For the sec­ond year in a row, Foo Fight­ers front­man Dave Grohl and pro­duc­er Greg Kurstin have launched The Hanukkah Ses­sions, a fes­tive music series where they cov­er a song–one for each night of Hanukkah–originally cre­at­ed by a Jew­ish musi­cian. For the fourth night of Hanukkah this year, they cel­e­brate “quite pos­si­bly the loud­est and proud­est of hard rock­ing Jews, David Lee Roth” with a rol­lick­ing ver­sion of Van Halen’s “Jump.” To watch their oth­er cel­e­bra­to­ry tracks, click here.

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Relat­ed Con­tent

Dave Grohl & Greg Kurstin Cov­er 8 Songs by Famous Jew­ish Artists for Hanukkah: Bob Dylan, Beast­ie Boys, Vel­vet Under­ground & More

Musi­cal Come­di­an Reg­gie Watts Rein­vents Van Halen’s Clas­sic, “Pana­ma”

Dave Grohl Rocks Out, Play­ing Drums Along to the Orig­i­nal Record­ing of “Smells Like Teen Spir­it”

Dave Grohl Falls Off­stage & Breaks His Leg, Then Con­tin­ues the Show as The Foo Fight­ers Play Queen’s “Under Pres­sure” (2015)

A high school girl from Levit­town, New York, the country’s first sub­urb, Mau­reen “Moe” Tuck­er hard­ly fit the pro­file of a rock star in one of the most influ­en­tial bands of the 1960s. Then again, nei­ther did any of the mem­bers of the Vel­vet Under­ground. Lou Reed, John Cale, Ster­ling Mor­ri­son, and Tuck­er had bare­ly begun before Andy Warhol intro­duced them to Nico and billed them as the Explod­ing Plas­tic Inevitable, and it was Warhol who helped turn them into cult heroes. But Tuck­er made them sound like no one else. “Her style of drum­ming, that she invent­ed” Reed once remarked, “is amaz­ing. I’ve tried to get a drum­mer to do what she did and it’s impos­si­ble.” Her approach to Reed’s songs was a “mix of African trance rhythms and Ringo-like arrange­ment genius,” Adam Bud­of­sky writes at Mod­ern Drum­mer. “Her play­ing style was huge­ly respon­si­ble for the Velvet’s sin­gu­lar per­son­al­i­ty.”

Lis­ten, for exam­ple, to 1970’s Loaded – which Tuck­er sat out due to preg­nan­cy — next to The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico, White Light/White Heat, or The Vel­vet Under­ground. Loaded, the only Vel­vet Under­ground album nev­er to go out of print, may be called by some a “near-per­fect rock album,” but it’s also the least exper­i­men­tal and least inter­est­ing of the band’s four stu­dio releas­es, the sound of the band with­out Cale and Tuck­er, reach­ing for radio hits. The Vel­vet Under­ground with Moe Tuck­er, on the oth­er hand, was the sound of a band that was con­stant­ly falling apart while root­ing down into a pri­mal rock and roll that would out­last them. It’s sub­lime, and Tuck­er deserves her rep­u­ta­tion as “one of the head hyp­no­tists,” in the words of Jonathan Rich­man.

Her con­tri­bu­tion was as much youth­ful enthu­si­asm and nerve as raw tal­ent. Com­pelled to play the drums by a love for the Rolling Stones, the Bea­t­les, and Niger­ian drum­mer Babatunde Olatun­ji, she might have banged away in unre­mark­able Long Island cov­er bands in her youth, becom­ing a more tra­di­tion­al play­er, had not Reed, who knew her broth­er, giv­en her the chance to play the first pay­ing VU gig at Sum­mit High School in New Jer­sey. As she remem­bers it in the punk oral his­to­ry project Please Kill Me:

I was a ner­vous wreck when we played that show. We were allowed to play three songs and we had prac­ticed them at John Cale’s loft. We played, “Wait­ing For the Man,” “Hero­in,” and I think the third one was “Venus In Furs.” 

