Count Me In

I love drumming.

When my eyes are closed and I'm playing the beat,

it's the same if there's, you know, 40,000 people

or if there's 40 people or four.

It's really just moving the air with these vibrations

and getting people to feel the power of the drum.

It's punctuating life with rhythm.

When I play drums at the drum circle

or big concerts, you feel like you're connecting with people.

Once you start playing,

nothing else really matters, you're in the moment.

It's a great instrument to play.

When I was young, I saw a show about Benny Goodman,

and they had the real Gene Krupa in the movie.

And every time they went to Gene, he was slamming.

And they go to the audience,

they were snapping, and I just thought that it seems like

the coolest thing in the world to play and drive a song and turn people on.

I believe it was a Monday.

We used to have bath nights in the house.

Me dad was there ironing. Me dad loved to iron.

Which was great, my mum loved it.

I think that's why she married him, you know.

Anyway, set up near the ironing board.

And we had a little, like, black and white TV set.

So the TV show was on.

Off they go, and I've gone…

"Whoa, who's that, Dad?"

"That's, er, Dave Brubeck Quartet, son."

"No, no. Who's that on the drum set?"

"Oh, that's Joe Morello, son."

"Wow! He's good, isn't he?"

I said, "I just want to be like him."

"You'll never be as good as Joe Morello," goes my dad's report.

And I'm like, "That's me done."

The video that changed my life was Mötley Crüe's "Wild Side",

where I saw Tommy Lee rolling around in a drum cage

and I thought, "Oh, my God, that's the job for me."

I'm done, I need to play drums.

I was, like, super shy, like the shyest girl that you could ever have met, erm,

and I just… I went to this drum club and…

You know, in The Matrix, when Neo suddenly sees all the code?

It felt like that.

Like, I couldn't do it yet, but I understood it.

I understood the principles of it.

It was the sort of drum break on "Wipeout" by The Surfaris,

which is one of the first things I learned, I think.

And I… "Oh, I can do that, you know, is it…"

And that's great.

You know, when you suddenly think, "Oh, I can do that."

As an 11-year-old, I was into Sandy Nelson.

The records focused on the sound of the drums and the sound of what he was doing.

I remember dragging my mother, "Mom, listen…

what he's doing there, see, Mom, see. Hear that 'shh' sound?"

"That's because he's playing the drums so fast that it sounds like…"

"Hey, Mom. No, Mom. No, listen, listen."

And here, you know, I sort of have a vague memory

of harassing my poor old mom to listen to Sandy Nelson.

They just looked so cool.

You know, when you're young and impressionable,

everything about it was mysterious and magical and dangerous.

You gotta remember, this time, rarely were people on television.

And you looked at the records, the actual albums, and you opened them up,

so it really left a lot to your imagination.

I had this incredible drum set.

I mean, it was growing exponentially.

Every day there'd be something else in it.

I went out in the kitchen and I picked up a pair of knives

and I beat the living daylights out my mum's cooker.

There's all these pieces of enamel flying off my mum's cooker.

Dad comes in…

"What's going on in here?

What's this confounded racket you're making?"

I'm beating it… I ain't stopping.

I'm Joe, I'm that dark sunglass guy.

I'm giving it the big one on the top of the cooker.

I played on pans and pots and random drums.

And my dad had goalie pads, he was a hockey player.

I did that for, like, a year,

until finally, they were like, "Okay, I think she's serious,

we'll buy her a drum set."

When my first toy drum kit arrived, I had to be the happiest kid in the universe.

And I'll never forget that little kit because it was one of those drum kits

that you get from Sears and Roebucks, you know?

And it was… I call it a Beatles kit

because it had a picture of the Beatles on the front,

you know, and it was made of cardboard and paper.

And it took about a day for me to tear that up.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles!

- -

The TV is on.

I'm in the other room and I'm hearing Cynthia say,

"Come on. You got to watch this.

You got to watch this."

For people of my generation, the Beatles on Ed Sullivan in the States

was a pivotal point, an epiphany for a lot of people.

It was like these guys from who knows where, from outer space somewhere,

you know, came down playing this amazing, you know,

rock 'n' roll music.

- -One, two, three, four.

And there's Ringo, sitting up there.

He's, like, 25 yards off the ground, with a Ludwig Super Classic drum set.

That hi-hat open.

And he could dance while he played, which was great.

I loved him.

Looking back at that early footage again, there's this fire,

this intensity to the way Ringo played and would splash the cymbals.

And he was, you know, up high and on the edge of his seat.

He had a punk energy, the fire with which he's playing and driving that band.

And when you remember that they had a hard time hearing each other,

but he was laying down the beat and driving that band.

To me, there's nobody like him.

His main influence was American, solidly American.

I mean, from early on…

They were in Liverpool, so they had the advantage

of getting the newest records coming from the sailors.

They were able to hear the American rock stuff

that was happening at the time, and they were hugely influenced by that.

The Mersey Sound. Yes, Liverpool's selling pop music.

Liverpool kids are proud of the fact that their city is providing

the world with beat music and an offbeat cult of fashion.

Tune in for a bit.

Everyone wanted the same thing.

They wanted to be an R&B band because that was cool,

even though we were playing all sorts of other nonsense,

but the ambition was R&B.

And everyone was listening to, you know, the old blues records,

Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins, Howlin' Wolf and so on.

We listened to the music.

We made it our own.

We messed around with it and we sent it back to America and America loved it.

And they loved it because it was being made by funny guys with funny haircuts.

So it didn't matter whether we were playing it right or playing it wrong,

they loved it.

Here's these young guys from England playing it 'cause they dig it.

Like Charlie Watts would say,

"The Stones, we just wanted to be a good, you know, R&B cover band."

That's what they were for a while, you know,

until they started writing their own songs.

And that's kind of naturally the way it goes.

They packaged it in a way that us Americans just ate it up.

Charlie.

It's about the groove, dude, Don't… You know, all that other shit?

Doesn't matter. Just hit that magic sweet spot,

the good foot, the whatever it is. Of course, they got excellent lyrics

and wonderful musicianship on the guitar.

Great, you know, all kinds of other qualities.

But it's that ramshackle groove that's unique that many look for,

but few can achieve that sophisticated dishevelment.

And that's why the Stones are the Stones.

Yeah, Charlie Watts is an English drummer who plays like no other English drummer.

He… He just doesn't.

He didn't… Never smiled.

You got a couple of them… out of him,

you know, in the early days.

He was a jazz drummer. He was a big band player,

playing in a pop band.

He… That was his thing.

But he… And he just had this thing

where… Ringo was this…

And Charlie…

It's like he'd…

He'd leave a beat out.

On his hi-hat.

And I thought, "God, that's fucking brilliant."

That's what I'm gonna do. I wanna be him.

If you listen to the beginning of "Honky Tonk Woman"

by the Rolling Stones, it starts out at a certain tempo.

This is the great Charlie Watts, one of the best all-time drummers ever.

And by the end, he's probably like…

If it starts at 103, he's probably at 109 or something.

But you don't sit there and go,

"Oh, God, that song is really speeding up."

It's just naturally… That's how they play.

-Whoo! -

"Merry Christmas, Mommy plus Dad."

Well, usually drumsticks come in pairs.

So that's probably what the other part is.

Yeah.

Eventually, after ruining enough cooking ware, my parents acquiesced

and got me an actual drum set when I was four years old.

-Yes! - No!

-Yeah! -

- No! -Yeah!