Hal Blaine Interview

The following interview with Hal Blaine was originally published in 2000, in the first edition of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Drums. Hal passed away on March 11, 2019, age 90 and drumming until the very end.

Hal Blaine is a legend. As the top Los Angeles studio drummer in the 1960s and early 1970s, he played on more than 8,000 different tracks for hundreds and hundreds of different musicians. His list of hits is staggering, and it’s almost impossible to listen to an oldies radio station for more than 10 minutes without hearing a Hal Blaine song.

In March 2000, Hal was one of the first five “sidemen” inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (One of the other inductees was Hal’s long-time friend and rival, Earl Palmer.) While officially “retired,” Hal continues to play on occasional live dates and recording sessions.

Interestingly, Hal’s accomplishments extend beyond drumming. He wrote the book Hal Blaine and the Wrecking Crew, which chronicles his career and the golden era of studio playing; you can find it at your local bookstore or online at Amazon.com. Hal is also a bit of a comedian (“What do you call a guy who hangs around with musicians? A drummer.”), and in 1998 he recorded the comedy album Buh-Doom!.

What Makes a Drummer Great

I have to admit, I’m an unabashed fan of Hal Blaine. To my regret, I was too young (and too self-involved) to be aware of Hal during his heyday, but I have come to appreciate him greatly in the years since. (Wisdom and maturity come with age, apparently — something else I’ve only recently learned!)

What is so great about Hal Blaine? First, you have sheer quantity. Name any 10 hit singles from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s, and chances are that Hal played on three or four of them. When Dick Clark featured Hal on his Rock, Roll, and Remember radio program, he essentially played his normal song list — because when you play a list of Hal’s records, you’re playing the top hits of the era.

The second great thing about Hal Blaine is the variety of styles he had to play — and master. How many drummers do you know who could play for both Frank Sinatra and The Mamas and The Papas — and play the right kind of drums for each? When you read the list of artists Hal played for, and then consider how different these artists sounded, you really appreciate his versatility.

Beyond this versatility is Hal’s creativity, his ability to play just the right part for whatever song he was playing on. Sometimes that meant playing full-out, as on The Fifth Dimension’s “Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine.” Sometimes that meant playing a Buddy Holly–like tom-tom riff, as on Tommy Roe’s “Dizzy.” Sometimes that meant playing nothing but bass drum and snare drum, as on The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby.” Sometimes it meant playing something other than drums, as on The Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows.”

(By the way, in spite of the huge Octaplus tom setup he used in later years, Hal was a master of not playing cymbals or toms, if that was what the song called for. Just listen to The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album; I don’t think there’s a single cymbal or hi-hat struck through the whole album.)

The point is, Hal played what was right for the song — and then put his own mark on it. You can always tell when you’re listening to a Hal Blaine drum part, no matter what style it’s in. Even though Hal’s part on The Grass Roots’ “Midnight Confessions” is completely different from his part on Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe,” you still know that it’s Hal Blaine on drums. He played for the song, but was still Hal Blaine; his personality always came through.

Not that there aren’t typical “Hal Blaine moments.” Back when he was cutting records with Phil Spector, Hal typically played just bass drum and snare (sometimes snare and large tom hit together) throughout most of the song, with no cymbals or hi-hats, just to cut through Spector’s heavily produced “wall of sound.” When the end of the song came, however — what musicians call the “out chorus” — Hal would cut loose like a man possessed, with thundering rolls around the toms and all sorts of amazing licks while the song was fading out. When you listen to these records, listen closely for Hal’s trademark lick, a quarter-note triplet played on two toms simultaneously. You’ll hear this lick on numerous songs (The Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron” and The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” are good examples), and it’s vintage Hal. (Max Weinberg once wrote about how he would occasionally throw that lick into one or another of Bruce Springsteen’s songs; every time he played the lick, Bruce would yell out “Hal Blaine!” in joyful recognition.)

