Russell Buddy Helm

Andy Warhol was at his usual table at Max’s Kansas City in Manhattan.

by Russell S Buddy Helm copyight 2013 all rights reserved.

Andy Warhol was at his usual table at Max’s Kansas City, his entourage was in attendance. Debbie Harry was waiting tables, not yet Blondie. Patty Smith was hanging out with Maplethorpe. The tables had little bowls of hard chick peas. I couldn’t eat them. Best not to eat at Max’s Kansas City at all. Too expensive and not that good. We headed on up the narrow stairs to the performance room. We were a hit it seemed. Lots of faces checked us out. Dave Mason, some kid named Springsteen, Village voice wrote a serious musical criticism, lots of fans. Tim was being gracious to everyone, but very guarded. The crowd could turn away from a new trend in a New York second. Late at night Tim and I would walk around the village, he would point out the places where he used to stay. He had performed at the Cafe Au Go Go for Howard. There were a lot of connections to Coconut Grove. One night, in the dressing room, I met one of the Bethlehem Asylum’s road managers. He had also been Tim’s road manager. Destiny runs in circles sometimes.

We had a great time in Atlanta, It was like a homecoming for me. Lowell George’s band, “Little Feet” played Richard’s, a huge Rock n roll club, the week before us, We all hung out and jammed together. Bonnie Bramlet tried her best to steal me away from Tim but he wouldn’t have it. John Hammond Jr tried to bust Tim for going commercial but I wouldn’t have any of that either. Lots of jive around a hit rock n roll band. You have to watch out or get sucked in by vampires. When we hit Baton Rouge, I felt like we had gotten close to my roots. The bayou was home to me. Lots like the everglades. I was writing and trying to get up enough nerve to show Tim. He had his writing partner, for many years, but we were now treading very new ground musically. I was hearing a melding of styles; rock and Afro Cuban, with aggressive high tempo trances that went for a long time, with Tim yodeling in some alien language. The more I pumped, the more he would sing in trance. It was unheard of at that time. The closest example is the live “Honeyman” album cut in New York on WBAI radio. Herb, Tim’s manager, just wanted him to sing love ballands which had made him popular in the sixties. But Tim wanted to go for the brass ring. When we hit the stage there was no telling what we would end up playing. Sometimes he would make up a song onstage and the rest of us would have to make it work. I loved that.

We stayed at the One Fifth Avenue in New York. That will always be a great memory for me; twenty two and living the life that I thought I should be living. Working at keeping sane, looking for opportunities to develop the art, the music, the writing, the drumming. I was being a good boy. The drugs and the booze really didn’t interest me. It was around and if you weren’t careful, you could turn into an alcoholic in a couple of weeks playing clubs or concerts, never mind the risks of the other stuff. I stayed on my game as best I could. Mack would yell at me through the bathroom door of our shared hotel room, “What are you doing in there?” I sat on the floor, “I’m meditating.” I answered him quietly. Anything I could do to maintain the stance of a balanced magician, I was willing to investigate. I was vegetarian until I saw myself in a Holiday Inn mirror and scared myself so bad that I started to eat meat again. I was skinny, brittle hair, pallor white, and slumping posture. Tim cracked up when two working girls called me a “Dangling Protestant”, as they past us up by Central Park around the corner from the Circus Deli..

Tim was fighting with his label and management about what kind of music he was going to be able to record and play. He had a reputation for eclecticism, but we were pushing the groove now, it was dynamic and exciting. We were defining the music that would happen in the future. He would also do his ballads, and that was always a treat. His voice had as much power and depth as Freddie’s, a different quality when he went up the high registers. He was defining a scale of notes that Coltrane might have used. This was not pop music the way it had been packaged. It was fresh. And we were getting a good audience. Very hip; even by Coconut Grove standards.

by Russell S Buddy Helm copyight 2013 all rights reserved.

www.buddyhelm.com

Daniel Lived Behind Lester’s Sculpture Studio in a Camper

excerpt: “History of the Groove, Drummer’s story” Russell Buddy Helm ©2013 all rights reserved

1971. Daniel lived behind Lester’s sculpture studio in Coconut Grove on the grassy alley between Virginia and Mary street, between Oak and Day street. Lester’s sculpture studio was a converted garage that is still standing today. But back then it held his amazing Samurai garbage can statues; full size replicas of Samurai armor made of welded garbage can lids. It was the first sculpture I witnessed upon moving into the grove and it impressed me a great deal.

