When Prince passed away, many a non-Prince fan sud­den­ly found out that the man was not only a bril­liant song­writer, singer, dancer, gui­tarist, pianist, styl­ist, and super­star, but that he was also a vir­tu­al one-man band in the stu­dio, able to play almost any instru­ment, in exact­ly the way he want­ed it played. Prince fans knew this, as do fans of the musi­cian who made Songs in the Key of Life — or what Prince called the great­est album ever record­ed. And if Prince were here, he would agree:  Ste­vie Won­der deserves more appre­ci­a­tion for his mul­ti-musi­cian­ship while he’s still with us.

Yes, of course, we know him for his “stag­ger­ing song­writ­ing and vocal skills,” writes PC Muñoz at Drum! mag­a­zine, for his “prowess as a for­mi­da­ble, inven­tive key­boardist (and pop music syn­the­siz­er pio­neer)” and “his vir­tu­oso-lev­el skills on har­mon­i­ca.”

But do we know Ste­vie Won­der as a drum­mer? Well, “news­flash for those who did­n’t know,” Muñoz announces: “Ste­vie Won­der also hap­pens to be one badass drum­mer.” (In fact, his very first gig, at 8 years old, was on the drums.) Not that he hasn’t received his just due from fel­low musi­cians, far from it.

Eric Clap­ton called Won­der “the great­est drum­mer of our time” in 1974 — “hefty praise” (and maybe a bit of a swipe), wrote music jour­nal­ist Eric San­dler, “com­ing from a man who played with Gin­ger Bak­er.” See a demon­stra­tion of Won­der’s for­mi­da­ble feel and groove behind the kit in the drum solo at the top of the post. But, of course, you’ve already heard his drum­ming — all, or most, of your life per­haps — on his albums, includ­ing most every track on Talk­ing Book, Songs in the Key of Life, and Innervi­sions — songs like “Super­sti­tion,” “High­er Ground,” “Liv­ing for the City” … all Ste­vie.

“I grew up prac­tic­ing to Ste­vie Wonder’s music,” drum­mer Eric Carnes tells Muñoz, “but I actu­al­ly didn’t know he was often the drum­mer on his own stuff. Until I was in my twen­ties.” Carnes goes on to describe the hall­marks of Won­der’s style: “very relaxed – not so crisp and not so metro­nom­ic. He’s using dif­fer­ent parts of the stick at dif­fer­ent times, and his hi-hat parts change through­out the song. A lot of times, each cho­rus in a giv­en song is played slight­ly dif­fer­ent­ly, too. He esca­lates a song over a long peri­od of time, real­ly grow­ing the whole piece, instead of top­ping out ear­ly; it gives the music some­where to go.”

Bill Janovitz of the band Buf­fa­lo Tom — in a very thor­ough paean to Songs in the Key of Life – points to the “innate sense of groove in his drum­ming.… There is a musi­cal inven­tive­ness that might stem from being a well-round­ed mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist, as opposed to some­one who strict­ly defines them­selves as a drum­mer.”

In his appre­ci­a­tion of Won­der’s drum­ming at Slate, Seth Steven­son also high­lights Won­der’s “expres­sive­ness.… No two mea­sures sound the same.” He offers a mini best-of roundup of Won­der’s record­ed drum­ming moments:

My favorite Won­der drum track comes on ‘Too High,’ the first song on Innervi­sions. Sub­tle snare rolls, sud­den tom-tom tum­bles, jazzy ride-cym­bal swings – they’re all scrump­tious and all in the greater ser­vice of the song. This is not the approach of a hired drum­mer attempt­ing to carve out his own ter­rain. It’s the work of a mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist com­pos­er who fits his vision for each part into an inter­lock­ing whole.

