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That’s one hellish big drum kit, but it was all used in the band’s music somewhere. The overhead shots of the band from my viewpoint again prove that the drummer has the best seat in the house. Somewhere around the second verse at 1’27”, Jon’s shoulders roll and sway, showing me he’s into the groove bassist Jeff Berlin and I have cooked up.

If you take a leisurely scroll through the videos on this channel, you can’t fail to notice the variety of drum kits I seem to have used over the years. It even astonishes me. What was I thinking? The kits tell their own story, of reaction to changing technology, of the advent of electronics and samples, of changing music styles, of shipping costs. If you're interested in nuts and bolts, check out Rodrigo Delaveau Swett's run-down on my kits at [ Ссылка ].

From a beginner’s Olympic kit in the late 60s, to a second-hand Ludwig kit (whose metal snare drum rang out through the original Yes’ ‘Roundabout’), passing through Ivor Arbiter’s Hayman kits (which many in the US took to be Camco drums because of the round lugs), I barely seemed to play the same kit for more than a year or two. I was looking not just for the ‘perfect’ (never a helpful word in music) drum sound, but for the most appropriate confection of percussion which would suit the demands of the musical situation of the day, which itself was changing frequently. With my own band Bruford in the late 70s, I met Remo Belli and the bright clanging of his Remo roto toms became a signature component of the band’s sound, as much as, say, Allan Holdsworth’s guitar sound.

In the 80s of course electronic drums arrived and somebody had to see if these things were more than toys. Simmons drums got steadily more sophisticated over a decade or so until it was possible to configure dozens of samples into ‘kits’ that could be changed at the touch of a button. Not quite on the bar line, but pretty close.

Business with King Crimson was good in the early 80s, so it was possible to stage three drumkits: 1) a main kit with a rear back rack of pads, side rack of smaller percussions and mallet instruments on tables; 2) six hexagonal pads, on which I and guitarist Adrian Belew (who started out as a drummer) could set up ‘Waiting Man’; and 3) a small set from which Adrian could play ‘Satori in Tangier’ or declaim ‘Indiscipline’ while I commented on proceedings from the main set. The ‘most expensive drum kit ever staged’, consisting of two Simmons SDX units (one being back-up) and multiple pads around an acoustic set, failed me spectacularly in a moment of hubris when the two computers were powered down in the intermission at Madison Square Gardens with Yes in the early 90s, and refused to power back up again. A less than perfect evening.

In the intimate world of jazz performance there is neither desire, nor space on stage, nor finance for the transportation of large amounts of equipment. My career has swung between stadiums, theatres and small clubs with entirely different music, so equally different drumkits. When I began in the late 60s there was effectively no drum rental business, so we took our own gear everywhere. Decades later, drum rental is entirely possible in most major cities. As an endorsing artist for Tama Drums, I’ve been fortunate to have the company deliver drums to my specification at the beginning of a tour, and collect them at the end, thus saving big on expenses.

That’s a brief overview of ‘why’ and ‘what’ of the drumkits I sat at as the years rolled past. Broadly, the music dictated the instruments necessary to realise it, rather than the other way around. Even if you’re a non-drummer - especially if you’re a non-drummer – I hope you’ve found the above interesting! See you next week.

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