On any given sun drenched grove late morning, after breakfast at the Coco Plum with Grale, or Vince, Danny or Christian, across from the Bethlehem Asylum’s second floor office being run by Drummond, I would stroll over toward Lester’s funky wooden bungalow, mozy on down the grass covered alley, pay a visit to Daniel and just watch him work. It was one of the most enjoyable times I had in the Grove. He was like a zen monk and was always graciously glad to see me. I would sit under the banana palms, Bahia grass between my toes, wearing only cut offs, and watch the tiny chips of marble accumulate at my feet as he silently tapped. His girlfriend was a Botticelli Venus we shall call Olivia. Everyday, Daniel would roll out of his camper and chisel away at a huge eight foot tall disk of Georgia pink marble commissioned to him from a bank in Coral Gables. His sculptor’s goal was to hone the concave surfaces to intersect just enough to allow sunlight to seep through the opaque stone at the curvilinear nexus of this flawless piece of marble. That center would have to be less than an inch in thickness. He looked like kirk Douglas in Spartacus; middle aged, a superb physical specimen; tanned, slim, sinewy from striking hammer to chisel to stone every day in his cut offs. Olivia, young and winsome, rising from the mists, loved him and they were happy. She was from a very connected California family. Her older brother had gone the way of many young men with pedigree and good schooling. He had gotten mixed up in the intelligence business. Eventually he ended up in a Mexican prison, and no amount of money could get him out.

There was talk of the Kennedy assassinations. He knew too much so ‘they’ kept him in prison, where he could not talk. His family tried everything to get him out. The last resort was El Rubio; the Flamenco guitarist who would frequent Coconut Grove on many of his smuggling expeditions in and out of the Caribbean. The truth be known; behind every Coconut Grove Beauty there was at least one smuggler, one spook and one soldier of fortune. The poets would tag along far behind, desperate for a smile. El Rubio performed his simmering Flamenco exclusively, in a private Coconut Grove home where the lazy long bladed overhead fans would draw in the comforting cool air that collected over the tiled pool included in the original design of the living room. This Castilian, traditional style of cooling was sufficient back then, instead of the modern air conditioning and ugly condos that now block the Trade Winds. The select patrons would sip cognac, sample exquisite paella, smoke prohibited Cohibas, fresh from Havana and clap politely but appreciatively after El Rubio’s stellar performances. I played the dombeq, which is a Mediterranean belly dancing drum. Afterwards, El Rubio would disappear.

Olivia and her Coconut Grove beauty cohort, persuaded El Rubio to hook up Olivia’s family with an outrageously bold mercenary genius. He would rescue their son from the high security Mexican prison, but he would need Olivia’s help. He would disguise a helicopter to look like the general’s official helo, making a snap surprise inspection, which Generallisimo liked to do. Olivia’s job was to get word to her brother to be in the exercise yard at twelve noon on the appointed day, and be ready to run. It worked. While the prison guards stood at attention, the Generalissimo’s bogus chopper dropped down into the exercise yard, Olivia’s brother dashed for the passenger seat and they were off before the guards could throw the bolts on their old Enfields. They skimmed treetops all the way across the Rio Grande and disappeared into the hill country west of Austin.

Charles Bronson starred as the mercenary in the movie version called, ‘Breakout’. Charles also bought one of my standing ashiko drums many years later in Malibu. The world is big, but if you keep moving you will meet a lot of the people in it.

Now the rich kid was on the run… Every agency was looking for him in all those trendy California spots. Family needed advice.

