Bill Bruford visits Graham Russell Drums

[Music] hello here we are at ground russell drums we're back talking about the the marvelous bill brewford yard sale which is uh very close to going live we're looking at mid-october um we showed you some of this gear last week and if you want to wander over this way we have somebody actually browsing the gear as we speak um introduce yourself sir hello everyone i can't believe he's nicked all my gear and he's gonna sell it i can't believe it bill's popped in to see us um very kindly he's a very busy man um but he's popped in just have a little chat about some of this gear and we've had so much interest in this gear it's been phenomenal and i just mentioned to bill i had an email yesterday from danny carey from tall uh who wants danny danny who danny carey ever heard of him oh danny carey yeah all right i've heard of him so hi danny yeah danny if you're watching bill says hi hi um and if you buy the drums you have to come and collect them in person and do a little performance while you're here please so hi danny yeah we're getting so much interest in your equipment did you ever imagine that your old gear would get so much interesting no no i you know you don't think about that sort of thing at all uh when you when you're playing it's only when you're downsizing and you've got nowhere to put the stuff you come to graham russell drums and hope for the best you hope for the best is to persuade you to take some stuff in which is great and give it a good home well we'll give it a good home because you've got a lot of fans out there that are pestering me to know when it's going on sale and the great thing about your equipment is it's so unusual it's not a standard rock kit true i never did standards no i always always approached which instruments to use i let the music dictate to me what instruments to use rather than say this is my kit i'm going to impose it on the music right the music would tell me it needed some boo bams and a gong tom or it needed a gong and a gong tom or it needed electronics here or something like that so my kit and choice of instruments was always in permanent state of fluctuation yeah which is kind of very irritating very irritating for a road manager i bet you know but uh it it felt like the music was changing i was changing the kit was changing all the time yeah and it was all lots of oddities obviously we got the the posted percussion rack over here which is obviously quite fantastic i don't know if you can see that jack i wonder if this way the percussion rack here so is this something you'd have did you have this for a long period of time was this i do projects i did i mean i don't know when it was around it was certainly used all over uh my recent work with mikhail borshlap which was an improvising piano and drums duo okay but we're going way back into the early 80s with earthworks it's on earthworks first album called my heart declares a holiday kind of music breaks down and there's a kind of it was just within reach and so i could sort of spin around a little bit physically from the drums and to the to the and then come around uh and use most of the instruments on there so it's been used a lot so there you go the actual percussion rate as used by billboard you could buy this this is one lot so uh yeah that's one lot all the symbols are going individually the kits are going as one lot that is one lot i would recommend you come and collect that if you buy that something that could be hard to ship but uh we've got a vast array of pasty symbols so i presume you with pasty for your whole career i was pretty much you know when i was a kid there were only two symbols really there were surgeon and they were coming from the united states and therefore very expensive yeah for us british guys and there was pisces coming in from switzerland and they were more reasonable price certainly and for some reason you know beginning the jazz ecm days and stuff um quite a few of the of the british drummers had passed i think john bonham had pasty for a while right you know perhaps cozy powell had some pies t they were around a lot in the british community i went to john heisman's studio and he had piles and piles john probably did massive 602s yeah beautiful yes um and so i endorsed the endorsed them for a while and they gave me lots of prototypes well that was going to be one of my questions because there are some prototypes in here so did you have any input in the production of these or do they just keep offering you fresh sounds or do you tell them what you want a bit of bit of both there was only um so they produce a symbol i'd try it and so forth and kind of like it and then they take it away again i think with some comments from me and say oh well we could change it here there and everywhere right and after a while me being away on the road a lot and so forth you'd lose a bit a bit track a bit of where their ear was what they wanted to hear right uh i love the flat rides yeah i thought there's a few again a fair bit of that i love the big chinas which are a great sort of buttery warm china sound yeah you've got some lovely traditional chinese really good um but this is tell us about this one boy well i used to have a very trashy symbol right which was played on the album read by king crimson okay a track called one more red nightmare i think which we've got very famous not not the track and not me but the symbol the right became very famous because it was a trashy symbol that was taken out of a out of a trash can literally on the day of the the day of the recording session day before in the rehearsal and then they're called you took a trashy symbol out of them yeah yeah it was it was yeah it was it was bent up okay an australian hat right you know the hat like that was bent up there to fit in the trash can right somebody got and jammed in the trash can okay uh and i speaked it out damn you didn't sound pretty sounding great all right you could get those kind of bright to muted that kind of sound out of it it was great and i did actually say to paiste you know this is hot everybody wants this symbol you know because it was going crazy in terms of sales the album was