I can point out many other examples of prime Hal. Toward the end of Simon and Garfunkel’s majestic “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Hal played the backbeat with tire chains — just one of many times when he knew that something different was called for. Any of the classic Phil Spector “wall of sound” recordings also show off Hal at his best; to get it all in one blast, spring for the Back to Mono box set, which includes the legendary A Christmas Gift for You album, which may be Hal’s best recorded work. Finally, to get a taste for how Hal’s drum parts developed in the studio, check out the boxed set of The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album; the four CDs in this set include lots of live in-the-studio takes and in-between-take recordings, providing a rare look at a masterpiece in the making.

If you want to listen to more of the “best of Blaine,” I recommend you check out his tasteful fills on any of the Carpenters’ hit singles, especially “Close to You”; his dynamic big-band-like backup on Petula Clark’s “My Love”; his solid grooves on a plethora of Fifth Dimension tunes, particularly ”Up, Up, and Away” and “Wedding Bell Blues”; his incredible versatility navigating different styles and tempos on Richard Harris’s “MacArthur Park”; and his driving snare drum on The Mamas and The Papas’ “California Dreamin’” and “Monday, Monday.”

Hal Blaine — along with Earl Palmer, Gary Chester, Benny Benjamin, Roger Hawkins, Al Jackson Jr., and other studio contemporaries — truly created the drum sound of a generation. Hal did it with flair, with humor, with impeccable technique, and with his own unique style. That’s why I’m a Hal Blaine fan — and why I always turn up the radio when one of his songs is playing.

The Hal Blaine Interview

As I was writing the first edition of this book in the summer of 2000, I had the good fortune to talk to Hal Blaine about his career, his opinions on today’s music industry, and his advice for beginning drummers. I found him charming and extremely entertaining, full of great stories and great advice; any drummer can learn something from this master.

Michael Miller (MM): I want to start out by congratulating you on your induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Hal Blaine (HB): That was fun.

MM: It’s good to see you and Earl Palmer and the studio guys finally getting some recognition.

HB: I know, I know, and they cut it all out of the TV thing, which is really a pity. Earl was just livid. Personally, I couldn’t care less. It was 20 years ago, great. Seriously, who in the hell cares? The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, you know, it’s nice, and that’s fine, and good-bye.

The one that I was very interested in was Bill Gates’s former partner, Paul Allen. He put this museum together in Seattle called the Experience Music Project. They came down here with a film crew and filmed me. They’re going to have film running for as long as the museum is open each day — people like myself, different artists, different musicians, talking about music. The crew that came in here blew me away! They were the guys that just got the Oscar for Titanic!

MM: Well, Paul Allen can afford to hire the best. (laughs)

HB: Evidently! I didn’t realize that he’s a guitar player. Plain and simple. A very wealthy guitar player. (laughs)

MM: A big Jimi Hendrix fan, I hear.

HB: Yeah, well it was originally going to be called the Jimi Hendrix Experience, but then it became the Experience Music Project. They’re supposedly doing a magnificent job.

MM: Hal, one thing that every beginning drummer is fascinated by is how other guys got started. How did you get started playing the drums?

HB: Well, I had a couple of relatives who were drummers: a female, who was with an all-female orchestra, and a cousin, Bill, who was a drummer in some little band, and a brother-in-law who was a great trumpet player. So I was kind of around music growing up.

When I was a kid, my dad used to take me to work every Saturday at the State Theater in Hartford, Connecticut, and I would watch absolutely every band, every singer, every dance act — absolutely everything. And I got hooked on drums, being a showoff. You know, drummers are showoffs, and they get all the toys to play and hit. A guitar player has one guitar and a piano player has one piano, but a drummer has all this stuff to play. We’re built-in showoffs, and I guess we need attention. That’s how it works. My sister bought me my first little set of drums, and you start bangin’ on ’em.

MM: How old were you when you got your first set?

HB: Oh, I was about 11 or 12. I used to set them up on the front porch; we lived on the second floor. After school, with the kids coming home from school, I’d be up there banging my drums, getting the attention.

MM: When you were first starting off, were you taking lessons?

HB: No, I was the only Jewish kid in an all-Catholic drum and bugle corps, which was kind of a funny thing. The priest used to see me peeking through the bars, watching the guys play and march and everything. Finally, he came over to talk to me one time, and I told him I was a drummer. I wasn’t a real drummer, but I was a drummer. So he invited me in, and I got to play march music with the guys and march with the guys. It was really a lot of fun.