I had just returned from a brain draining tour in Europe and was invited down to Paradise Island to relax with Olivia’s new group of friends. She told how when she and Bananas had been seated at their first sortie into Paradise island, Gino had swept his hand across her lap to place a linen napkin on her diminutive skirt and copped a feel in the process. She married him. He cooked pasta and drained it through a tennis racket. “I will feed you so much pasta, you will be so fat, no one will love you but ME.”

“Your money is no good here.” He said to me. I was being treated like royalty. I found myself sitting in the casino, overlooking Tony and Gino dealing blackjack and baccarat. The crowd was beyond expensive. They had tied their yachts up to the dock just outside the casino, and entered wearing tuxedos and evening gowns. These were the ultimate jet setters. I watched as they dropped ten grand on one card. No one cared, they were so wealthy it didn’t matter.

Olivia sat down next me, tanned and lovely in a white summer frock. She was with a nervous but nice guy. “This is our family lawyer”, she said. “We are here to talk about my brother. I want your opinion.” I did not want to have an opinion. My father had been a part of the Intel community and I didn’t feel up to it. They broke it down and I gave them my advice. “You have to create a new identity for your brother.”

If you were to have access to the intelligence business phone book, my late father’s family name would appear at the top, and would be as ubiquitous as “McClusky” is in my mother’s family home village phone book in Scotland. For this reason, I am reticent to get involved when there are questions of subterfuge. I opted out of that life, to the consternation of a few. I knew the guy Olivia had just introduced me to as we sat in the casino on Paradise Island, overlooking the baccarat tables. He had been Jack Ruby’s defense lawyer, although it didn’t do Jack much good.

We had a vantage point table in the cute little white gazebo bar about ten feet above the gaming tables. Here we could watch Olivia’s husband and his associates from Rome deal blackjack while their new Las Vegas Mafia pit bosses kept an eagle eye on them. There had been a power shift in the gambling world. Meyer Lansky’s Miami Beach barbershop based Mafia cartel had moved in and taken over the previously Sicilian owned “Cathino” on Paradise Island. There were some rough nerves and some people had already fed the fishes. But Gino and Toni were still driving their Ferrari’s and kept telling me, “Your money is no good here.” Everything was free for me, even the Gauloises.

“If there was a conspiracy, we couldn’t prove it.” Olivia’s family lawyer stated with some bleakness in his voice. “Every lead, every witness, either disappeared or died, even all of Garrison’s leads in New Orleans. If there was a conspiracy to kill the Kennedy’s we would have had the legal precedent to prosecute, but we could not put a case together.”

“No surprises there.” I said to myself. I ordered a vodka gimlet, on the house. It was the favorite breakfast drink of the FBI undercover agent I had just been sharing a room with on this last tour through Europe. I forced my mouth to stay shut. That took a great deal of personal fortitude. I have a reflexive reaction to spying. I will blurt out the secret intelligence information and blow covers, ruin missions, and end people’s careers. It is a delayed stress response to my father’s murder, but it would also be a response to the upcoming murder of Tim Buckley, but I didn’t know that yet.

I looked at Olivia, she was young, beautiful, innocent in a randy sort of way, naive and skirting some dangerous territory. “Look, Olivia. Get your brother a new passport, and set him up in some foreign country, like Italy. Don’t ever let him come back here. Okay? And when you go to see him. Be extra careful.”

by Russell Buddy Helm copyright 2013 All rights reserved.

When I left Tim Buckley’s band.

by Russell Buddy Helm copyright 2013 all rights reserved

When I left Tim Buckley’s band I had no idea I would be back behind Tim playing drums again in less than a year. I had moved in with Katherine, a local beauty in the Santa Cruz mountains. She helped me make the transition from rock star brat to acceptable human being. She was an inheritance from Coconut Grove.  I met El Rubio two years earlier; Flamenco guitar player, friend of Bananas, when he had come through the grove on his way back to California after doing something in the Caribbean. El Rubio and I  played together and got along fine.