big and it was great um and they said uh well they weren't terribly interested in that and then anyway another guy said i'll make you one this person from from factory metal right i can't quite remember which country he's from but he tried really hard but it doesn't quite doesn't quite work but it has got a good narrative story behind and this is back in the 70s yeah it was in the 70s because these days trashy symbols are very popular again they're making very trashy symbols well that's nice but for a while it wasn't really heard of no you know to make a trashy symbol right so that's a relatively new idea partly because people like these industrial metal sounds yeah and that album red was all about being an industrial trashy medal yeah you know so there we are so talk about king crimson i'd like to ask you have you have you seen the recent shows with gavin harrison i have gavin harrison is simply one of the best drummers in the world and he's absolutely terrifying i think he's terrifying chris and obviously he's he's got two other drummers as well he has so it's it's how do you feel when you watch a show like that watching someone performing music that you were part of the creation of is it is it awkward is it uncomfortable well i'm not good at concerts no i fidget you know and if it's if it's terrible i want to leave after 10 minutes right and if it's brilliant i want to play right and and you know i just don't really enjoy concerts it's going to drag there by my wife on the whole okay you know so i'm not i'm not a great consumer of other people's listening to other people it makes it rings too many bells and starts too much history going in my brain right okay because i do other things now sure but watching king crimson obviously it's changed a lot obviously they're playing this song change a lot away from how they were created yeah so that must be interesting i guess yeah it's interesting it's music musicologically it's interesting or from a musical critique the point of view it's interesting things are done differently these days okay uh and that's great i don't in any way think that uh inhibits or or throws the the original days into any kind of bad light you know i'm not sure they're making it better they're doing it differently yep which is fine as what you would expect you know do you know gavin i know gavin quite well dear sure he's my favorite drummer on the planet well he's so good have you seen the one with uh on that show david letterman yeah it's fantastic i've seen so much amazing show oh yeah unbelievable you know i mean you know there's 17 odd million people watching that pressure i was watching an interview with gavin and he said it's the biggest pressure thing he's ever done that in the modern drama festival the modern drama festival was terrifying i've done that too because he said that it's just so scary it is because every every drummer in the world is there and all great too yeah you know so you have to have a different approach i think you know yeah so yeah big fan of gavin so hi gavin if you're watching um i think he's saying you can come down here gavin and give a clinic if you want i don't think gary likes doing clinics anymore he's a very busy man yes um so behind you we have the iconic star classic maple and the gorgeous yellow yeah it's just this color scheme is this something you came up with did you know when i did ask for that it's true i don't know why just the yellow and black it's just a lovely color the canary yellow is terrific um i had also some simmons pads there's one of them that were there in the same grab that one quickly so they can see it in the same yellow and black um kind of livery you know and and so the whole kit was looking yellow and black and then this is hip i would i would then be in yellow and black as well i think so kind of humanoid working within all the drums all the drums were one and the human drummer is part of the kit great you know it's that kind of feeling and you told me when i picked this girl up you still got the jacket still got the jacket yeah is it for sale i don't think it is is it i've still got the jacket this is the one pad what happened to the rest of the pads well you know i had a lot of simmons kit uh there were two simmons kits pretty much identical one stored in time of bill ryan at tamar in the u.s was very very good and stored a lot of king crimson equipment and one kit was there another one was here i think the one here went back to simmons i think the one in the united states was sold right um but you know it's the difficult equipment now it's outdated uh you know the the hard the backup and support for that now is very difficult yeah so i did sell it to a collector who probably you know i'm not sure what is using it live okay but uh i you know the i i worked hard with it it was not easy but like all these things i think if you get a dozen great tracks out of it or even you know an album or two out of something and it really says something and that album would not have existed without that particular set of percussion yeah you know in its form then you've changed things you know it's it's really nice to do that yeah we were certainly one of the pioneers weren't you of that whole electronic what a fool what a fool being the first in is never necessarily a great great place to be so so go back to the yellow kit which even has a gong drum which is signed inside by bill whoever buys this kit is getting an absolute true one-off kit um so there was this 80s would you say what what projects would you use this is 90s 19. this is 90s okay we had a lot of king crimson work in in the mid 90s right um we toured the world couple times around it seemed to me because i got pretty dizzy um and this really did a lot of service then so did this whole kit go around the world you weren't using any sort of hiding this was in those days still it was just about possible to fly your own kit around okay and and these days that's considered extravagant you know because rental now is so good yeah that you can go anywhere and get a good drum kit you know right you're just not going to get yellow and black so if it's part of if it's part of the band's show if