You know, one thing leads to another that way. Eventually we moved to California, and when I was in high school, I got in some little bands. I had my own little band and played around San Bernardino and up in the mountains of Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear Lake. You know, we used to play a job for $5 and a free chicken dinner. For real.

That’s kind of the way it starts. I went through the service, played USO shows, played Army bands, got out of the service, came home from Korea. I met some nice people in San Bernardino who wanted my band in this new nightclub that was opening up.

One of the top disc jockeys, Bill Bellman (he was known as Bill the Bellman), asked me if I could come into the radio station sometime. They had a studio, and he was a songwriter. He wanted to do demos, and he just happened to be a friend of mine. I’d go into the studio with him and several other San Bernardino musicians — great musicians. All black, by the way — most of my early days were playing with black musicians, it was just one of those things that happened. Anyway, we got to do all these demos with Bill the Bellman, which led to eventually being in Hollywood and doing demos for all the big songwriters, which led to “These guys that did the demos — we better get them for the record.”

So I’d had a certain amount of studio time behind me and studio experience when I really got my first big break and started working with Tommy Sands, who was a teenage idol in those days, and Sam Cooke. Sam Cooke was a major, major artist, and, of course, that led to Phil Spector, and the rest is history.

MM: If somebody were aiming for studio playing today, how would they go about it?

HB: First of all, studios are not like they used to be. Every kid has a garage studio today. They make their own demos. They have their own computer that plays their own drums and their own horns and their own violins and everything. The synthesizers that do all of that, the sampling that has been done through the years — there used to be companies advertising that they had me sampled, and Shelly Manne sampled, and various drummers, various other artists. You could buy those samples, and you could have me playing an entire track to no music — you write your own music to it, that type of thing.

So today it’s a different thing. Today, if you go in live — well, there’s not a lot of live recording going on anymore, like we used to do with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and those kind of people that sang live. With The Beach Boys, we did live instrumental tracks, but they would go in and do their voices later. The same with Jan and Dean, and The Monkees, and The Partridge Family, and all those groups. I mean, I can’t tell you how many television pilots I did, from The Brady Bunch and on and on and on. We did everybody, because we were the new kids in town that knew what the words “rock and roll” meant.

And it was just crude, it was just a backbeat. There was nothing to rock and roll; it was nothing — but to the old established guys it was a dirty word. Rock and roll was just “dirty black music, and we’re not gonna play that.” So when rock and roll started to infiltrate the television shows, movies, commercials, and records, of course, whenever they were gonna do something, they said, “Call those rock and roll guys.” Well, that was us. That was the Wrecking Crew.

The reason they called us the Wrecking Crew — that was a phrase really that I kind of coined — was because we were working with a lot of these old established musicians who’d been in the studios for 30 years, and they used to look at us; here we were in Levis and T-shirts, and smoking cigarettes — no drugs — and these guys would look at us, in their three-piece suits, and they’d say, “These kids are gonna wreck the business.” So we became the Wrecking Crew, and it got so that producers would call my secretary and say, “We need that Wrecking Crew for so and so,” and she’d just book the dates. I mean, we were booked three months, four months in advance, sometimes.

MM: And you’d be playing, what, three dates a day?

HB: Probably a minimum of three dates a day, sometimes four, up to seven.

MM: Pretty much the same cats playing?

HB: It was me and a nucleus of rhythm players, you know, bass players and guitar players. Later, they would bring in their own strings, their own horns, that kind of stuff — if they were gonna do that.

I’d do rock and roll records in the beginning. You can listen to Sam Cooke’s “Another Saturday Night” — I think it was H. P. Barnum who was the arranger. Those were the kind of records that we were doing that the old established guys were saying, “That music is terrible, it’s filthy, it’s awful, it’s not music.” They had no idea — and within a year they were begging us to work with them. After all, I became the big contractor, and a lot of us became leaders, and these guys had their noses up our asses. At the beginning they hated us and then all of a sudden they loved us because we had work.

