desires" record.
Tommy Mottola, who's now the president of CBS Records, was managing that band at the time, as well as Hall & Oates. At one of the Tom Dickie sessions, he pulled me aside, and told me Daryl and John needed a drummer to finish the album they were working on. By then, G.E. Smith was in the band, and naturally I was interested.
RHYTHM: So your connections grew...
MC: It was actually more like being in the right place at the right time. I finished the Tom Dickie project, and about a month later, in January or February of 1981, I started recording G.E.'s solo record at the Power Station, where I met Bob Clearmountain.
That record took only two weeks to record, from start to finish, with Clearmountain engineering and co-producing. I was really knocked out, even then, by how he worked. Bob is alot more than an engineer - he's really in a league of his own, light years beyond most studio people. He hears things that I'll never hear.
OK, now this is where it gets weird. A month after we finished G.E.'s record, I was down at Electric Lady studios to record the "Private Eyes" album with Hall & Oates, and I got a call in the middle of the session from Clearmountain, who said, 'I just got these tapes from a Canadian guy, and I want you and Brian Stanley (the bass player on the G.E. Smith solo record) to play on the guy's record.'
Of course, that was Bryan Adams. He had already put out his first album, which was basically a dance record, and so I ended up playing on his second album, "You Want It, You Got It", and then right away, I went on the road with Hall & Oates at the end of that summer, playing with G.E. and T-Bone. And the rest, as they say, is a mystery - I mean history! (Laughs)
RHYTHM: So right from the start, you were faced with the dichotomy of playing with two major acts?
MC: It was more than I could have ever asked for or expected, and I was very committed to Hall & Oates. I mean, they were a very big act, having Number One or Top Five hits back to back for something like five years straight. But whenever I wasn't on the road with Hall & Oates, I would work with Bryan in the studio.
Somehow, in that month or two when I wasn't on the road, it always worked out that Bryan was ready to go into the studio. So I'd come into the city and record at Power Station, or go up to Vancouver for a week at Little Mountain Studios, and do the drum tracks. Somehow it just worked out - I didn't try to question it, I just went along with it.
The second album I did with Bryan, "Cuts Like a Knife", did pretty well, so Bryan got a drummer to go out on the road with him. Then it came time to cut "Reckless", and I finally ran into some scheduling problems, since Bryan wanted me to join the band, but I couldn't because I was still working with Hall & Oates.
RHYTHM: There were actually several drummers on that album, weren't there?
MC: Well, Bryan had hired a drummer in Vancouver, Pat Steward, who is a really good friend of mine, and he played on two or three of the tracks. I did a bunch when I was finally able to get some free time, and Steve Smith from Journey played on 'Heaven', which turned out to be Adams' biggest hit. Actually, there's a funny story behind that song.
Originally, I was going to play on the track, and we started recording 'Heaven' at the Power Station one day around ten a.m. I had to be at a Hall & Oates rehearsal a couple of blocks away by noon, so I split just as they were starting to roll tape and get the song together.
Bryan knew I had to go, so I said, "Look, I'll be back about five o'clock. I've got it down, and when I come back, I'll nail it!" So off I went to rehearsal, and when I got back to the studio that afternoon, everybody is in the control room listening. I see Steve Smith in there, and I'm like, "Hey, how ya' doing!"
He kind of looked at me, and must have been thinking, 'Is this guy going to get me?' (Laughs) And I still didn't know what was going on. So Bryan pulled me aside and said, 'Hey, Steve was in town and stopped by, and we just started playing' I said, 'Great - it sounds great!' They had five or six takes and they pieced it all together, like Bryan likes to do.
After that, I guess he was feeling kind of bad, so he offered to pay me for the day. I said, 'Bryan, it's okay, man - don't worry about it!' (Laughs) And that's the story of 'Heaven", four hours of magic I missed out on. Nobody knew it was going to be as big as it was. To me it was just another day in the studio with Bryan.
RHYTHM: Just the collaboration itself represents a pretty major change, doesn't it?
MC: In some ways yes, and in others, not at all. I should start from the beginning of this process so you can see how the story unravels. The album started in the fall of 1988. We were in Europe touring that summer, just hopping around the Mediterranean through Portugal, Spain, and Israel.
