Eric Singer - Playing drums was always a good way to express my energy

It’s the last show in Germany tonight. How was the tour?
Eric: ‘Oh very good. We are playing in Berlin tonight and tomorrow in Brno, Czech Republic and that’s the last show of the year and the whole tour. I am actually very glad, because it has been a long year. I worked a lot, I was working between Kiss and Alice Cooper and I did both tours. I am not complaining, because the world economy is going way down and for me I had a very good year personally. But I am also glad to have a break. The German crowd is very good, I have been to Europe three times this year already. Once with Kiss and the shows with Alice Cooper and Whitesnake have been very good as well.’

You grew up during the beat generation. In that time the drums were recorded with only two microphones and the sound was, let’s say, slight. Nowadays drummers have much more possibilities. Where do you see further capabilities?
‘I was influenced by a lot of 60s music, but probably more by the 70s stuff. I was born 1958 so by the time the early 70s were around I was a teenager. That’s the age when music has the most impact. Well, I think everybody should explore whatever different styles and technologies that they like.

For me I still like the idea of just playing real drums and live in a band. In some bands it works good with backing tracks or loops, you know, especially in bands like those of Madonna and Beyonce. Something like this would have these really big productions on record and to reproduce it live you almost have to do it. And also they have everything with the lights synchronized with the computers and with the dancers, it is very important to keep in. To me one of the most important things in rock-’n-roll is the human aspect.

You know, playing the instruments and keeping it real and live. The beauty is, sometimes you are not having such a good night and you make mistakes. But the great thing is, when you play the next show you have the chance to make it better or try something different and experiment. And that’s the beauty of playing live drums. To me, you can’t reinvent the wheel. I mean, a drummer is basically a drummer. The function of a drummer in the band is to hold the beat and to provide the rhythm. A drummer like Terry Bosio really took drumming to another level and created it more to an individual voice of an instrument, he has done some incredible things like making drums an instrument that is not just only there to keep time. But that’s not the kind of drummer I am. I enjoy just playing live in a band and doing my part of creating this chemistry of sound.’

Why did you started playing drums and haven’t you chosen for a career as a singer?
‘I don’t know. I remember that when I was very young my older brother and sister played the piano, because both my parents were musicians. They both played the violin, and my father played saxophone as well and my mother was a singer too, they were both musical. My father was a bandleader. They had me take piano lessons for a really short time when I was kid. My father insisted that I should play an instrument and I chose playing drums. I guess the only thing I can remember is watching those TV shows in the 60s with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and all the bands that were playing the Sunday Night TV Show, because they always had a musical guest. Every family sat at home and watched the show together. This was very impressive and most kids wanted to play an instrument.

I think The Beatles were the biggest influence to most musicians at that time. As time went on in the music, especially rock and hardrock became more popular and more mainstream and you had more and more bands that influenced a wider audience in different ways. Like Black Sabbath, I really liked them when I was a kid and of course Led Zeppelin, everybody loved Led Zeppelin. Even if I loved guitar so much, I always found myself watching the drummer. I guess that’s natural. Whatever instrument you are playing, you will find yourself watching the person that plays it too. If you are a drummer you watch the drummer, if you are guitarplayer you the guitarplayer. I have always had a lot of energy and I think playing drums is a good way to express that energy.’

I heard you singing with Kiss and Avantasia, your voice is really good. I guess you should do it more often!
‘The Avantasia thing was just for fun. We did this very fast. It was the last night of the recording, 1.30 or 2 o’clock in the morning and Tobi said, try to sing this song and I said okay. So we recorded the song. Tobi played the bass, Sascha played the guitar and we sat up in the room and played it live as band. He heard me singing in the studio and he heard me singing this song. Actually doing that song, Ride The Sky, was just fun. I had told Tobi about the singer John Lawton and about the band. He didn’t know this band and so we were talking to the owner of the studio and he said “Oh I have one of these records because I was the engineer”. I told Tobi that he just had to hear these songs and Tobi said “I love this song, I wanna record it”.

As we were working on it he heard me singing, goofing around, ‘cause when I am in the studio I am always singing and talking a lot. Tobi then said that I should try singing it. We sang it only two or three times and that was it. Tobi sang along with it as well, and it all just happened by accident. I loved this song and the record when I was a kid. When I was 15 I was listening to it a lot. I had couple of friends in school, we were all big music fans. We always bought records and rock magazines and we always knew about all the different bands. I was more into English and European bands than American bands as a kid.

