Cool Hand Luke

     If you aren’t a drummer or don’t care who inspired me, I apologize. I realize that this may be terribly boring for you. I also realize that I generally write too much and these keep getting longer.  I’ll have this out of my system soon enough. But for now, in my continuing series of drummers who inspired me, I’ll tell you about the glorious high school years.

      I’m probably older than a lot of you, so the idea of grunge and the early 90’s is just kind of lame to you. Honestly, it’s kind of lame to me now. But at the time I was an adolescent and like most adolescent males, I was angry about nothing at all or at least I wanted to be. I felt misunderstood and alone, and I felt like I had something to say. I felt like I was overlooked just because I was young. Such is adolescence. So, when Pearl Jam’s music came along it really struck a chord with me, so to speak. It was passionate, it was rocking, it was angry at times, and it wasn’t hair metal. I didn’t know quite what to think of it because it was so different from what had been around before that. I’m not saying these things from the perspective of a seasoned music critic or pop culture historian. I just know that when I was 14, there was something really moving and honest about Pearl Jam’s music to me. Plus they looked really cool. My failed attempts at being Eddie Vedder spurred on a solid four or five years of bad hair and dumb clothes for me.

     When I was a freshman in high school, I had finally saved up enough money to buy an embarrassingly horrible drum kit. There were very few entry level drum kits at that time, and I had to drive almost an hour out of Nashville just to find one I could afford. (This was before Guitar Center and all of that.)  I got a CB Percussion five piece that was bright, bright red. It sounded like junk and I didn’t know how to make it sound any better. I did really stupid things like taking the bottom heads off and putting t-shirts over the top heads. Matt Goldman would have scolded me.

     Every day after school there was a 45 minute window between when I got off the bus and when my parents got home. That 45 minute window was when I would bring in my boom box and play along to CD’s. Playing along to CD’s (and tapes) is how I learned the most about drumming. I drummed the most to Led Zeppelin, but I also played along to all kinds of 90’s bands: Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Smashing Pumpkins, Helmet, etc. Once I hit high school, 9 times out of 10 I was drumming along to Pearl Jam.  I especially wore out Ten and Vs.

     Dave Krusen played drums on Ten, but his parts aren’t what I played. I played what Dave Abbruzzese, the drummer after Krusen, played live. I studied my VHS copy of Pearl Jam on MTV Unplugged that my friend had taped for me (we didn’t have cable). I learned every fill, every five-stroke roll on the hi-hat, every splash cymbal accent. All the best and worst things that go along with 90’s drumming were on that VHS tape. That’s what I played when I drummed with Ten. Dave Abbruzzese was exciting to watch. He played in a really creative, funky kind of way, and he hit really, really hard. Even on MTV Unplugged he was hitting hard. He looked kind of crazy now that I think of it.

     Dave Abbruzzese went on to record the next two albums with Pearl Jam, and I learned all the drum parts forward and backwards. I’d say this was a pretty formative time for my drumming. I was starting to develop my own style, and I took a few things form Dave Abbruzzese that I still use to this day. Namely, using five-stroke rolls on the hi-hat, hitting the cymbals entirely too much, and playing too hard. (Matt Goldman does scold me for playing too hard.)

     I don’t know what Dave Abbruzzese is up to anymore, and I don’t keep up with Pearl Jam that much for that matter, but I look back fondly on my early high school days listening to Pearl Jam. A couple of my friends from youth group and I used to go to Pizza Hut in the summers after church on Sunday night. Even though we all had Vs., we would pay to play it on the juke box while we hung out. It was like our soundtrack. We had the best conversations about God and school and crushes.

     I didn’t know who I was at all then, but I was aware that I was becoming something. I was aware that God had his hands in every aspect of my life; even the messy, adolescent parts. My freshman year in high school was when I started following Jesus. As odd as it sounds, my memories of that time in my life and becoming a follower of Christ are very linked with the music and the culture that Pearl Jam brought about in my circle of friends. I didn’t take a lot away from Pearl Jam in terms of my faith or my worldview, but God used that music at that time—like all things—for His glory and for my good.