Steven­son and Janovitz speak to a thread in so many dis­cus­sions of “vir­tu­oso” musi­cians: com­posers who are also musi­cal prodi­gies have ways of play­ing instru­ments in an idiom only they can under­stand. One imag­ines that if we had record­ings of Mozart or Bach – both prodi­gious mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ists from very young ages – we would hear clas­si­cal instru­ments played in ways we’ve nev­er heard them played before. The mag­ic of record­ing — and Ste­vie Won­der’s record­ings espe­cial­ly — means we can hear the drums on his songs exact­ly as he heard, and played, them, and exact­ly as he want­ed them played.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Catch Ste­vie Won­der, Ages 12–16, in His Ear­li­est TV Per­for­mances

Decon­struct­ing Ste­vie Wonder’s Ode to Jazz and His Hero Duke Elling­ton: A Great Break­down of “Sir Duke”

See Ste­vie Won­der Play “Super­sti­tion” and Ban­ter with Grover on Sesame Street in 1973

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

So, you want to play gui­tar like Mark Knopfler? I mean, who wouldn’t, right? His style has been “leg­endary in the gui­tar com­mu­ni­ty for decades,” notes Ulti­mate Gui­tar. Seems every­one who’s picked up the instru­ment has har­bored a secret or not-so-secret desire to knock out “Sul­tans of Swing,” flaw­less­ly, no mat­ter what kind of music they play.

Accord­ing to the Inter­net, it’s easy. There are How-to guides, promis­ing 5 Ways to play like Knopfler. At least one les­son admits, “imi­tat­ing Mark Knopfler’s play­ing style is much eas­i­er said than done.” I’ve seen it done con­vinc­ing­ly once, by a gui­tar prodi­gy, raised by musi­cians, who toured with Bud­dy Guy. Oth­er­wise, I’m here to inform you that you can­not learn to play like Mark Knopfler in Five Min­utes.

For one thing, it took Knopfler him­self decades to hone his style, tone, and tech­nique — years and years of lis­ten­ing to old records, learn­ing Blind Willie John­son, Chet Atkins, and every­thing in-between. “Even when I would be about 20 or so,” he says, “I was already steeped in a lot of ear­ly coun­try blues and every­thing.” Then there were the “years of liv­ing hand to mouth as a gig­ging gui­tarist,” Jamie Dick­son writes at Music Radar.

Knopfler also admits, mod­est­ly, to being a bit of a prodi­gy. “I could do Elmore James-style steel from the very, very begin­ning when I was just a kid. After I heard it, I could just kind of do it.” When Dire Straits released their huge-sell­ing fifth album Broth­ers in Arms in 1985, it seemed like blues gui­tar was the last thing any­one want­ed. The era was all about show­ing off. Syn­th­pop, new wave, met­al, and rap ruled. Dire Straits played clean, laid-back tunes with tasty, taste­ful Amer­i­can licks.

Tak­ing show­man­ship cues from big sta­di­um acts (what he’s called “jack­boot” rock bands), Knopfler adapt­ed the folk blues styles he’d learned on acoustic and Nation­al res­onator gui­tars to the red sig­na­ture Stra­to­cast­ers he became famous for play­ing, pick­ing loud, elec­tri­fied roots rock with his fin­gers and thumb. “I real­ized the pick was becom­ing redun­dant,” he tells Gui­tar.

So, if you want to play like Knopfler, you’ll have to lose the pick. More­over, you might want to con­sid­er switch­ing to your non-dom­i­nant hand. “I’m left-hand­ed,” he says in his Gui­tar inter­view, “but I play right-hand­ed. They tried to teach me vio­lin at school for two or three years — right hand­ed– so by the time I was 15, I was into the habit of play­ing that way round.” It’s a lot to ask of any gui­tar stu­dent.

But there are plen­ty of ways to start pick­ing up Knopfler’s basics, then prac­tic­ing them year after year as he did, and lis­ten­ing to all of his influ­ences. Watch his whole appear­ance at the top, giv­ing brief fin­ger­pick­ing demon­stra­tions — from Singing Nun syn­co­pat­ed bass lines to his trade­mark singing dou­ble and triple stops. Learn more about his “fin­ger style finesse” at Pre­mier Gui­tar and see how his sound devel­oped around his favorite gui­tars in the short film above.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Mark Knopfler Gives a Short Mas­ter­class on His Favorite Gui­tars & Gui­tar Sounds