MM: When I was a kid, I remember reading an article in Life or Look or one of those magazines about a drummer — later on I realized it was you — that everybody wanted the Hal Blaine sound to make a hit record, and if they couldn’t book you, they’d book your drums.

HB: It wasn’t that they couldn’t get me, but if somebody was doing a date with their own group and they wanted my sound, they would ask if they could rent one of my sets for their drummer. I had about a dozen sets of drums then. I had a guy that took care of my drums exclusively, and he still is — this is his thirty-sixth or thirty-seventh year with me, taking care of my drums. And he would, you know, deliver the drums and set them up for whoever and then pick them up after the session.

Hal’s long-time drum tech is Rick Faucher, a legend in his own right. Over the years, Rick has worked with Hal, Jim Keltner, and many other L.A. studio drummers.

The rental was putting me on the contract, which today, of course, has managed to give me my pension from the union. Because with every job we did, it was an employer’s pension, and I did so much work, obviously, in those days, and built up that pension.

MM: What kind of set were you playing back then?

HB: I had a little four-piece set. I started out with Ludwig, then I had some Rogers, then I went with Pearl.

In the early 1960s, I designed a set that completely changed the drum world. We went from a little three- or four-piece set of drums; I built a set of drums with an octave of tom-toms so that I could make those long filling rolls rather than just one or two or three tom-toms.

MM: Who made that set for you — was that Ludwig?

HB: No, no, no. I stupidly gave it to them. I was a Ludwig drummer, and they were thrilled. I introduced that set — my set of drums — on an Ed Sullivan special, and every drum company in the world within three months was putting out that set of drums. Like a fool, I never patented anything; I didn’t get a design patent or an actual patent. When I do clinics today, one of the first things I do is talk about that if you come up with any design or anything, you get yourself a design patent, which is the easiest thing in the world — it costs you nothing.

There’s a little item out there called the ching-a-ring. Well, I made a ching-a-ring out of a tambourine, probably in 1959. I was using that on my hi-hat — I still have the original tambourines here that I was using; I should have put a design patent out on ’em — and before you know it, companies are making ching-a-rings.

Hal’s groundbreaking set of eight tunable concert toms were eventually popularized as Octaplus toms from Ludwig.

MM: I’m amazed, listening to the old recordings, how many of the songs really didn’t have traditional drums or traditional drum beats on them. I think back to a lot of the stuff with The Beach Boys, like the song that you played the orange drink bottles on.

HB: That was just a matter of percussion sounds, coming up with different sounds. I remember playing my snow-tire chains on “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

MM: Great sound.

HB: Perhaps it was my creativity. I wanted to know what the song was about, and wherever it led me, that’s where I would come up with a certain sound that they wanted.

MM: One thing I find is that a lot of drummers just play too much. When do you know when not to play?

HB: Well, you know, that comes with experience, learning that less is more. That one good knock in the right place is worth a million sixteenth notes.

Kids today don’t listen. I’m amazed — when I go into a studio today, if I go into a studio that I haven’t been playing in for some time, where the guys don’t know me, everybody has headsets, and the engineer says to me, “Hal, what do you want in your headsets?” And I say, I just want a little bit of everybody and just a touch of the singer, and no drums. They say, “No drums?” That’s right. I don’t want any drums in my headset. “Why is that?” Well, I don’t have to play with me, I have to play with six or seven or eight guys out there. If everybody listens a little bit to everybody, you’ll play together. But these guitar players get in, and they say, “I wanna hear my guitar, turn me up, turn me up” — it’s crazy. All of a sudden they’re playing with themselves. They’re not listening to anybody else.

They just don’t make music today the way we used to make music. Now maybe each generation has said that, but it’s the truth. There’ll never be another golden era like the 1960s and 1970s and part of the 1980s. It has all changed. I mean, you can’t understand the lyrics today, these kids screaming. These drummers who are using baseball bats for drumsticks. I mean, it’s hysterical.