I remember I was one of the first that was into the Scorpions in America, I mean in Ohio where I grew up. We used to have a radio show on a very famous radio station in Cleveland called WMMS. On Sunday night this radio station used to have a radio show called Import Hour and they played songs from import records that were not regularly released in America, like albums from the Scorpions, Crow or Raven. Most of the time the records never came out in America. I remember hearing the song Speedy’s Coming from the album Fly To The Rainbow. It was not the first record I heard , that record was Lonesome Crow with Michael Schenker on it, but the next one with Uli Roth was Fly To The Rainbow. I remember hearing this song and the great guitar playing and I fell in love with the Scorpions because I loved Uli Roth guitar playing. So many people in America were attracted by Uli Roths guitar playing. The Scorpions of course became very famous and popular a couple of years later.

The first show they ever played in America was in my hometown in Cleveland. They used to do these shows in the 70s called World Series of Rock, four, five or six bands on one day. I don’t know, they had 40, 50 or 60 thousand people coming to these shows. I remember I couldn’t go, I played drums in my father’s band when I was growing up and I had to work. But I remember listening to the radio station and they were on air. They had an interview with Klaus Meine and Rudolf Schenker live from the event, while I sat in the car on my way to work. A lot people don’t know, but it was their first show ever here. I saw them earlier this year when they came to the Kiss show in Hannover and I told them that I remembered their first show. Rudi was surprised that I knew this and I told him as well that I wasn’t able to attend it because I had to work, but that I remember hearing him on the radio.’

How did you get to learn playing drums? Did you had lessons?
‘Yeah, I started when I was ten or eleven years old in the fifth grade and my father, as I said, told me I had to play an instrument. The drummer that played in his band gave me some lessons for a short time. Then we moved to another part of town, that summer I didn´t take lessons. You know, when you are a kid you take the summer off and just play and have fun. Then I went to a new school and the kids in school were more rock-’n-roll kids, they were listening to Led Zeppelin and all that stuff, and they were smoking cigarettes and pott, only 12 years old, at a very young age! Of course I found it all was exciting and great, because I loved the rock music and all that stuff.

A couple of the guys were taking drum lessons from this other guy, Buddy. A really nice guy and everybody seemed to like him, because he knew how to communicate. He used to say ‘to be good at something you don’t have to be good at doing it, you must be good in communicating the information.’ To be a good teacher is really about that, you know. And sometimes when you are a teacher you have to have the ability to maybe sometimes teach the same thing in many different ways. He had this ability. But he also made it fun and he didn’t put pressure on you. Because of that I will always feel thankful that I met him. Before I moved to California, I took lessons from a teacher that had gone to the Barclay School of Music.

People that went there had a more advanced knowledge and advanced way of teaching, I should say. Then I moved to California in 1983 and I was planning to go to the P.I.T. Music Institute. But at the time I was thinking about it, I had to wait six months for the next semester to start. Then I looked into the paper and I saw some famous drummers and they taught privately. We don’t have this in Cleveland, but in New York City or Los Angeles there are these famous guys that would teach privately. I took lessons from a drummer named Casey, he had played with Gino Vannelli, was more like a jazz drummer but I had heard that he was really great. Sometimes what you don’t do is the best thing in life. After having some lessons for a few months he said “Eric (and he was a teacher at a music school as well) I don´t think that you need to go to this music school.

It’s a good school and you will get a lot of information, but I think you seem to know what kind of drummer you want to be and what direction you want to go. My advice is that if you wanna take lessons, you should get lessons from one guy at a time, but you should really just get in bands and play.” At this point I was already 25 years old. It turned out to be a good advice, even if he was a teacher of that school, he was honest with me. So, that’s what I did. I went to join a band. Within a year in L.A. I met some people and I auditioned for Lita Ford. I got the gig and from that point on, that was in, I think, November 1984, I have been touring and making records.’

