Our Drums Are Our Bond

Drummers stick together. When several bands play on the same bill, it's pretty much guaranteed  it will be the drummers who hang out together the quickest and easiest. Why? Because we have so much to talk about!

But seriously, we learn from each other and tend to respect each other's different approaches to playing.

The bond between drummers is, sadly, illustrated today by the tributes paid by the widow of John Blackwell Jr, former drummer with Prince, who has succumbed to cancer.

She lists among those who have given their support and friendship: Gregg Bissonette, Dennis Chambers, Antonio Sánchez, Billy Cobham, Chad Smith and Natalie Depergola. 

Great drummers and great hearts.

Down, Down...

Just when you thought 2016 couldn't take away another rock star... Rick Parfitt of Status Quo is gone.

The Quo were formidably good at what they did... but it wasn't really for me, and I never saw them live.

But many musicians rated and respected them – including, maybe surprisingly, John Lydon, who perhaps saw something punkish in the Quo's refusal to ever do anything but stick to basics and go for the lowest common denominator.

This year of the wins of Brexit and Trump and the losses of Bowie, Cohen and Prince (and many more) has been bloody awful. I dare to think that 2017 has to be better – rather than a case of down, down deeper and down.

Borderline Genius

I'm glad they found the "missing" Sinead O'Connor. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been worried about her.

And I'd been listening to her beautiful singing just a few days before her Prince/Arsenio Hall comments caused such a furore.

She's almost as good at causing uproar as she is at moving you to tears with her voice.

I had been revisiting Willie Nelson's 'Across The Borderline' album from 1993 – his finest work and one of the best albums ever.

Sinead performed an emotional duet with him on a version of Peter Gabriel's 'Don't Give Up', the track being recorded just the day after she had been more or less booed off stage at the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary gig – because, just before that, she had torn up a photograph of the Pope on TV in protest at the Catholic church's handling of child abuse.

(What supposed Dylan fans were doing booing someone for making a legitimate protest is something of a puzzle – although Dylan 'fans' have, of course, not been unknown to boo Bob Dylan on a number of occasions.)

Dylan, inevitably, has a presence on 'Across The Borderline', joining in on 'Heartland' which he co-wrote with Willie. And Nelson also throws in a great reading of Dylan's 'What Was It You Wanted'.

With additional contributions from Bonnie Raitt and Paul Simon, every track on this album is a masterpiece, and Sinead, a voice crying against the wilderness, provides one of its very finest moments.