When guys look at me, when they see the Hal Blaine signature stick, they say, “My goodness, how can you play with that little light stick?” I say, first of all, I got microphones on me. I don’t have to play loud. I play what I feel. I play dynamics. Now if they want me playing really heavy, I’ll just turn the sticks over and use the butt ends — it really doesn’t matter. I don’t need the sticks that these guys are using — they’re building muscles and they’re getting cramps and they’re hurting their fingers and they’re getting deaf.

MM: I’m still amazed by the versatility you guys had back then.

HB: Yeah. In the morning I’d play on some rock and roll record, then I’d be doing Barbra Streisand records, some of the most beautiful music in the world, and then three hours later I’d be in playing a Latin session. I mean, it just went on and on and on. It’s amazing to me, and I guess amazing to a lot of people, that we could do that. It was wild, but we were guys who, at that time, had that experience, and we could do it.

MM: It was an amazing era, and great stuff came out of it. They don’t make ’em like that anymore.

HB: I know. They really don’t. It’s really a shame, but, you know, it’ll come around again. I remember the big bands, and I was a big-band drummer — that was my meat. I was with Count Basie, I was working with lots of big bands. It was wonderful, and I loved it. But the big bands were getting crazier and crazier, the arrangements were getting wilder, the chords were more dissonant, where it really wasn’t pleasant to the ear — even to the ears of the musicians! It finally wound up with Stan Kenton playing all this wild music — I mean, it was wild! Then all of a sudden this guy came along with a quiet little trio to Capitol Records, and turned the whole recording business upside down. His name was Nat King Cole. Quiet, little wonderful music.

So people who were really getting enough of the Stan Kentons and these wild bands who were just blowing their brains out, all of a sudden Nat King Cole came along, and you could hear every word. It was impeccable, and his music was beautiful.

One of the saddest parts of my career was, after he died, going in and putting drums on all his stuff. He had a fine drummer, Lee Young, but Lee played quiet little brushes; you never knew he was there. Dave Cavanaugh, who was one of the big producers of the time, a great arranger at Capitol, decided to update and put some real drums on Nat’s stuff. So I spent, I don’t know, a week or so, everybody crying in the studio listening to Nat on tape, talking in between takes, and so forth. Really very, very sad. Very sad.

All this music that we’re listening to today that’s so crazy — but people are coming along, like this chick Diana Krall, she’s playing very quietly. I think she’s eventually going to turn the tables around where everybody starts coming out with kind of a quiet version of songs.

MM: I’ve always seen a trend more toward simplicity, over time.

HB: Oh, absolutely! Less is more. It’s one of the things you learn.

MM: When MTV had all those “unplugged” concerts, that was kind of that trend. Take the electronics away, strip down the instrumentation, and see what it sounds like.

HB: Right. That’s one of the wild things about David Grisman. He has this wonderful company, and he’s made over 30, 35 albums. We’ve done records with Jerry Garcia and various people, but acoustically. He will not have anything electric on his records. You listen to these albums, they’re magnificent. And he sells a lot of albums, a lot of albums.

MM: You worked with John Denver for a long time, right?

HB: Working with John Denver is the perfect example of how we used to build a song. John would sing the song; we would all produce our own parts. When we were ready to make it, we would yell into the booth to wake up the producer, who was sleeping there or doing a crossword puzzle, and we would make a record. I had 10 major hits with him, 10 major albums through those years.

MM: You’ve done studio drumming, you’ve done live drumming, you were on the road with John Denver. For a beginning drummer, what’s the difference between doing studio and being on the road?

HB: The difference is when you’re working a live performance, you’re getting immediate response to what you’re doing. People are screaming, and they love what you’re doing. People are listening with their eyes. You become more of a showman when you’re on stage.

People listening to records — when you’re in the studio, you’re playing music. You don’t have to show off, so to speak. You don’t have to raise your arms a little higher than normal and things like that, the little tricks you learn — you know, how to jump up out of your seat on the very end of the song — those kind of things that you do onstage.

Another difference is that you can have an awful lot of fun on the road because when the show is over at night, you know that you’re going to get a good night’s sleep and have a nice breakfast in the morning. Especially the John Denver show. We never carried a bag; our bags where all numbered, they were always in your hotel room whenever you arrived. I mean, it was just the most incredible job, probably ever, in show biz. And everybody made money.