El Rubio appeared at a Tim Buckley concert in Boulder Creek, in the Santa Cruz mountains just south of San Francisco. He introduced me to Katherine of Boulder Creek. She was a trompe l’oeil painter. Her hanging drapes were actually meticulously painted canvases.  Katherine, flaxen haired beauty with  hips that swayed like the ocean, was a sane haven in the midst of the rock n roll frenzy of the early seventies. She offered me a safe place up in the Redwoods, away from the deadly predatory music biz. I took the offer and pulled out of the star making machinery. I hadn’t seen El Rubio since Coconut Grove, where he had taken my stereo Roberts recorder out of Bananas’ living room, with the promise that he would pay me back…. someday.

El Rubio was a gypsy and famous among Caribbean smugglers. He would perform house concerts where rich Paella was steaming on the banquet table and the men would light up real Cuban Cohiba cigars and drink Brandy after dinner while El Rubio played his rascado style of guitar. He was a virtuoso Flamenco guitarist, but he also had connections to the world of mercenaries and Soldiers of Fortune.

When Olivia, a beautiful friend of a beautiful friend, asked for help to get her brother out of a Mexican prison, El Rubio’s name came up. A movie was made about this caper.

excerpt for “Drummer’s History” by Russell Buddy Helm

copyright 2013 all rights reserved

We were leaving Kansas City

by Russell Buddy Helm copyright 2013 All rights reserved.

We were leaving Kansas City. Sitting at the Kansas City airport, waiting for a flight. The morning was just ending, so Mack decided to start on his vodka gimlets. He started to feel antsy, so got up and started to spook around the waiting area, hiding behind columns and spying on people. I was standing off to myself, leaning against a column, just getting some alone time. Mack motioned surreptitiously to me, and then pointed at an unsuspecting traveler, reading a newspaper. Mack hand signaled to me that he would go around the other side, and that I should go around this side and surround that guy. Then we would “get him”. It was a game he liked to play; Secret Agent. I formed a pistol with my fingers and pointed it back at Mack and pretended to shoot him instead. That pissed him off. He came over to me and hissed in my face, “Why can’t you be a team player?!”

“I’m not a joiner…” I muttered back at him. He stalked back to the round table where the rest of the band was sitting, waiting. He slumped down on the seat and nursed his series of gimlets. Finally Tim said to him, “Mack, If I get political again. Will  you kill me like  you did Jimi and Janis?”

Without hesitation Mack responded in a voice that he had not used before. It was serious, not the silly drunked up voice that he usually put on. “When Buddy picks  up a gun, that’s when everybody goes to jail.”

Just after Tim Buckley was murdered, later, I was crying in our living room in the Santa Cruz mountains when the phone rang and Katherine said with a great deal of trepidation, “It’s Mack.”

He had left the band a year ago, during the time I had quit.  Or he was fired. I didn’t know the circumstances. How could he have gotten this phone number? It wasn’t in my name. I answered the phone, “Hello?”

“Look, man. Tim was loved by a lot of people back here. And we’re impressed that you found the guy who killed him.  So…we can ‘do’ this guy for you. No charge. No strings attached. All you have to do is say yes….” I could feel the set up. Recording machines were running. This was my father’s business. My instincts woke up.

“No Mack. Let justice take it’s course.” I hung up gently. That was a call from the devil himself. I was not going to participate but ‘they’ knew I wanted to. They wanted me involved in  something that would end up with me being in trouble. It was a frame. I had seen enough bad detective movies to know that. But I didn’t really know what his motives were. The old fears came up. I inherited them from my mother, who had fallen in love with a spy.

Was I that much of a threat? What did my father do? Is it about me at all… Tim was the real target; was it a murder for money or politics, or revenge? Whatever the reasons, it was a very, very professional job. The coroner never found out what killed his brain.

Tim’s dream was to record an album with Fred Neil, Odetta, and himself all singing together. I would have liked to have played drums on that one.