It was like being on vacation just playing and traveling, catching the sights, and doing only one or two shows a week. During this time Bryan was coming up with ideas for songs, and when we got home, he started writing with Jim Vallance, as he always had.
The songs were okay, better than most people's good stuff, but there was something missing. We recorded some of them with Steve Lillywhite in London at the end of that tour, and ended up with ten or twelve songs which I thought were great. But when Bryan got back to Vancouver, he just put them away.
After that, we went down to L.A. to record some new tracks with Bob Clearmountain, because the Lillywhite tracks had been scrapped. I guess we ended up doing six or eight tracks down there, and in the end, Bryan decided that those tracks weren't happening either. Remember, these were tough decisions to make, because Bryan had worked with all those guys for a long time.
RHYTHM: And Lange was just the next producer in line, so to speak?
MC: Not at all - he's fortunate enough to pick just about anybody in the world to work with. Actually, by the time we were recording in L.A., Bryan was already writing some songs with Mutt. They had originally gotten together just to write.
I heard a couple of tracks off some demos and immediately I knew it was Mutt Lange stuff. I mean, Mutt sings, plays everything, and sings backup vocals - he's really amazingly talented. At first I heard it and wondered how this whole connection was going to work for Bryan. No matter what, I knew it would be interesting.
RHYTHM: When did you get involved in the process?
MC: We finished the drum tracks for the new album in the first week of January. I first recorded in the Fall of 1989, then I had done some tracks just before Christmas, and finally I went back in January and redid EVERYTHING, doing eighteen to twenty tracks in a week and a half.
Like you said, there have been quite a few changes in the ways we work. On the earlier albums, Bryan and Jim Vallance would play everything on the demos. Vallance is a great drummer, so I would take what Jim played and throw my stuff on it.
Mutt uses a Fairlight to do most of his demo drum parts, and hearing them, you can pretty much tell it's all machine parts. So when it came time to record my drum parts, I spent a LOT of time trying to figure out how to play those Fairlight parts while still making it me. Over a period of time every session would get a little more involved.
The tracks I did late last year were recorded at Little Mountain Studios, with Mike Frazier engineering. He's a great engineer and a great friend, and we'd worked together on Bryan's stuff before. Then Bryan would fly back to England to work with Mutt, and every time he came back, we'd end up recutting things.
RHYTHM: Mutt Lange has created a legend around himself for that type of attention to detail - spending days just to get one guitar chord or drum fill perfect. It sounds like you got caught in the middle...
MC: Well, I was trying to be the professional that I'm supposed to be, but by this time, some of those songs were being recut for the fourth or fifth time, and I started to ask myself, 'WHAT do they want?' It was just so tough. What we ended up doing was putting the original 24-track demos up on one machine, and using another machine to record my parts.
I played note for note over the Fairlight drums - we would go bar by bar, stop the tape, check it and then move on. If I missed one note, a hi-hat beat or cymbal crashes, which took hours to match, we'd recut it until they matched exactly what was played on the demos.
By January, Bob Rock was engineering the sessions. Thank God for Bob. He's a nice guy who knows exactly when to take a break, and when to tell a joke or a story. He also knows when to get mad and he knows exactly the right thing to say to put you in the proper frame of mind.
RHYTHM: That's a hell of a story, especially for a guy like you who's used to playing everything live.
MC: It's funny - there are so many people who try to discredit Mutt and what he does as a producer and a songwriter. But how can you? He's so successful, and I have nothing but respect for him. This is not a battle of the purist musician against the million-selling pop producer.
At the same time, I'm a drummer and I love to play, and the only way I get satisfaction out of the music I work on is to sit behind a drum kit and come up with the stuff and put it out there. But I've always had to deal with that side of the recording process. Hall & Oates used a lot of machines and programmed drum parts - very rarely did I get to go in and play live drums.
RHYTHM: But your name's all over those Hall & Oates albums...
MC: In fact, Jimmy Bralower did a lot of the drum programming on those records. He and I were actually one of the first combinations of live and machine drum playing. 'Adult Education' is a classic example of playing live drums over a machine. 'Maneater' was also a Linn drum, with me playing over the choruses and the solo.