you like part of what the band is about then it's nice to take it fantastic so that one did a lot of miles yeah and held up pretty well you know and that's it's a lot for guys who put them in cases at the end of the night sure yeah people who look after them you know yeah the these tymptoms here which are rather fun these are lovely i've never seen these before but these built for you they were do you requested them i did i didn't design them i think they they already had star classic highest achievement blah blah blah they already had them designed right and probably available for other people but they put them in the same uh color to go with that yeah which is lovely and did you play them alongside that cable did you use them sort of stand alone i used them alongside that kit a little bit right not not very much okay because they just came fairly late in the day is this the very flat layout that yeah it's not involved in that no not involved in that by that time i'd stripped down and the reason i'd stripped down in part was because i wanted to get a different order of toms right instead of going down which everybody does i'd rather go yeah you know for example so the pitch order that you're it's going to give you a different flavor and it came also from percussionists so i was at a pas show percussive art society show watching this classical tympanus from the dutch orcs the conscious about orchestra and he's got five temps you know two three one in dead center four and five and he's just swinging so beautifully from the hips like this yeah you know with no with no sweat at all you know boom boom boom boom boom it is just like that i thought i've got to do that right that's a lovely flavor for a drum kit and that's what you get when you go to a percussive art society convention yeah you see some guy doing something differently from another genre or another set of uh techniques and you could say i could borrow that i could incorporate that in the drum kit you know and did that change your playing or did it change the way in which it changed my playing partly and uh and what instrument comes up under what stick at what time yeah you know so so there's there's two chords here symbol and the drum symbol and drum symbol and drum symbol and drums so there's four of those pairs of instruments and you start thinking about them as chords as pairs you see what i mean you start thinking about the instrument just a bit differently right but then i've always thought about the instrument differently every time i sit down and because i've never played a regular drum set i don't think well not since i was a kid okay so two things change yeah and did you purposely go down the path of sort of being unconventional you you don't strike me with somebody that's content to sit and play 4-4 for very long i i don't think musicians say i'm going to be unconventional i'm going to say how can i contribute here yeah well if john bonham does that and he's got that covered yeah i'll try something else what is it that he doesn't do yeah you know how can i how can i bring difference how can i bring my character my personality to the music how can i shape the thing myself the way i want you know yeah that's hard now to do because music is very very curtailed you know so if you listen to bbc radio 6 or something you know many of the drummers are doing very similar stuff on very similar sounding instruments yeah but in my day you know with some of the groups we had we were able to branch out as you can tell we were able to branch out a bit yeah and the manufacturers were willing to help which was lovely but certainly in the way you play and compose is is certainly always pushing the envelope being you know even with the electronics you were at the forefront of tried to be trying to push things forward that's what you were paying me to do right that's what i thought my job was you know fantastic simple call me old-fashioned that's fantastic no i love it so behind you over here we have a black tarmarant star kit which probably is 80s i think did do you have much history for this like 80s um yeah this is obviously before this one wow um if you don't don't worry well it's going back uh this is early earth works okay before that before that it's earlier i thought it's kind of a rock drunk it's before i even begin to think about jazz and jazz sounds and smaller drums and right this is still able to be able to shift this stuff around i use this a lot with patrick marazz right and we had a duo called maras bruford and we did a lot of improvising and we'd just take one piano and and one drum kit okay and well we didn't take a piano we went we piano was supplied yeah so we just had one kit and that one went around the world of fair bit doing music for piano and drums we called it we didn't want to be rock we didn't want to be jazz we played music for piano and drums and funny enough earlier on you said last night you with pete lockett i was and he was doing some music with a pianist indeed indeed well keyboard player keyboard very much on the electronic looping now of course looping is so great so they use that a lot and use a lot of electronic sound okay but a lot of guys in this um who are you know obviously not looking for hit records yeah you know and want to give full expression to their creative instincts find a duo with a keyboard player is a lovely way to go yeah because you can influence the music so much you can respond there's no clash of pitch uh and i did that a fair bit with patrick marazz i also did it with the dutch pianist called mikhail borshlap uh we while doing that stuff as well just improvising piano and drums um and pete's doing it now with john peter vitesse who's a great keyboard player um so that's where that came from anyway towards the end of the 70s 80s certainly there's not many snare drums here so i presume you must have cupboards and cupboards of snare drums at home no you didn't show me no i'm not really a collector of drums fun life i don't quite know why not many snares it's rather a nice one there the one that's now is it lovely it's a bell brush and there's one with this yeah and there's one with the star classic right there