TERRY BOZZIO

Prince of Percussion

By Steven Cerio

MANY DRUMMERS, IN AN ATTEMPT TO MODERNIZE, UTILIZE NEW –FANGLED ELECTRONIC GADGETS TO IMPROVE THEIR SOUND. TERRY BOZZIO, ON THE OTHER HAND, USES PURELY ACOUSTIC PERCUSSION. Yet his visionary techniques and innovations drag these classic instruments into the future with intelligence and skill.

            Bozzio’s career began with the Maria Napa Symphony. That led to gig’s with Jazz gurus Pete Escovedo, Art Lande, Eddie Henderson and Woody Shaw, which in turn led to a grueling ten record excursion with the musical-genius-about-town name Frank Zappa (Bozzio plays on Zappa classics like Sheik Yerbouti, Zappa in New York, and Zoot Allures). Terry’s approach to the kit sharply contrasted with former Zappa skin-beaters like Chester Thompson (with his laid-back intensities) or the clumsy-yet-elegant thud of Aynsley Dunbar. Bozzio’s sound had a youthful bravado, trampling over odd time signatures with a disarming ease.

            (To challenge Bozzio, Zappa composed the incredibly complex The Black Page. Its transcription consisted of so many inscribed drum patterns and figure that the pages appeared to be almost black. Zappa often used the piece to showcase Bozzio’s remarkable talents.)

            After a decade with Zappa, Bozzio moved on, recording with the Brecker Brothers (also Zappa graduates) and then replacing Bill Bruford in the Prog-Rock supergroup U.K. Teamed with John Wetton (fresh out of King Crimson) and Eddie Jobson (from Roxy Music), they went on to record the classic Danger Money and the impressive-yet-overlooked live recording Night after Night. In 1980, fueled by the remarkable swell of New Wave sound, well fed by extraordinary musical prowess and fantastic showmanship – two attributes rarely combine in the dance-and-fashion craze. Bozzio led the Persons through four albums as drummer, producer, writer and stage designer, developing a band persona that mixed softcore S&M and The Jetsons. From the band’s first his single, “Mental Hopscotch,” Bozzio proved he could slash out a 4/4 beat with the same enthusiasm he displays delivering his many virtuoso flourishes.

            After Missing Persons, Terry played with Robbie Roberston, Mick Jagger, Dweezil Zappa, Steve Vai (another Zappa alumni!) and Deborah Harry. He united with Jeff Beck to record the Grammy-winning CD Guitar Shop.

            Bozzio now dedicates his time to his educational videos, Solo Drums and Melodic Drumming And The Ostinato and clinic/performance tours with his forty-four-cymbal, twenty-drum, ten-foot pedal kit. Each performance includes components from both the videos and his two self-released Cds Chamber Works and Drawing The Circle. Both of these releases utilize techniques discussed in the videos, most notably his use of the ostinato, a technique whereby the drummer produces a pattern with his feet and counteracts this with various other patterns time signatures and temperaments. This technique conjures the aural illusion of a dual percussion team without overdubs or other electronic trickery. Such independence of the limbs is the dream of any drummer hoping to take the road that leads away from the land of “Boom Boom Crash Crash.”

Chamber Music is melodically reminiscent of Stravinsky, with touches of influence from conductors Harry Partch and Edgar Varese – both of whom propelled percussion from mere symphonic accent to solo instruments worthy of focus.

            Of course that indefinable Bozzio flair for dramatic time signatures and textures runs throughout both Cds. Building crescendos from rumbling throbs and crystalline structures from his various self-designed cymbal concoctions, he dices the large tom tones into bits as melody and rhythm congeal. The concept of “drum fill” isn’t present here – rather, he creates varying textures and follows melodic structures with such specialty items as piccolo toms (also of his own invention). Both these Cds and their live counterpart have carved Bozzio his own niche among a small handful of progressive innovators.

            Only occasionally does an artist like this rise up with both a respect for history and a mind programmed for the future. When such talents appear, critics often use the generic label “experimental” to describe work they don’t understand. However, since an experiment is a blind stew of intent and chance, that label does not apply here.

SECONDS: What’s your first memory of drumming – did you start out playing pots and pans?

BOZZIO: Yeah, things like that. I don’t really remember much of that, though I do remember seeing a home movie where I was about sixteen months old, and I was fooling around with some tools, and banging them like a drummer. My first conscious memory is of Ricky in I Love Lucy – that was the first time I saw an actual drummer, and that’s when I decided I wanted to play the drums. So I got a little toy drum kit, and I quickly destroyed that. When I was ten I got some bongos – my dad had a Tito Puente album.

