Just listened to Glass Harp 1971 Pacific High Recorders show and John Sferra's drum solo during Can You See Me has some nice pedal work--I assume it's with one pedal, but I'm still new to the band.
Just listened to Glass Harp 1971 Pacific High Recorders show and John Sferra's drum solo during Can You See Me has some nice pedal work--I assume it's with one pedal, but I'm still new to the band.
The story I remember hearing about the Where Eagles Dare intro fill is quite different. Actually, I already googled it:
"Steve mentioned to Nicko that they needed some kind of drum intro. Nicko was still kind of nervous, being the new kid on the block and all, but he stayed in working almost all day on a drum intro for the song. At the end of the day, he had a little 6–7-second thing that entailed hitting basically every piece of his kit, going from small tom to big tom, like a kind of ending to a song – and then jumped into the chorus. The next day, Nicko played it for Steve and Steve went "no... no... no... nothing like that... just something simple like rat-tat-tat-tat... rat-tat-tat-tat (you get the idea)". Steve tried to play something on Nicko's kit, but he's about as good as that as his grandmother would be... Nicko said "oh... you mean like this?" and played it. "That's it!" replied Steve. And "it" became this brilliant technical piece we all know."
Eventually, McBrain budged from his principles when Iron Maiden was recording Dance of Death and used a double pedal on Face in the Sand... although I think he also admitted later that his double bass technique sucked so bad that they had to quantize all the left foot kicks to get them on time.
By the way, John Weathers hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet, but I was quite impressed by his tight bass drum triplet work on So Sincere when I was listening to The Power and the Glory earlier this week.
That story makes a little more sense. I find it funny that the worlds biggest metal band has a drummer that can't play double bass. The fact they don't need him too is a testament to how good he is. I have a hard time imagining what Maiden would sound like with double bass to be honest.
Carl Palmer's drum solo from the Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood, NJ.
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Where did you get that story? That's most definitely the story that's told on the History Of Iron Maiden Vol. I: The Early Years DVD. There the story told is the one I mentioned earlier in the thread, and it's 'Arry, Nicko, and I think one or two of their other associates telling the story.
Well, I imagine if he started with the double bass drum when he was 18 or whatever, he'd be excellent at it. The reason he did it so badly on Dance Of Death probably stems from the fact that he'd spent the preceding 25 years or whatever it had been not using the double. It's probably not very easy to just suddenly pick up something like that late in one's playing career.
He apparently also thought double bass drums were a gimmick and a crutch and therefore refused to use such a setup.
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