but no a lot of pro drummers have you know a fair few uh there is there is one because you had a signature snare for a while one when you the time i do so why didn't i give you a signature i don't know it wasn't it wasn't in your garage um well it's in my room at home which is when i'm using it it's one that i'm keeping i do have fun you can only have one surely i have three snare drums at home okay that's good um a signature and uh a prototype which red which is very nice and um something else but i can't remember oh yes i also have the early ludwig snare drum that was kind of 400 yeah chrome snare drum that was used on roundabout and the early yes material yeah which kind of hit music would you be using that when you played with genesis because on on second year i think so i think so because on seconds out you play on cinema show yes which is remark where did you last listen to that it's been a while it's fantastic this is just the greatest kids at home listen to cinema show on seconds out bill brewford's snare sound it's a 400 cranked up with a real honk to it it's the greatest snare sound and listen to the playing honestly that i love that performance good performance i'd love to talk to you more about genesis but i don't know if we have time but uh that was just a four-piece kit in those days wasn't it like a lab week with a 400. yeah yeah but but also i just come from king crimson i think so i did have a side rack of sort of metal plates and things and percussion okay that i could use if if phil was busy doing straight stuff i could use percussion that happened also with percussion racks i also had electronic percussion racks with simmons pads on them yeah taken from that idea of having a percussion rack of acoustic instruments yeah i took that idea and built percussion rack fairly big with about 12 simmons pads yeah which i used a lot with anderson bruford whiteman howe which was a kind of yes offshoot in 1989 91 that was very visual i remember seeing pictures very visual because you could stand like this yeah and and if you're if you're in the back of a stadium you know there's 20 000 people looking at you you and you turn your back on them you can point out the sounds and the viewer can see what you're doing i'm very conscious of of performing to a viewer yeah yeah because my style is naturally economical i tend to do this a lot i tend to do that a lot i don't do nights bush in white satin bush diddy bush dum dum dum i don't wave my arms about and a couple of times people say from the back of the room i you buford because they call me buford they forget they are all right in the state oh buford do something man do something puberty so uh you know rather than do right see what it sat in i'd probably play some percussion up here on electronic rack you know okay i am i'm working as hard as i can do what do you want me to do i'm busy you did mention this here which is which is obviously unique yeah but do you think on a dressing room door it's definitely a dressing room door definitely you said it might have been at red rocks well it's made in redwood city ca i have a feeling it was on a certain dressing room door in one of the anderson brewford waitman house shows okay it could have been san francisco it might have been red rocks fantastic i think so and yes this is for sale as well you can buy this you can put this on your and this is this is lot number zero seven two three zero seven two folks and you you mentioned on your wall upside down upside down you mentioned playing red rocks to be just now just somewhere i've always dreamed of playing and never will um just tell us what it's like to play at red rocks oh the sun going down yeah and the rocks let me tell you they are red right i mean you can see this from the stage absolutely and it's just a heavenly view as the sun goes down yes then it's darkening i mean you can't wish for more beautiful places to play light red rocks you know as the stages is covered first four or five thousand people are covered and there's probably another twelve thousand people picnicking and yeah and out there and it's kind of um in a bowl surrounded by sort of rocks and i remember playing along and seeing as this one son went down a mounted cop right you know doing security just on his on his horse just kind of plodding along round the perimeter of the rocks as well after you're playing yeah oh lovely yeah maybe had a partner somewhere i don't know but lovely fantastic so you also spent a lot of time in america yeah most of my career was in the states for sure sure it was you know for uh we made more money in the states so you know england always got a short shrift because one view says you've got to pay to play here as it were because it you know we weren't so big yeah um but for the same by the same token if you're going to put the band anywhere for 24 hours you know you tend to put it in the more profitable places yep we went to japan an awful lot in the 80s to about 95 they had a financial crash right but i went sometime once or twice a year i think with the simmons thing through the 80s and into the 90s but the states was the big one yeah thank you america that's good um so going back to this lot uh you've got this big old flight case here yeah uh we've got a big old symbol case we've got lots of even if you haven't got a huge budget the the the bill brewford yard sale auction has something for everyone we've got little symbol cases and these stenciled cases and we've got a yamaha dx7 we have got a hard keyboard in there yes indeed to trigger those sounds in early midi right okay excuse me early early days of midi yep uh you know i trigger it i took a whole keyboard you know i didn't realize it came in a rack module and of course things came in a rack module life is so much better now guys i gotta tell you it's a whole lot easier yeah so some lovely speakers lovely speakers things and you have so many 602 heavy bells yeah but they're all pitched so you know you would you were able to get great shimmering so i mean gavin uses he uses power you know the belt it's a beautiful sound yep fantastic now we've got some gongs and we've got the original boxes for the yellow kit as