Tim Buckley Strummed His Twelve String Electric Fender Like It Was an Acoustical, like Freddie.

by Russell S. Buddy Helm all rights reserved copyright 2013

Tim Buckley strummed his twelve string electric Fender like it was an acoustical, like Fred Neil; big broad strokes that rolled out waves of romantically mystical chords into the empty soundstage. Frank Zappa’s trainset had been dismantled and put on the road. It was just Tim playing his 12 and Joe playing lead, I was on a drumset they had rented for the occasion from SIR, seeing as how I did not even have a drumset in L.A. After the first song, Tim said, “You want to go on the road? Next week?” That was better than Frank’s offer. I would have had to memorize all of Frank’s charts in three days because he didn’t want music stands on stage. I nodded. “Give me your albums, so I can learn the arrangements.”

“No. Don’t bother. Play whatever you want to play.”

There is a certain level of trust that occurs between humans when they share rhythm. It is part of our DNA. When we can recognize another person’s rhythm, we tend to trust them because of some unconscious shared common language.

The Boarding House in Francisco was the first gig with Tim Buckley. We had a five piece band. “Sell out!” Someone yelled half way through our set. The San Francisco crowd was mostly appreciative but that remark hurt Tim. He was working very hard, sweating and singing with a voice that could not be compared to anyone. His vocal chords were a force of nature. I was in my element. The vocal drum improvisations got wilder and wilder, cooking AfroCuban RnB with Tim going off singing in tongues. It was VooDoo only nobody back then knew that. I had come directly from the heart of magic grooves and lit his fuse. He bloomed onstage, burning with a young engine on the drums. We didn’t really need a band. The climb up the credibility ladder was pretty quick. We started headlining with Bob Seeger, Return to Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra, too many to remember. Central Park, New York at the Shaffer festival, plus every dive in the Midwest that would have a rock n roll stage. We were too busy to notice how much fun we were having. Toured Europe with Van Morrison, Allman Brothers, Doobie Brothers, Mahavishnu, Amsterdam, London, on and on. We recorded “Dolphins” by Fred Neil, and it became the single; huge arrangement with chimes and his angelic voice. I think it did pretty good. This band was good, but I wanted something else. “You deserve a better band than this.” I said coming back from Europe after three years of touring. “Besides, I won’t sign publishing with Herb so we can not really write together. So, I am leaving the band.” He nodded his head sitting in the back of the limo. He understood. We were finishing up a worldwide tour at Stanford, in Palo Alto playing with Loggins and Messina. By cosmic coincidence my girlfriend had gotten us a ranch house close by so that I could go back to art school at San Jose State. Jim Fielder, the bass player with Blood, Sweat and Tears, sat in the back with Ed Green, the guitar player with Ricky Nelson’s Stone Canyon Band. “Write if you get work.” Ed said with a wry grin. I shut the door to the limo, and carried my suitcase into the Trailways bus terminal. Katherine would pick me up down by our newly rented ranch in the Santa Cruz mountains.

The situation was complicated, even though I liked the keyboard player and the bass player and the guitar player. Their playing was alright, but there was some underlying dynamic that bothered me. The piano player was from Baltimore. We shared a motel room in Albuquerque and watched the Watergate hearings on TV where everyone witnessed a U.S. Constitutional Crisis in full bloom. Mack knew all the moves before they happened. “See that guy behind Spiro Agnew, with the white shirt, black tie, crew cut, sunglasses? That’s my father. He personally busted Spiro Agnew. He’s the head of the FBI in Baltimore.”

by Russell Buddy Helm copyright 2013 all rights reserved.
www.buddyhelm.com

1970, Coconut Grove.

by Russell Buddy Helm copyright 2013 All rights reserved.