Gui­tar Sto­ries: Mark Knopfler on the Six Gui­tars That Shaped His Career

Mark Knopfler Plays a Poignant, Over­driv­en Ver­sion of “The Last Post,” Remem­ber­ing the Many Lives Lost in World War I

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

Jim Mor­ri­son didn’t fare par­tic­u­lar­ly well, health-wise, in the last years of his life. Alco­holism took a heavy toll, as we know. “Images of him with the shag­gy beard, hair reced­ing at the tem­ples, and excess flesh gath­er­ing around the armpits,” writes Rob Fis­ch­er at Rolling Stone, “can resem­ble, in ret­ro­spect, T.J. Miller more than Father John Misty. This is the out-to-seed drunk­ard that Val Kilmer por­trays in Oliv­er Stone’s icon­ic film The Doors.” It is also an unfor­tu­nate car­i­ca­ture that leaves out the cre­ative and intel­lec­tu­al ener­gy still left in the artist once called “the first major male sex sym­bol since James Dean died and Mar­lon Bran­do got a paunch.”

There was always more to Mor­ri­son than that, and in the 1969 inter­view above, filmed over a week in L.A. with Rolling Stone’s Jer­ry Hop­kins, he is still “remark­ably sharp,” Fis­ch­er writes.

Even though the con­ver­sa­tions includ­ed many rounds of whiskey, scotch and beer, his respons­es give the impres­sion of a thought­ful and engaged artist strug­gling to real­ize the full extent of his already colos­sal pow­ers of expres­sion. He was read­ing wide­ly, writ­ing poet­ry, grav­i­tat­ing more towards film­mak­ing, all while long­ing to recon­nect with the explo­sive ener­gy that comes with play­ing small venues and clubs like the Whiskey a Go Go.

Mor­ri­son and the Doors were exper­i­men­tal artists, tak­ing musi­cal risks and sell­ing them with sex. The Doors were the first rock band, for exam­ple, to use the new Moog syn­the­siz­er on an album. Even before Wendy Car­los’ Switched-On Bach intro­duced pop­u­lar audi­ences to the tech­nol­o­gy of audio syn­the­sis in 1968, the band brought jazz musi­cian Paul Beaver into the 1967 record­ings ses­sions for Strange Days to use Moog for effects on sev­er­al tracks and to dis­tort Mor­rison’s voice.

Beaver, an ear­ly adopter of the syn­the­siz­er, pro­duced two sem­i­nal Moog records in the late six­ties: The Zodi­ac: Cos­mic Sounds (1967) with Mort Gar­son and dou­ble album The None­such Guide to Elec­tron­ic Music (1968) with Bernie Krause.

There­fore, when Mor­ri­son, in his astute analy­sis of Amer­i­can music, “pre­dicts” the future of elec­tron­ic music in 1969 dur­ing the course of his inter­view with Hop­kins, he knows of what he speaks. He’s already seen it, and being the hip guy that he was, he had like­ly heard the work of elec­tron­ic pio­neers Sil­ver Apples and maybe even of the band White Noise, a side project of BBC Radio­phon­ic Work­shop com­pos­er Delia Der­byshire that pro­duced music far ahead of its time that very year — music made almost exact­ly the way he describes:

I can kind of envi­sion one per­son with a lot of machines, tapes and elec­tron­ics set up, singing or speak­ing while using machines.… 

At the end of the brief clip at the top, we hear Hop­kins ignore this idea and move Mor­ri­son back to talk­ing about rock. But Jim had already moved on — and so had the cul­ture, he knew. The music he describes was hap­pen­ing all around him, and we might imag­ine he was a lit­tle frus­trat­ed that oth­er peo­ple could­n’t hear it. What Mor­ri­son brought to it, how­ev­er — or might have, had he lived — was the lyri­cal, the sen­su­al, the per­for­ma­tive, the melo­dra­mat­ic, and the tru­ly fright­en­ing, all qual­i­ties it would take new wave and goth acts like Echo and Bun­ny­men, Depeche Mode, and a host of Doors-influ­enced dark wave bands to bring to fruition in the elec­tron­ic music of future past.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Moog Syn­the­siz­er Changed the Sound of Music