well you have and somebody can see a lot of this stuff going to america i can see a lot of people shipping this across the the ocean together there's a very nice app of amp rack there i've never shown jack that jack's all about amps and keyboards he's he's very into recording great job in studio and uh the sleeshman double pedal yeah did you play much double pedal i did for a little while a lot of people don't know it why because the left foot was an electronic bass drum right the right foot was a kick but the electronic bass drum would often be playing a trashy metal sound right so you could go or so a lot of people say oh we you know there's only one bass drum going and there was only one bass drum right but the left one was producing metallic sounds often so for a bit i did yeah okay but i'm really not a double bass drum guy i think that's probably the whole thing it's not really my thing no i i guess that to be the case so obviously you still have a kit at home i do do you find yourself on it i have a little noodle yeah and then i think oh you know i really i really am losing uh the fluency right you know i i've got some really fancy licks that i can play you and i've got some really simple stuff that i'm not very good at right um but the thing that you need above all is fluency the ability to join ideas together yeah i think and so joining those together to make a fluent sentence such as hopefully the one i am producing right now yeah is not so easy for me anymore because i haven't played for 10 years sure you know and obviously prior to that you were traveling all over the world continually and very busy is there any element of that you missed you missed the travel did you not like the travel oh i've got to say now i've got to say now graham i'm not a traveller no no that's probably the wrong choice of career a successful musician well i i i don't want to travel anymore right so you're done with traveling don't done with traveling and anyway it's particularly good time to have done with traveling since there ain't any traveling going on that's true and the playing do you miss the the vibe of playing the concert and the excitement of course you miss particularly the camaraderie of other musicians because i think whenever you get on a stage uh with almost anybody you play a concert to no matter how many people you bond with them yeah you know and sometimes it's something you've only met that afternoon sure but at the end of it the two of you have had a little experience together yeah and it's nice and he'll always remember that other person or she and yeah and you will remember them you know because you because you looked an audience in the eye yeah and faced it down and delivered the goods god damn it yeah and how about sort of playing stadiums back in the day do you miss that you'd obviously so exciting the adrenaline of playing those big shows yeah yeah it really was it really was exciting i think my favorite period really was the king crimson in the 80s that is 1980 to 84 perhaps there were four albums around the time maybe three albums a red one a yellow one and a blue one and uh i think that period there where it was simmons electronic stuff was getting really interesting and we had adrian baloo as our front man who was very good tony levin on base who everybody wants yeah and stick base and they'd invented the roland guitar synthesizer and the chapman stick and simmons electronic drums and we were really changing the sound of of what what a rock group could sound like yep for example you know the guitarist didn't use chords on the whole right they played single line running figures that were interlocked so there's a kind of airy sound to the fabric to the music bit like a string vest yeah see what i mean rather than power chords yeah on the john the whole were avoided so being vaguely creative at all in music requires making choices about what not to do what to leave out yeah and that applies entirely on drum kits too yeah what not to do it's every bit as important as what to do is this a clinic or what no it's just just a little chat that you've started people are interested you're getting me going now yeah so we are selling all this stuff as you know uh we're currently cataloging photographing it it's going to be going live on ebay and we will be doing a newsletter so that everybody knows that's that's unique isn't it you haven't got many of those with a zed on them i have not you mean well it's illegitimate yeah indeed i haven't yeah that's a nice signal too look i made a mess of it by sticking it sticking up this one is my favorite oh i want a bit on this one this is the traditionals i think i played this last week for you few people i absolutely love this symbol it just sounds fantastic very very very big and buttery now yeah that's a lovely one i think yeah we're all going to be bidding on this game [Music] so there we have it the billboard bill brewford yard sale is going live in uh about three weeks time unless i change my mind and we cancel the whole yeah you seem like you're quite so what would your wife say if you took it all home don't ask me that no to get out of here so yeah if you've got any questions email in if you're not on our newsletter on our mailing list sign up on our website so we're sending out newsletters about the auctions um if you've got any questions about any of the gear emailing if i can't answer it i'll forward it to bill and bill can answer it for you um there'll be pictures and images on instagram and facebook as well uh this video will be on youtube so if you follow us on youtube and instagram you'll keep up to date with with the progress of the sales thank you so much for coming in well thank you so much for taking the the you know the the contents of my drum room you give me a whole bill for corner yes i promise this will be gone in about three weeks time it's gonna be gone it's all going to danny carey as well so that's a blessing so yes uh bill bruford thank you for everything thank you for your music thank you for your gear thank you for your time and um yeah that's it kids um it's all for sale um get your pennies out and bid away good luck guys see you soon bye you

