![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/morse3.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/mcbride1.jpg)
Substitute things
The Guardian has a piece dealing with “how rock’s drummers cope with furious sets in their 70s”, and Ian Paice is featured there, among his peers Rat Scabies (Damned), Nicko McBrain (Iron Maiden), Paul Cook (Sex Pistols), David Kendrick (Sparks, Devo), and others.
Ian Paice, 76, has just finished a tour with Deep Purple, the band he co-founded in 1968. Even 56 years on, the shows were touching two hours long and opened with the band’s fiercest, most propulsive song, Highway Star.
“Many of the things I found easy when I was much younger are now difficult,” he says. “But I know a lot more now than when I was younger. So you substitute things: that is going to be difficult, but I can do that instead. Anybody who thinks they can do exactly the same thing they did 50 years ago is mad. There aren’t many guys of my generation left playing what I call ‘powerful drums’.”
There’s not much more Purple related in the article, but here is the link.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Little Ian is no longer the whirlwind drummer he was in the 70s, he’s matured like fine wine. But it doesn’t matter if one day he can’t do a single drum roll anymore as long as he keeps that swing which sets DP apart from so many other heavy bands.
Rat Scabies was brilliant in an interview in the heyday of Punk when a jaded NME scribe tempted him with the question why he had only a rubber rat and not a real one dangling from the top of his bass drum. Unflappable, he quipped: “I like rats, they wouldn’t like being tied to my bass drum. Besides a real rat would smell too much.”
And they do, real rats have quite an odor. It’s an ammonia-musky type smell from their urine and fur glands secret, you can’t miss it if you’ve ever smelled it once. Smart animals with a sophisticated social life, also one of the few rodents you can tame to a reasonable pet level, unlike rabbits, hamsters or guinea pigs which never really tame. I had a white lab rat once, it was fun to have around, had impressively sized balls of the furry kind immediately attractive to the female gender and would sit on my shoulder eyeing its surroundings inquisitively – and, yes, it smelled a bit no matter how tidy you kept its cage or how often you washed and bathed it (which it didn’t mind). My little brother had bought it for himself, he was at that time still living at home and my mom, generally very much an animal lover, told him unceremoniously in no uncertain terms that it was either the rat or him who would leave the house so he bequeathed it to me, I had by then moved out and was living off immoral red light district earnings in Frankfurt. Needless to say, I christened it Ben.
https://youtu.be/uxv0ZNXvmqk
January 7th, 2025 at 04:30Nicko McBrain is the drummer who impressed me the most, if talking about later aged power rock players. Powering the Iron’s is no mean feat at any time. 72 years old before retirement because of health related issues, well done Sir. Carl Palmer is still drumming at 74 and both he and Ian Paice are two of the greats of British & world rock music. As Paice says, less is more and he has wound things down nicely in what I have witnessed from live clips online over the last few years. Simon Phillips is ‘only’ 67 & still going strong. It is luck or bad luck, depending on illness or age related health issues. Stamina and the passion to boot. Neil Peart was worn out big time with Rush & Geddy Lee is still banging on about how they loathed having to pull the pin. Time for Ged to get over it me thinks, in that sense of things. Thanks for the article as it is a thought that often passes through my mind, the stamina of it all. How long can it last etc etc. Cheers.
January 7th, 2025 at 05:45Of all the drummers, I’ve always preferred Ian P 😊
He is completely magnificent!
January 7th, 2025 at 08:52Ian Paice is not only a good drummer, he is above all a friendly and pleasant person with an incredible attitude
January 7th, 2025 at 17:52As far as I’m concerned, Paicey can do whatever he wants after he’s mind blowing, spell binding drumming on MIJ…no one can even come close !
January 7th, 2025 at 22:56Thanks Mr Paice
“He is completely magnificent!”
But you say that about all the boys in Deep Purple, Karin!
https://www.meisterdrucke.ie/kunstwerke/1260px/Carel_Lodewijk_Dake_-_Vrouw_berispt_een_meisje_over_een_scheur_in_haar_prentenboekHet_Gescheurde_Prent_-_%28MeisterDrucke-1369001%29.jpg
You have to become more discerning, Karin, really. I mean Little Ian’s twin sister Ludvica Pearl Paice (they look very similar, you can only really hold them apart by the hair) drummed for some Rolling Stones guy on a cover of one of those awful Elvis songs (with some balding guy from Genesis playing a Status Quo guitar, all weird), that does have to count against him, be stringent and don’t act all female!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5g9nt1wVMA
[Macca is great, both as a singer and a bassist, no two friggin’ ways about it.]
January 7th, 2025 at 23:43