SECONDS: So they were totally supportive?

BOZZIO: Well, not really – they were not. I craved guitar lessons, but my dad didn’t want me to be a musician, because he was. And that’s where the real roots are, because my father would always be begged to play accordion at parties. He was a child prodigy at the age of four. You know, he had a teacher who’d rap him on the knuckles, but he always wanted to play guitar. But then he got married, and he didn’t want to be a professional musician – he wanted a solid direction for his life. But when he would take that accordion out and start playing, there’d be a hush across the room, and people would start crying. And witnessing the power that music had made me really envious.

SECONDS: Was Zappa your first professional gig?

BOZZIO: Before that I played with local bands and studied in college, and did well in the college orchestras and music ensembles, and started to play with some local symphonies. And then I got a gig playing for the musical Godspell. I auditioned with some friends, and in no time flat I was a professional musician. I could draw unemployment, it was fantastic. That basically got my foot in the door. Then I started playing with a lot of the best Jazz and Latin cats in San Francisco. Herbie Hancock, Woodie Shaw, Joe Henderson. I’m trying to think back now. I played with John Abercrombie, too – he was a really down-to-earth guy. He could jam.

SECONDS: Did Zappa’s vulgarity ever embarrass you?

BOZZIO: Not really. My head-space was the typical head-space for a Rock& Roll musician who’s in a band fronted by a major personality like Frank. You sort of have the mentality that you’re playing to get laid. For the most part, I took the position that I’m a player in a symphony orchestra, and he’s the conductor. Whatever he wanted to do, I’d go for it. I just wanted it to be as great as it was. It’s like, if he’s doing it, and he that smart, and he’s that funny, and he’s that cool, why not? He set such a good example – we had a ball. It always just seemed like : this is the way real people talk, and these are the real aspects of humanity that most people repress, so what’s the problem?

SECONDS: He was a genius who supported his high-brow aspect – that Edgar Varese influence – by talking to the common man, feeding him odd times signatures and humor.

BOZZIO: I don’t think it was that simple, or that calculated – I think it was just a natural part of Frank’s personality. He didn’t think music should be that serious, and he felt a lot of bizarre music had an innate sense of humor to it. I think he truly enjoyed going out and playing music with the band. I think he truly enjoyed doing his spiels – which were like stand-up comedy – cynicism, par excellence. I don’t think he had any problem shifting roles. He’d have ten things going on at once.

SECONDS: I read that obsessive book, The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play –

BOZZIO: I only read The Real Frank Zappa Book. I lived it first hand. I don’t really like a lot of these outside-the-Zappa-scope books; they’re all pretty much dry and wrong. Bullshit. Not funny, and not interesting. Unless it’s like a reference, and then really do one, instead of some musicologist’s bullshit interpretation of what went on. Then you read The Real Frank Zappa Book, and you laugh like hell, and you’re awestruck. You learn so much.

SECONDS: What happened to that project with Patrick O’Hearn and Eddie Jobson?

BOZZIO: That came about because Frank had an all-day photo shoot with this famous photographer who did the cover of Zoot Allures, and he had this amazing technique which really looked cool – really had a vibe to it. So Frank is there all day, red face, black face, polka-dot – all of those later albums that had the make-up off, he was like drowned, greasy, exhausted rat – and we walk in at seven o’clock, fresh out of the shower – three young guys – and he thought the contrast of that was really funny. And that was when he decided to retire the Mothers Of Invention. He said: “I’m going to call the new band ‘Zappa’ – you know like, ‘Montrose”’ - which I thought was really funny. And then he goes: “Why don’t you guys get your stuff together, and open the show as ‘The Cute Persons’, and then we’ll do our stuff as ‘Zappa”’ He liked the contrast – and liked the fact we were a bunch of guys who did everything together. I had a little Volkswagen, and used to drive Frank home every night, because he didn’t drive. And we would jam in his basement. When the Warner Brothers suit came down, and his ex-manager sued, and his assets were frozen cause he was getting ripped off by those fuckers – he almost didn’t have enough dough to pay us, so we jammed and rehearsed in his basement, and he was doing legal crap all day long – instead of writing music. And we said: “You know we can hang – if you don’t have enough dough to pay us.” We believed in the cause, but he was really good with finances, so he scraped together the money to pay us.

SECONDS: At one time, Montrose drummer Denny Carmassi had your haircut – I thought you were in the band!