Our set was only about 15 min­utes at the most and in each song some­thing of mine broke. All my stuff was falling apart! The foot ped­al broke in one song, the leg of the floor tom start­ed going loose. I thought, Oh shit, I’m going to ruin this!

Instead of ruin, what fol­lowed were more gigs and a peri­od of exper­i­men­ta­tion in which Tuck­er, who start­ed with only a snare, tried out dif­fer­ent con­fig­u­ra­tions of the drum kit in long jam ses­sions at Warhol’s Fac­to­ry: play­ing her bass drum with mal­lets on the floor, then on chairs while stand­ing up, eschew­ing cym­bals alto­geth­er, mak­ing judi­cious use of tom toms and tam­bourines, play­ing a few mem­o­rable shows with trash­cans when her drums were stolen.… She had no train­ing, no one in the band told her she was doing it wrong, and so she was free to rein­vent the drums her way.

As you’ll see in the thor­ough doc­u­men­tary above, Foun­da­tion Vel­vet, by Cam For­rester, Tuck­er’s way was exact­ly what the Vel­vets need­ed to recre­ate rock and roll in their image. She had a “dis­ci­pline with regards to play­ing the song, and not the instru­ment,” For­rester says. You’ll also see him recre­ate Tuck­er’s instru­men­ta­tion. In the time­stamps below, click on the demon­stra­tions to see her drum set­up for each track on the band’s first three albums.

Quotes/Introduction — 0:00
Back­ground & musi­cal begin­nings — 3:50
“Tucker’s sis­ter plays drums?” — 6:14
Andy Warhol, ‘The Fac­to­ry’, and Nico — 9:07
The ‘Explod­ing Plas­tic Inevitable’ Shows — 12:46
A female drum­mer? — 15:09
‘The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico’ Ses­sions — 17:38
DRUM DEMONSTRATIONS — 21:22
Good­bye to Nico & Andy…hello to VOLUME! — 25:02
‘White Light/White Heat’ & DRUMMING DEMONSTRATIONS — 28:18
John Cale leaves, and Doug Yule joins — 34:35
The third album & DRUMMING DEMONSTRATIONS — 37:07
‘Loaded’, band breakup, and solo career — 43:09
Moe’s hero­ic return to the drums — 45:58
Retire­ment from the music busi­ness — 53:48
Influ­ence & lega­cy — 54:28
“A nat­ur­al drum­mer…” — 57:03

One can approx­i­mate Tuck­er’s style and recon­struct her influ­ences, as For­rester has done here bril­liant­ly, but there will nev­er be anoth­er drum­mer like her.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Vel­vet Under­ground: Get a First Glimpse of Todd Haynes’ Upcom­ing Doc­u­men­tary on the Most Influ­en­tial Avant-Garde Rock­ers

The Vel­vet Under­ground & Andy Warhol Stage Pro­to-Punk Per­for­mance Art: Dis­cov­er the Explod­ing Plas­tic Inevitable (1966)

Watch The Vel­vet Under­ground Per­form in Rare Col­or Footage: Scenes from a Viet­nam War Protest Con­cert (1969)

Watch Footage of the Vel­vet Under­ground Com­pos­ing “Sun­day Morn­ing,” the First Track on Their Sem­i­nal Debut Album The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

Andy Warhol Explains Why He Decid­ed to Give Up Paint­ing & Man­age the Vel­vet Under­ground Instead (1966)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Now ramp­ing up to a wide release is a film that will draw in no few fans of Haru­ki Muraka­mi around the world: Dri­ve My Car, adapt­ed by film­mak­er Ryusuke Ham­aguchi from Murakami’s short sto­ry of the same name. That name itself comes, of course, from the Bea­t­les song, their knock­out open­er to Rub­ber Soul. It was­n’t the first time Muraka­mi had bor­rowed a title from the Fab Four. The nov­el that made him a house­hold name, in his home­land of Japan and sub­se­quent­ly the rest of the world, was called Nor­we­gian Wood.