Nowadays, as you know, all you have to do is look at VH1 to see where are they now. You know, these guys are homeless and living in the streets, and they made millions and they put it up their nose or in their arms. Of course, now that they realize how foolish they were, they want to start the band over again. It doesn’t work. Today, the demographics of record buyers are from 11 to about 24 years old. They don’t want old people anymore. They want young kids; they want little gorgeous chicks. You see this on MTV and VH1 when they’re doing videos. It’s just the way it is. It’s hard to understand the songs because everybody’s playing as loud as they can, and the singers are not really trained singers — they’re people just out of high school or whatever, and they’re screaming. They’re just hollering, and you don’t know what the heck they’re saying.

But, I’m not a young kid anymore. You know, if I was a young kid in high school, and that was the trend, and we were all 15-year-olds, maybe I’d be going along with that.

I know that there are an awful lot of fine musicians out there, and they’re all trying hard; they’re studying hard. I try to tell drummers they’ve got to know how to read music. How do you expect to walk in and sit down with maybe a 60-piece orchestra when they put a part in front of you? You know, it’s the old joke — how do you get a drummer to quiet down? Put music in front of him. (laughs)

MM: When you do your clinics and you talk to the drummers, what mistakes do you see beginning drummers making?

HB: The first thing is, they don’t want to study. They just want to get in and play music. They want to play their favorite rock and roll song that they’ve heard 2,000 times on the radio or on their CD player at home, and now they’re a drummer because they’re playing exactly what the drummer played on the record. They think that’s all they have to do, and they start these garage bands and they play cover songs. But how in the hell can they possibly be creative and play their own songs?

You know, it’s easier to hit the lotto than hit the jackpot with a group. There are 10 million groups out there, and record companies don’t sign groups anymore today. I shouldn’t say that — sometimes they do. But if you have a band today, and you write songs — let’s say 12 or 14 songs — and you record them — they’re not bad, you know, halfway-decent commercial — you can get them burned on CDs for next to nothing. You can have them packaged for next to nothing. And every time you go out and play somewhere, you sell your own CDs.

Now, I know, from heads of record companies, that they watch some of these sales. I know there was one big group, Smashing Pumpkins or Hootie and the Blowfish, all of a sudden there was some group that was selling something like 30,000 records almost every two months. Well, that’s when a record company takes notice. They’ll go in and offer them a lot of money to put the record on their label.

It’s not like the old days. It’s not like you went in, you worked on a record in the studios, and so forth. It just doesn’t work that way today. That’s why it’s such a long shot for a drummer to really make it.

I think the last guy to really start to happen, along with me and after me, was Jim Keltner. Fine drummer. Fine, fine drummer. You know, he’ll even tell you, I was the guy that started recommending him for work. Even Jim, now he’s out on the road today with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. He’s out there because he’s making more money on the road than he’s ever known in the studio. Studios are just not happening anymore. If you’re going to be a sideman, so to speak, you have to be with a group that’s out there making it, and making money.

It’s such a long shot today, it’s a shame.

Aside from popular music, there are a lot of musicians, who are fine, fine musicians; they study classical music all their lives, and they go into a symphony orchestra. Well, a violinist can always find work because they use 20, 30, or 40 violins in a symphony orchestra. And if it’s not this town, it’s the next town or the next town.

But a drummer — there’s only one drummer in a band. If you’re lucky enough to get into that band, whatever it is, whether it be pop or classical, you’re very fortunate to have a job.

I hate to discourage guys, but damn it, it’s a fact of life!

MM: It’s a tough industry — like you said, there’s only one drummer in a band. But I’ve been surprised at how noncompetitive — how friendly and cooperative — most of the people in the drumming community are.

HB: That’s true. Drummers are all friends. I mean, when we, the so-called rock and roll Wrecking Crew, came along, we were all guys working in nightclubs, making a hundred bucks a week. All of a sudden we’re making a thousand dollars a day. Now that’s one hell of a leap! Like falling into a vat of chocolate. And you gotta be friends.