BOZZIO: You’re right. We had similar hairstyles, a similar face – he’s Italian, and so am I. Another guy I’m often confused with is John Waite. He was in The Babys ‘round that time, and he was opening for us, and he had a massive hit single, but didn’t have the audience, yet. So there was some confusion, because of the resemblance.

SECONDS: Your palette of textures and great awareness of silence reminds me of Joe Morello at times.

BOZZIO: Listen to “Take Five” today. That’s like forty years old now, and it’s still one of the most tasteful, beautiful drum solos. It was 5/4. Everybody in the world knows that song. Solo drumming, melodically, tastefully done, by a master.

SECONDS: The way you handle you cymbals, your choice of drums, and the decisions you make on the kit have always been extremely inventive.

BOZZIO: Two things happened in 1979. I’d left Frank, and he was live in New York with The Black Page. And The Black Page starts with a snippet of a ten-minute drum solo I had improvised, which was a note-for-note rip-off of a Tony Williams lick off a Stanley Clark album. There, for posterity. This stuck in my craw. And then, when I got to England, I just went wild, listening to Kin Crimson albums, and here’s a guy who’s not a chops-oriented American Fusion drummer, like Tony Williams and all the guys I emulated, and he really got this wonderful sonic personality, and a beautiful, inventive style. And so this really made me aware of developing my own style. So I started stacking the cymbals at that time, and stayed away from things I had seen.

SECONDS: Did you become bored with regular cymbals?

BOZZIO: This was the simple matter of trying to get sonic personality, instead of the typical sound. Zappa would always say, “Bozzio, you play this ride cymbal throughout all my music, and I got this band of white noise that’s just always going on.” And from a musical standpoint, it puts everything in this singular vibe. So after awhile, I started to think two cymbals put together makes this white noise sound, so you get this explosion, but then it quickly dies down. So I stopped doing that – so I could play melodically between the high hats. It was a slow evolution. One little idea at a time; one little sound at a time.

SECONDS: It creates a very earthy sound.

BOZZIO: My cymbals are a different metallic combination. They have a reddish hue, because there’s more copper in them than the average cymbal.

SECONDS: All of your tracks really hold up, like that triangle part on “Rendezvous 6:02” on Danger Money.

BOZZIO: Well, in a way, that’s kind of the sad state of affairs in Pop Music. Back then you had musicians working at a much higher level than people today.

SECONDS: Now it’d be hard to find anyone good enough to play on a Zappa album.

BOZZIO: There are basically five major avenues you can use now. You have County& Western, Slick Pop, Classic Rock, Lite Jazz, and Alternative Rock. It’s like: where’s Miles Davis? Where’s Weather Report? Where are the people really raising the bar with each album they put out?

SECONDS: Everything comes back in cycles, why not quality musicianship?

BOZZIO: It’s going to change a lot with the Internet. Everywhere I go, I meet people – drummers – totally out of the music business. No manager. No record company. And they’re all starving to meet people to go out and play, and do something different. And here I make a living at it, and I have total commercial freedom. Absolute artistic, commercial freedom.

SECONDS: I see the Punk Garage ethic recycling for the umpteenth time; it has to play itself out. The next spin has got to get back to something more traditional, so that it can come full circle and re-invent itself.

BOZZIO: Not necessarily. The music business is geared towards a thirteen-to-twenty-four-year-old demographic. We’re talking about people who have no sense of history. When you’re thirteen years old, you just got away from playing with Barbie dolls and toy soldiers. Suddenly, your hormones start to kick in, and you want to attract the opposite sex, so you start listening to music. You have no sense of the history of music. You have no idea that these power chords you think are so cool – say, in a Korn song – were first devised way back when Beck and Page invented feedback, and Clapton was doing that stuff in the Sixties. From a musicological standpoint, aside from a few key artists who are innovative, and a few technological revolutions that have increased the breadth of sound palettes, you have nothing new musically. In the Sixties, you had true free spirits like Bill Graham putting a show together that featured Ravi Shankar, Charles Lloyd – a Jazz saxophone player and The Grateful Dead on the same stage. Now, Backstreet Boys would never be with any other act except another Backstreet Boys. But it’s not just them. Whatever band – from the hippest to not – would never play with another band that didn’t somehow fit in with their demographic. And they don’t want them to be as good as the headliner. It’s all bullshit. So, these kids are not musically educated, the music programs in the schools are being but and slashed, so where can they go? They can’t go to the radio. They can’t go to MTV. They can’t go to normal TV. They don’t hear anything decent, so there’s no qualifier.

SECONDS: Unless you’re lucky enough to be in the vicinity of a good college radio station.