Channel: Graham Russell Drums

Views: 80,027

Rating: 4.9586349 out of 5

Keywords: Bill Bruford, Graham Russell Drums, Bill Bruford Drums, Earthworks, Genesis, Yes, King Crimson

Id: Ha0OimHJv70

Length: 31min 20sec (1880 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 26 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/raythetruck]

Super neat that Bruford's doing this! He's been retired for many years so I'm glad to see this equipment might see the light of day again (even if a lot of it will probably sit around gathering dust in someone's personal collection). I'm wondering if he still has that beaten-up cymbal he recorded One More Red Nightmare with haha, but I'm glad to see him doing well nonethless.

(I'm a bit busy at the moment so I haven't had the time to actually watch the full video; did they state where the money from the auction would be going? I remember David Gilmour did a similar thing last year where all the proceeds went to charity.)

[u/catspider2]

It's so weird realizing that this is the same guy that was playing the drums in Yes, King Crimson and Genesis in overalls without a shirt on. Now he's saying stuff like 'musicologically'. Makes you see how long ago those early days were. Jon Anderson seems unchanged with time though

[u/sonic10158]

Pat Mastellato: “Is for me?”

[u/MisplacedEland]

Bill is still a Treasure.

[u/chunter16]

His American accent is surprisingly good

[u/j0hNnYb0i_69]

Cool! I saw this was 31 minutes and though it was a prog song lol!

[u/dollarama86]

Broof