www.buddyhelm.com

Terry the Tramp banged on the Bethlehem Asylum front door. I could hear the knocking all the way back in the music room that overlooked the jungled backyard. Old Florida wide wooden jalousies broke the sunlight into bands of dark and light green. I put down the sticks, jumped up three steps into the coral rock bar with vintage glass bricks, then jumped down three steps into the sunken living room, sprinted past the six foot flamingo coral fireplace, across the open living room, forty yards to the front door. The knocking reverberated around the living room like a cannon again. The little high turret windows  that bordered the flamingo fireplace rattled even though they were thirty feet up on the wall. I opened the door and nearly choked. This guy was huge. I’m six two and I felt like a midget. He had his colors on. Denim cut off jacket. 1% badge on the pocket. One percent referred to the quote from Spiro Agnew, saying that there was only one percent of the country that was being a problem.

“Papa John.” he rumbled down at me. I nodded and scooted away. Papa John, our self appointed manager was sitting at the sprawling old mahogany dining room table with Jim. They both had their colors on too. Jim was decorative, rock star version. Papa John’s was the real thing. “Papa John. There is a guy asking for you.” Papa John didn’t seemed concerned. “He’s big.” I added. He perked up. “How big?” He stood up and eased past me like a ghost. He was across the living room and grabbing the guy and squeezing and hitting him, they were growling at each other at first. I could not tell if they were friends or mortal enemies for a few moments. They started laughing.

“This is Terry the Tramp.” I was humbled. This guy was famous. “This is my rock n roll band.” Papa John swung his arms around the place. Terry grunted approval. They  both went for their wallets; identical, soiled, smelly, old worn leather and pulled out newspaper clippings kept safe in a secret fold. They held them up and regalled us with stories of Mother Magoo’s funeral procession. The news photo showed a long distance shot with hill after hill after hill covered with thousands of hogs. Terry pointed, “That’s me and Papa John, at the front.”

Tower Records on Sunset Strip was the mecca in nineteen seventy two.

excerpt: “History of the Groove, drummer’s story”

by Russell Buddy Helm ©2013 All rights reserved.

www.buddyhelm.com

Tower Records on Sunset Strip was the mecca in nineteen seventy two. It was where the royalty of the Rock mountain presided. The In Store events were world wide news. Peggy, the Coconut Grove heiress who decided to be my manager, yelled at me to pull in to their parking lot. Inside, the bins of records were overflowing. The large room had every kind of record. “I want you to hear this one album.” she said and took me to the ‘B’ sections of pop and rock. There, next to the Beatles bin, was Bethlehem Asylum. Our album was being sold in Tower Records. There were a few copies left. It was gorgeous and terrifying at the same time. We weren’t getting any of that money. We got absolutely nothing. But we had done it. We were in Tower Records on Sunset Strip. That had to mean something.

“Here.” She shoved it in my face. “Buy this one.” It was “Greetings from L.A.” by Tim Buckley.

excerpt: “History of the Groove, drummer’s story”

by Russell Buddy Helm ©2013 All rights reserved.

Glenn Campbell and Steve Goodman were cutting Dueling Banjos

by Russell Buddy Helm all rights reserved copyright 2013

Glenn Campbell and Steve Goodman were cutting Dueling Banjos live, in the huge basement orchestral size studio A at Capitol Records, the building that looks like a stack of forty fives, just above the intersection of Hollywood and Vine. Steve missed a part on the guitar licks being traded back and forth at lightening speed with one of the best pickers in town. Glenn Campbell just laughed, “We’ll fix it in the mix!” He jokes. They were having a good time but there was a level of pressure and big money that tainted the air with stress.  They were the money players. This was the fastest track. I figured I was lucky to be here so I was sightseeing. Another night I witnessed Super Sax recording Charlie Parker solos with a full orchestra. Vince Martin’s album was going along nicely in the studio next to Glenn’s session. Much smaller and intimate. The Beatles had recorded here.

Van Dyke was adding a level of class to Vince’s session that was enjoyable. The other players were all ringers. When I arrived Vince announced that I would be replacing the drummer, who was the son of the Tonight Show drummer. This kid was very good. “Buddy’s got that island swing. I need that on this tune.”