How and how long do you practise nowadays? Do you have a special programme?
‘I don’t practise. I just go and play. My practise is playing a show. Okay, I can’t say I never practise. When we are done with this tour I won’t play drums for a while, I will take a break. Just keep my body rest. We had a break before this tour with Whitesnake and I didn’t play for two weeks. My body needed it, I was sort of run down. When I do practise I go and usually spent half an hour or an hour, put on the drum machine and play along with the machine. Sometimes I put on the radio and play along with songs played on the radio. Even if I don’t know the music I put on like a rap station. It makes you work in your own time, it’s good practising too. I usually practise when I am learning the songs for a tour. Sometimes, let’s say for example, when I am preparing for a Kiss tour I may take a live show or a recording and play along with myself.’

In the 80s it seemed that a lot of drummers wanted to be fast and faster like Dave Lombardo for example. What do you think about it?
‘I call it the Drummer Olympics. It’s like who can be the fastest human in the race. I gotta say, there are some amazing drummers nowadays. I think the reason is that nowadays they have much better tools to learn from than when I grew up. At that time we didn’t have DVDs, videos, MTV and all these instruction tapes and private lessons. Now you can go and take lessons from some of these drummers by buying their instruction DVDs, using computer programmes. Now you have all this best information available to you. These kids have a lot of great learning tools nowadays. I also realized that I never had the ambition to be faster than everybody. That is not important to me. I leave it up to the guys that enjoy it. When I see it I am blown away by these guys’ fantastic technique. I admire what they do but it is not something that I aspire to do.’

How many drumheads do you need for a tour?
‘Well, my drumtech changes the drumheads just about every day, not the whole kit, but almost the whole kit. I have in this particular kit six toms and a snare. We don’t change the bass that often, we don’t need to, but the tom heads and the snare are changed every day. So probably a least five heads every day, a hundred shows do the mass. Three or four pairs of sticks in a show. We are just refreshing up everything at some point of the tour, switch some of the hardware or things like that. I don’t get a new kit that often. It’s just because I don’t see any need for. When you are young, you always wanna have everything, when they start giving you stuff for free – “I want this one, I will take red, blue and green”. But when you are getting older, you start thinking “I can only play one at a time. I only need the one for a tour”. Right now I have two complete sets of drums in road cases, complete ready to have one at one place. Just to send one with Kiss and one with Alice. Of course I have many drumkits at home.’

You have your signature snare drum with Pearl. Did you have influence on it and where did you put your focus on?
‘When Pearl started doing signature snare drums, they had done a couple for a few other drummers before they asked me. I have a drum that I really like. But I am actually now talking to Pearl to come up with a new one. The problem is, this drums are very expensive. It´s a great drum, but not affordable for most of the drummers. So I’d like to come up with a set that has a much lower price, that can be afforded by especially younger kids, we’d rather come up with something that is about 300 USD list price.’

I read that there is a gig planed with ESP in Europe?
‘Yes, but we haven’t announced any dates. We are definitely playing in about three cities in Germany. We are playing in Holland, Norway, Finland, Italy and one show in Switzerland. We will do about 13 shows. It’s very difficult to try and put these stuff together, ‘cause obviously we are doing it on a very small level in clubs. All the musicians have to be available at the same time. It’s something we will do just for fun.’

I read that there is a gig planed with ESP in Europe?
‘Yes. We are definitely playing in about three cities in Germany. We are playing in Holland, Norway, Finland, Italy and one show in Switzerland. We will do about 13 shows. It’s very difficult to try and put these stuff together, ‘cause obviously we are doing it on a very small level in clubs. All the musicians have to be available at the same time. It’s something we will do just for fun.

ESP concert dates:

Feb. 06 - Kaiserslautern, Germany - Fritz Walter Stadion
Feb. 07 - Freiburg, Germany - Brauerei Ganther
Feb. 08 - Oberhausen, Germany - Schilderhalle
Feb. 09 - Uden, Holland - The Nieuwe Pul
Feb. 10 - Prague, Czech Republic - Retro Hall
Feb. 13 - Roncade, Italy - New Age Club
Feb. 14 - Pinarella di Cervia, Italy - Rock Planet Club
Feb. 16 - Verviers, Belgium - Route 66
Feb. 17 - Memmingen, Germany - Kaminwerke
Feb. 18 - Pratteln, Switzerland - Z7
Feb. 20 - Bergen, Norway - Garage Club
Feb. 21 - Jevnaker, Norway - Glassheim
Feb. 22 - Helsinki, Finland - Nosturi Club

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