One of the things I used to tell the guys when I was contracting was, “If you smile, you stay around a while. If you pout, you’re out!” Because a lot of guys would walk in, look at their music, and say “Eh, the same shit today,” or “What kind of shit are we playing today?” Well, the microphones are on and producers hear that, then they’ll come to me and say, “I don’t want that guy around here! I want guys who want to play on my records.”

So that’s one of the things I used to tell the guys. So everybody was friendly. Everybody loved one another. There were no arguments, there were no fights. Fortunately, during our era, there were no drugs. Rarely were there drugs.

The Mamas and The Papas were a different story. They had lots of drugs. Coming out of The Mamas and The Papas, Michelle Phillips, who became quite a great actress — she does a lot of movies, she recently married an old buddy of mine who’s a plastic surgeon — she’s the only one, really, who didn’t do drugs. The rest of them, you know, Denny was always drunk, jumping out of windows and breaking his legs. John Phillips had a liver transplant, and now he’s drinking again. [NOTE: John Phillips died shortly after this interview.] Cass, of course, unfortunately passed away.

I look at all these groups, there’s something like 175 groups that I worked with, did their records, and there may only be a couple of guys still out there. Freddy Cannon goes out once in a while to do something. Gary Lewis still goes out to do something once in a while. He’s one of the few guys that won’t admit that I played drums on his records. I played on his records, I played on his father’s records, I was doing movies with his father. I mean, it’s ridiculous — I’ve got pictures of him sitting in the studio, you know, fooling around with my drums! He’s the only guy who said, oh no, he played his own drums on his own records. Total BS.

I do need to say, when it came to The Monkees, for an example, they really did play music, but they didn’t make their own records. Now I remember one night, there was this big, big thing that hit Hollywood: The Monkees do not make their own records. I mean, it was the scandal of scandals.

MM: But nobody made their own records back then…

HB: That was common knowledge, but not necessarily to the general public. To the kids, all of a sudden this thing came up — The Monkees do not make their own records. So, in order to straighten that out, they took The Monkees, and they had them in the little Studio C at RCA one night. Coincidentally, we were in Studio A making Monkees records. Closed session, nobody could get in there. In Studio C, all the press, all the media was there, all the TV guys with their cameras, taking pictures of The Monkees playing music, and singing. (laughs) So, that kind of took care of that.

A lot of guys are constantly asking me, still, didn’t it bother Dennis Wilson that you made the records with The Beach Boys? Well, Dennis loved that I made the records because he could be out surfing and motorcycling and boating and you know, nothing but chicks and boozing and getting in car crashes. (laughs) That was Dennis. The proof of the pudding is when he made his own album, he hired me. (laughs) He really didn’t mind.

There was only one drummer that did. When I did The Byrds, that was the only drummer that pissed and bitched and moaned, and Terry Melcher, the producer, had to tell him to shut up and sit the fuck down! (laughs) Anyway, they were thrilled at the end, because right out of the box came “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

MM: Of all the people you played with, is there anybody you wanted to play with that you didn’t get to?

HB: There are many people, obviously; there were lots of people in those days that I did not get to work with. But they were mostly people who had their own group and had good musicians and went in and made their own records.

MM: It seems that the ones you weren’t playing on, Earl Palmer was.

HB: Right! Exactly. I was just gonna say, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.” I was always Phil Spector’s drummer, so Earl got to do that when I was in England, and it was a big hit. I mean, it was Phil Spector producing. Everything he did was a big hit.

MM: What drummers do you listen to today — who do you like?

HB: There are some fine drummers out there. I have friends like Gregg Bissonette — very, very fine drummer. Kenny Aronoff, who I see with so many groups, knows just how to play — like I said, less is more. Of course, Nashville discovered drums about 15 years ago, so Paul Leim and those guys are down there, and country music has become rock and roll, and they’re just playing what we were all playing in Hollywood, and they’re doing a great job.

MM: What advice would you give to a new drummer just starting out?