We kicked it off, Vince sang live vocals and played the piano, the grooves settled in and we went through the chord changes, then we went through the changes again, and again. Vince was so inspired he was composing new verses as we got into the groove. That’s the way we did it in the Grove. Just let it happen. Only here, now, in the big bucks world of the music biz, this was unacceptable. The engineer waited until we had finished the improvisation with many added verses. Vince thought it was great. Everyone thought it was great. Joni’s husband was on bass. He leaned over to me and said, ” I want to have a band with you.” I nodded. I had no idea who he was.

“So,” Van Dyke cruised up to me using his Tennessee Williams kind of tone, “…You’re the new flower in town?” I had no idea what was going on. Babe in the woods. “…love the way you play.”

“The bass player wants to start a band…” I offered innocently.

“Oh, That would be dandy, but let’s not exchange vows and rings just yet.” He said walking over to listen to the engineer.

“We can’t use it.” He said exasperated. “Its too long. There are too many verses. Why did you make up verses? We had an arrangement.”

Vince defended his artistic decisions,
“It felt really good, and the inspiration came. That’s what it is. If you think it’s too long, then cut out some of the verses.”

The engineer almost blew up. “We can’t do that! The tempo varies, if we splice the tape, there will be jumps in the rhythm. It’s not possible to hold a song steady for that long.”

Vince smiled and nodded his head, “You never played with Buddy.  It’s steady.  Just check it.”

So how do you check the tempo to see if it is steady in an old school recording studio that is supposed to be state of the art? You tap your hands and watch the second hand sweep around the face on the big Bulova clock on the wall. There was no click track, no metronome. Drum machines didn’t exist. They played the song and everyone watched the clock and tapped. It stayed steady for about seven minutes. The length of the song. Nobody said much. The engineer was bummed out because  he was going to have to splice two inch recording tape using a razor blade and scotch tape. He muttered to himself,

“Hal Blaine can’t even do that.”

There was a time when drummers in our culture had an unspoken agreement that they would not discuss Mystical Drumming. It was not acknowledged. It did not exist. Magic drumming was not a part of the professional drummer’s world. There were no magazines promoting shaman drumming. There was only snare drums, Zildjian cymbals, Ludwig bass drums, but also a hint of that other spiritual world of drumming; the Drummer’s Throne. This was the place where a drummer could steer the universe.

If I didn’t have a gig, I would just sit on my drumset and play. The phone would ring. It always worked that way. I was shocked when other drummers didn’t do that. I thought all drummers knew how to talk to the universe. That’s what drumming is. But being metronome correct is not what drumming meditation is about. The tempo has be late to the downbeat. It cannot be unforgiving like a drum machine if you want people to heal and feel safe. It has to be sloppy, lazy and back in the pocket. Late to the downbeat. That is the great art form of Jazz and RnB, the drummer swings it and plays it straight at the same time, laying it back, being late to the downbeat. It is a paradox of rhythm, that is why the body can dance. The critical mind is put in neutral by the mystery of rhythm. But the body wakes up, dances and heals.

Frank Zappa stared at me, “Can you read my charts?”

by Russell Buddy Helm all rights reserved  copyright 2013

Frank Zappa stared at me, “Can you read my charts?”

“I’ve read psychotic charts before.” I responded with an unintentional snarl.

Frank looked shocked, and a little scared. People did not insult him. “Well, I prefer rock n roll.” he said defensively. “Me too.” I answered mutely.

Aspergers Syndrome was not discovered yet. Being rude was accepted behavior for a drummer, if they were good. But the mood in Frank’s big playset studio had turned sour. Ralph, the sweetest  and best jazz drummer had stormed out. I had asked him why, as he jammed his shell tom toms into their cloth travel cases.

“Frank and I… don’t…get…along!…” was all he could utter.