This Is “The End”: A Video Explo­ration of The Doors’ Exis­ten­tial Epic

The Doors’ Ray Man­zarek Walks You Through the Writ­ing of the Band’s Icon­ic Song, “Rid­ers on the Storm”

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

It’s appar­ent­ly a tradition–Flea per­form­ing “The Star Span­gled Ban­ner” before the start of an LA Lak­ers game, accom­pa­nied by the bass, and only the bass. The record­ing above took place over the past week­end. You can also watch oth­er per­for­mances from 2016 and 2014. Some­where, Jimi is smil­ing.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

Hear Con­tro­ver­sial Ver­sions of “The Star Span­gled Ban­ner” by Igor Stravin­sky, Jimi Hen­drix, José Feli­ciano & John Philip Sousa

The Grate­ful Dead Rock the Nation­al Anthem at Can­dle­stick Park: Open­ing Day, 1993

Jimi Hen­drix Revis­its His Sear­ing Per­for­mance of “The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner”: The Dick Cavett Show (Sep­tem­ber 9, 1969)

If you’re going to back Dave Grohl behind the drums, well…. As so many have said, in so many ways over the week­end, in poignant trib­utes to Foo Fight­ers’ drum­mer Tay­lor Hawkins, who sad­ly passed away at age 50 on Fri­day — you’d bet­ter be damned good. As the Foo Fight­ers formed with Grohl on gui­tar and vocals, the for­mer Nir­vana drum­mer, now front­man “need­ed some­one who would not make fans keep wish­ing he had stuck with drums,” as NBC’s Daniel Arkin writes.

Grohl almost did stick with drums, at least in the stu­dio, record­ing the parts him­self for the band’s first album, The Colour and the Shape, after con­flicts with orig­i­nal drum­mer William Gold­smith. Hawkins was the tour­ing drum­mer for Ala­nis Moris­sette at the time — a much big­ger act than Foo Fight­ers in the late 90s. But the two kept bump­ing into each oth­er “back stage at fes­ti­vals around the world,” as Grohl wrote in his 2021 auto­bi­og­ra­phy, The Sto­ry­teller: Tales of Life and Music. “Our chem­istry was so obvi­ous that even Ala­nis her­self once asked him, ‘What are you going to do when Dave asks you to be his drum­mer?’ Part Beav­is and Butthead, part Dumb and Dumb­er, we were a hyper­ac­tive blur of Par­lia­ment Lights and air drum­ming wher­ev­er we went.”

Not only did Hawkins become Grohl’s “best friend and part­ner in crime” — his blond, beard­ed dop­pel­gänger behind the drums — but he was a fero­cious musi­cian on his terms, col­lab­o­rat­ing with Bri­an May, Den­nis Wil­son, Slash, and mem­bers of Jane’s Addic­tion, form­ing his own band, Tay­lor Hawkins and the Coat­tail Rid­ers, and get­ting vot­ed “Best Rock Drum­mer” in a 2005 read­ers poll by drum­ming mag­a­zine Rhythm. The acco­lade, if high­ly sub­jec­tive, is still high­ly deserved.

Revis­it Hawkins’ great­ness above in the BBC Radio 6 Drum­ming Mas­ter­class above, a near­ly hour-long spe­cial in which the man him­self walks us through his ear­ly life, his influ­ences, his drum­ming tech­niques, and his behind-the-scenes expe­ri­ences play­ing with Moris­sette and Dave “Steve Miller on steroids” Grohl. It’s an essen­tial watch for fans and per­haps one of the best ways to remem­ber the only drum­mer who could suc­cess­ful­ly back Nir­vana’s for­mer drum­mer for over two decades. He will be dear­ly missed for far longer than that.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dave Grohl Tells the Sto­ry of How He Wrote “Ever­long”

Dave Grohl & Greg Kurstin Cov­er The Ramones “Blitzkrieg Bop” to Cel­e­brate Han­nukah: Hey! Oy! Let’s Goy!

Watch 1,000 Musi­cians Play the Foo Fight­ers’ “Learn to Fly,” Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel,” and The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”

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