The Bea­t­les’ albums have also pro­vid­ed him with inspi­ra­tion, as evi­denced by his sto­ry “With the Bea­t­les,” pub­lished in trans­la­tion last year by The New York­er. It takes place in 1965, when the Bea­t­les had become huge­ly pop­u­lar in not just the West but Japan as well. “Turn on the radio and chances were you’d hear one of their songs,” says the nar­ra­tor. “I liked their songs myself and knew all their hits,” but “truth be told, I was nev­er a fer­vent Bea­t­les fan. I nev­er active­ly sought out their songs. For me, it was pas­sive lis­ten­ing, pop music flow­ing out of the tiny speak­ers of my Pana­son­ic tran­sis­tor radio.” Despite being a high-school, then col­lege stu­dent in the 1960s, “I didn’t buy a sin­gle Bea­t­les record. I was much more into jazz and clas­si­cal music.”

This sto­ry is fic­tion­al; its nar­ra­tor is not its author. Yet Muraka­mi, who hap­pened to come of age in the same era, made sim­i­lar remarks about his expe­ri­ence with the Bea­t­les a cou­ple of years ago. His orig­i­nal­ly one-off ses­sion as a disc jock­ey on Tokyo FM has become a more or less full-fledged show, Muraka­mi Radio. Each of its broad­casts he ded­i­cates to a dif­fer­ent musi­cal theme, and it was thus only a mat­ter of time before he got around to the Bea­t­les.

Despite his ear­ly indif­fer­ence, as Muraka­mi explains between songs, he lat­er, in his thir­ties, came to sense the genius of John, Paul, George, and Ringo, dur­ing a stay in Greece with their self-titled 1968 “White Album” on tape in his Walk­man — which, despite lack­ing its title song, inspired him to start writ­ing Nor­we­gian Wood. Apart from that mem­o­ry, the late-peri­od Bea­t­les fig­ure only sec­on­dar­i­ly into Murakami’s “Bea­t­les Night.” He focus­es instead on their ear­ly, pre-Rub­ber Soul work, or rather, on a vari­ety of less­er-known cov­ers there­of.

You can hear eight of those num­bers in the Youtube video above, includ­ing Lit­tle Richard’s inter­pre­ta­tion of “I Saw Her Stand­ing There”; “All My Lovin’ ” as per­formed by Chet Atkins and Suzy Bog­guss; and even “Tu Perds ton Temps,” Eng­lish pop star Petu­la Clark’s French-lan­guage ver­sion of “Please Please Me.” If you lis­ten to the actu­al broad­cast on Japan­ese video-stream­ing site Nicon­i­co, you’ll also hear such addi­tion­al Bea­t­les cov­ers as “Do You Want to Know a Secret” by Motown singer Mary Wells and “She Loves You” by Rita Lee of Brazil­ian rock titans Os Mutantes. Obvi­ous­ly, the appeal of the Bea­t­les tran­scends cul­tur­al bound­aries, as does that of the exten­sive­ly trans­lat­ed Muraka­mi. What explains it? Per­haps, in both cas­es, that they cre­at­ed their own gen­res — or rather, their own won­drous real­i­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 100 Amaz­ing Cov­er Ver­sions of Bea­t­les Songs

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Became a DJ on a Japan­ese Radio Sta­tion for One Night: Hear the Music He Played for Delight­ed Lis­ten­ers

A 96-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Miles Davis, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

Stream Big Playlists of Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Per­son­al Vinyl Col­lec­tion and His Strange Lit­er­ary Worlds

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Day: Stream Sev­en Hours of Mix­es Col­lect­ing All the Jazz, Clas­si­cal & Clas­sic Amer­i­can Pop Music from His Nov­els

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.