Jean Luc was throwing a sulking fit. George was trying to smile and get along. Ruth was just ignoring the melodrama. I was sitting at the kit looking at the charts for ‘Overnight Sensation’ and trying to focus on the notes but they kept moving around. I recognized one of the time signatures, 9/4. I was trained for this, but I was having some kind of stress reaction. I had had them before. Like when the CIA tried to recruit me when I was nineteen years old. They wanted to control me. They wanted to use me. I was feeling the same way about Frank Zappa. He was a total control freak.

Peggy, my self appointed LA manager from Coconut Grove had asked me, “You want to play with Frank Zappa?” I said sure. Why not. My music career was over. The Bethlehem Asylum was gone. I was going to go back to art school and paint. That would help me pay for tuition. Duh…

“Sing it more Black.” Frank instructed the white singer. For some reason that hit me wrong. In Macon, Georgia, that might have gotten him a broken nose. I was spoiled, listening to Duane Allman night after night, everything else pales, including some one as good as Frank. I missed Charlie’s saxophone and Christian’s excellent voodoo piano skills. George Duke is no slouch but there was a mystical quality that I wanted; something with more heart in it. We took a break. Everyone stood around silent, waiting for Frank’s next pronouncement. I decided to change the mood of the Mothers of Invention rehearsal. I kicked in with a funk groove, something that everyone could enjoy. George smiled and dropped in a chord pattern that was like Quincy. Everyone started playing, even Jean Luc got up and sliced off some tasty licks on electric violin. Frank had no choice, he had to get in the groove or be totally lame. He played for awhile. Everyone started to relax. I had hijacked the greatest band in LA. Then Frank stood up abruptly, waved his hand in the air and shouted.

“That’s enough! Stop! OK! Ten Minute Break! Frank’s gotta take a shit!”

Everyone stopped playing. Even George. I watched Frank unstrap his Les Paul, hand it off, without looking, to his hovering valet/roadie  and swagger across the huge soundstage to the bathroom. Everyone sat there silently and watched while Frank locked himself in the bathroom, unzipped his jeans and farted.

Something snapped inside my twenty two year old head. I had to get out of there, right now.

Before I knew what I was doing, I had launched myself across the soundstage and was pounding on the bathroom door.

“What!!!” Frank yelled through the thin door.

“Frank! It’s Buddy!” I yelled through the door. ” I gotta go!”

There was a pause. Then a reluctant pissed off retort, “Okay, I’ll be right out!”

I was in a daze, a fog of desperate apprehension. I watched myself pounding on the door again. He screamed, “What!!!”

“Frank’s! It’s Buddy. I really gotta go.” I heard myself saying.

“OK, OK Godammit!” I heard his belt buckle and zipper. I pounded on the door again.

“!!!Alright! Alright!!” He screamed.

I got up close to the door so he would hear me.

“Bye!”

I walked out of the sound stage.

Walking down the narrow hall of Bizarre/straight records toward the front, Sunset Blvd, sunlight, fresh air,  felt like a Roman Polanski movie. The walls were getting closer, diminishing to  a narrow crack in the front of the building where a young man slouched against the wall outside the manager’s closed office door. I finally arrived at the end of the long shrinking tunnel hallway. I stood next to the young guy, waiting in line to see Herb. I was in an altered, paranoid state, just from trying to drum with Frank. No drugs. He hated drugs. He couldn’t control people who were high.

The young man looked over at me and said, “What did they send you to the principal for?” I was suddenly in high school again, and this was a guy who could be in my band.

“I can’t work with Frank.” I said still in shock.

He cackled out loud. His eyes lit up with glee and a big toothy grin opened  up, “NOBODY can work with Frank!” He laughed. When he finally settled down he said,

“What do you play?”

“Drums.”

“I need a drummer.”

“Who are  you?”

He looked hurt but took it like a man. “Tim Buckley.'”

” I heard greetings from LA. I liked it. Salsa. You’re much taller on record.”

He winced again. “Thanks. Where are you from?”

“Coconut Grove”

His eyes opened wide, he stood up straight and asked me in the most sincere voice I had heard in LA,

“How is Fred Neil?”