RHYTHM: And now you're back to playing live drums again on this Willie Nile project.
MC: I tell you, it's great, especially because I've always loved jamming with T-Bone (Wolk), and we're just cooking it up in the studio. Willie's an amazingly talented guy, and he's written some killer songs and put together a collection of shady characters to play it all in the studio (laughs). We call ourselves 'The Circle Of Men'.
For me, what I'm doing now is a real pleasure, because I know we're coming up with great stuff on the spot. When you're playing well and things are going right, there's nothing better than the feeling of knowing that this is going to tape, it's going to be on a record, and that the performance will be permanently documented. It's like writing a book, because that's forever too.
On the other hand, if it's bad, it still gets released. Personally, I think I've played more bad tracks than good ones. And whenever I'm recording and I mess up a fill or something - which happens a lot, actually (laughs) - I get pissed. If I'm really messing up, I'll get so aggravated that I just throw my sticks and say 'Fuck!' When we were recording "Into The Fire" at Bryan's house in Vancouver, I ended up doing that a couple of times. He has this beautiful chandelier in the dining room, where my drums were set up. Luckily, I missed that, but I hit the ceiling, which was all plaster, a beautiful old ceiling.
I said to myself, 'Oh God, what did I do?' But Bryan came in and he was laughing like crazy. I was so apologetic, but he said, 'Don't worry about it!' There was actually no real damage, but I'll never forget that sinking feeling.
RHYTHM: That just proves that you're your own toughest critic. Who do you look up to for inspiration?
MC: I've always admired drummers who had perfect time, who could set a groove and make it swing when there's no swing going on. Others drop a snare drum a little behind the beat, so the whole thing just sits down in the track a little. If I do anything, it's probably just getting the time down, so a song just sits right and feels right. I'm not that technically amazing.
I respect the same guys probably that most people respect, like Steve Gadd, Danny Seraphine, Jim Keltner, Ringo Starr - he's one of my favorite all-time drummers, and John Bonham. He just blew me away. If anybody knew how to sit just behind the beat and make a track flow, he could.
You know, I saw David Weckl play recently, and he was unbelievable, because he has feel and groove, and plays with conviction and confidence. He comes up with things I've never heard before. I can watch most drummers and figure out how they played something. But I got Weckl's videotape, slowed it down on my VCR, an I STILL don't know how he does it.
On a more personal note, the new Don Henley record really hit me, because he's a great drummer who sings and writes too, like Phil Collins, who's a hero to me. I met Don in Japan, and hearing him sing was amazing. He's done that L.A. foo-foo scene, but you can't live there without being in it, and you almost have to be in it to be that successful.
When I heard him sing, he just stood there with his arms crossed and didn't really do anything, but he just sang these songs. I was standing next to Huey Lewis offstage, and He's going, "Man, this guy's got it. Every note, it's just coming out.' You know Henley's been through the shit.
RHYTHM: That can be powerful inspiration. What's up for your own future?
MC: I've also been writing a lot of material recently, drawing up on the emotions and experiences I've had recently with some family members and friends. I'm working with Stuart Lerman, who played guitar on the Willie Nile album. He has a 24-track studio here in New York, and we've been cranking out demos like crazy.
What's really exciting, and a little scary after all this, is that I played a bunch of gigs with Bryan in Copenhagen recently, and we did some of the new tunes in rehearsal. He was blown away, so hopefully, we'll be back out on the road by the end of this year or the beginning of next.
Actually, whenever I'm off the road, I'm not as busy as everybody thinks I am. People see me on all these records and must say, 'God, that guy must work all the time.' But like most musicians, I'm not very good at soliciting work, calling people and saying, 'Hey, I'm available!' That's what my manager does, but he also knows that I don't like to work too much, because my life really is at home with my wife and family.
This whole rock drummer/musician guy is just a part of that life. I'm really lucky because I'm in music and things come out musically, so I don't have a nervous breakdown, climb a tower and start shooting people. It's worked out pretty well that way!
Nick Armington and Lars Lofas are producers who live in New York City.
source: www.bryanadams.com