HB: Study. You know like they say, location, location, location? Study, study, study. Practice, practice, practice. Because practice makes perfect. You’re not gonna get anywhere if you haven’t studied because you walk into a band and they throw that music in front of you — how in the hell are you going to play a song? Unless you happen to know it backward. Now what if it’s a brand-new song?

What is music? Music is only a roadmap. You start here and you end here, but in between there may be some stops and starts and left turns and right turns, and so forth. That’s all music is. Everyone is reading the same part; that’s so that everyone — whether it’s a five-piece band or a thousand-piece band — everybody starts at the same downbeat and ends at the same place.

It’s only a roadmap, and if you can read English, you can read music. I’ve heard guys say, “I don’t want to have to read notes because it’ll hurt my soul.” Well, that’s such BS, absolute BS. If you can read the newspaper or a comic book, you can read music. It’s no different. You learn to read in groups.

When you first started to learn to read English, you were reading, “the,” “man,” “dog,” “cat,” “c-a-t.” Music is no different. When you first learn it, you’re learning your one-e-and-ahs and two-e-and-ahs and so forth, but before you know it, you’re reading in groups. Now when you read a newspaper, you don’t think about the word “the,” “can,” “run,” “cat,” “go,” “stop.” You don’t think about those things. You’re automatically reading them. Once you start reading music you learn to read in groups. Bop bop, bop bop, dadadadadot, dadadadadot. Once you’ve practiced it and studied it, you don’t think, “one-e-and-ah two, one-and two-and” — you don’t think that way; you think in groups. So you automatically do it without thinking about it.

Once in a while you run into a figure that an arranger has written that’s really difficult, and you go back to the old, “Let’s see now, this is one-and two-and-ah three-and four-and one-and.” You spell it out and then you’ve got it. But if you don’t know those basics, you can’t do that.

The hardest thing I ever did was a movie called The Carpetbaggers with an incredible arranger who writes some of the most difficult music in movies. He writes a lot of stuff in six. I walked into this session — why I even got hired, I don’t know. But I walked in and the percussionist saw me, and I didn’t know this percussionist. He was an older guy, and he was one of those guys that read fly specks. I mean, he played all these marimba and xylophone parts on all the cartoons, for years. One of the great, great guys — terrific guy. He saw me looking through the music and sweating. He came over and put his arm around me and said, “Look, there’s no problem. We run into something here, we just talk it out. Nobody has to know.” And it was beautiful, and it came out great! It would go from six to three to four to two to one, unbelievable stuff. And it worked out fine.

The score to The Carpetbaggers was written and arranged by award-winning composer Elmer Bernstein, who has created the soundtracks for hundreds of Hollywood films from 1951 to today.

So, if I hadn’t had some kind of basic training, I could have never done that in a million years. That’s all it is.

The advice that I give kids is that you must learn how to read music. Because then you become a part of the joke, you know. What did the drummer say on his very first professional job? “Would you like fries with that order?” (laughs) What does a drummer say when he knocks on your door at night? “Domino’s!” You know, you’re either gonna be a drummer or you’re gonna work in a fast-food joint, and that’s all there is to it.

There are so many things that I try to explain to kids when I do clinics. When you drive a car, if you remember when you first started driving, maybe you were 12 or 13, and you were learning; you couldn’t wait until you were 16. Finally you’re driving, and now you’re scared to death; you’re shaking all over, you’re looking ahead, you’re trying to see a light, remember to step on the brake, step on the gas, turn on your signals …. Well, within three or four months, you’re now looking at people, you’re waving to people, you’re listening to the radio, you’re not thinking because you’re automatically seeing that light coming up that’s green or red; you’re automatically stepping on the brake or the gas or turning on the street you’re supposed to turn on. You don’t think about it. You’re not saying to yourself, “I’m going to turn here and then I’ll step on the brake and then I’ll turn…” You don’t think that way.

Reading music is the same way. You don’t think about it; you’re just doing it. You’re playing those licks — they’re just in groups. Every time you see those triplets, dadada dadada dadada, you know what they are. Not the first time, but by the fifteenth or twentieth time.

So, I guess that’s my advice.

MM: That’s great advice, Hal. Thanks for spending the time talking.

HB: My pleasure.