BOZZIO: Right, ‘cause they can play some interesting stuff, and also, some total garbage. Now, here’s the thing. The state of Bavaria, in Germany, has a budget allocated to the arts equal to the entire United States art budget. So, they have a culture. The feel, even if you are a salesman, a shop owner, or scientist, music is going to enrich your life. So you pick an instrument in school, and if you find another one you like, you can change – but either way, you’re going to learn. Every kid has some basic musical understanding there. So therefore, their music, is far greater. They haven’t got the short attention span that we do. So this is our sad state of affairs, but I think with the Internet, we’re going to have more choice, and a guy who has a name like me – they can log onto my website, because they know who Terry Bozzio is – can sell a thousand Cds and make more money than ten to twenty thousand for a record company. Why would I want to go and be dictated to by someone who doesn’t like or understand my music, when I can be an independent like Zappa, make more money, and have the freedom? I just thank god Frank made me an internationally known drummer with credibility, because people know – once you’ve been in his band you can pretty much play anything.

SECONDS: Do people like about Zappa, or complain that he always told them what to do?

BOZZIO: Frank said, “Look, I write the note, I write the words, I write the checks.” When you do that, there’s a music hall right down the street – go for it. How is that different from Benny Goodman?

He’s taking all the hits, he’s taking all the knocks, he’s got all the responsibilities. He’s the only one they’re gunning for, not you. He’s the one getting all the bad reviews, not you. All you got to do is the work. And most people just don’t have the guts and the balls that Frank had, and that’s because they’re lazy, and their reason for playing is not the pure joy of making music. It’s – I want to be rich and famous, I want to get laid, or I want validation, because inside I don’t feel a thing. And we all have those motivations to some extent, but on the other hand, if those are your primary motives, it’s a dead end. The point is doing something you really love and enjoy. It doesn’t have to be music, it can be drawing, or making pottery, or whatever. Making a hat and making it the best damn hat you can. All those other guys – I don’t think they really understood that concept. Frank would always try to help out as an honest friend. Frank always had a strong standard to his music, and had to fight against people who just didn’t understand him. So, what could he really do? It’s a Zappa show and he’s bringing you along, so at least try to do your part in good faith, and enjoy it, for god’s sake. It was the same for everyone. Frank was usually ten years older, and a lot smarter and more experienced, because he’d been doing it from day one. And so, who am I to come in and start issuing orders? And after I left, I found out just how hard it is, getting something going on your own. So I look at it more like – a respected ensemble, like a Miles Davis group. Something every musician would want to be a part of.

SECONDS: How important is it to have a hit record?

BOZZIO: I don’t even think about it. Living in LA, and going through the experience of being in a successful Pop band and having your fifteen minutes of fame is a very intense experience. There’s a serious psychological price to pay. So after that, I started to seek help. I spoke with a lot of psychologists, and sat with myself for a little while, and little by little – almost by accident – you find out who you really are, and why you should be doing what you are. So that, beyond the acceptance level, you know you’re doing the right thing in you heart. For me, just practicing everyday was like therapy. You’re always looking for possibilities. Someone who can really support them. But it’s that way with everyone I play with. The great thing about my coordination level at this point is I can accompany anyone, because I’m used to playing by myself, so I bring a lot more to it than just the mentality of an accompanist.

SECONDS: I hear a great evolution in your playing: well-mannered and elegant but retaining that same energy you had on the Zappa records.

BOZZIO: I want to have dignity as I grow up, and I want to have integrity, and do something I feel is artistically valid. And as you get older, you look around and see people trying to be admired, and they have a dignity about them, like Stravinsky. I don’t want to be a guy who’s fifty years old packing CDs, who has the hairstyle of the week. Jung says that, in an esoteric way, there’s nothing anybody can do that can’t be done by anyone else. So you get a green Mohawk, and you know what? Anyone can get a green Mohawk. So your idea is not in the green Mohawk, or the clothes you wear, or any of that. Your identity comes from deep inside.

SECONDS: But that’s not the American perspective. The American perspective says that your identity is the green Mohawk.

BOZZIO: This is because we live in a society where we don’t tell kids, “Look, this just might be what it appears to be: some bizarre evolution that gave us consciousness, and when you die, that’s it.” Instead, we tell them you got to get the good job so you can get the Rolex watch, so that people will look at you and be envious, and you can feel good about yourself, and that’s awful. I learned that, and now I’m hip. I dress like a slob when I play because I sweat, so they’re sweat clothes. But I don’t get a lot of opportunity to dress up, so sometimes I like to present myself as a composer from the Thirties. It depends on how I feel.