Aynsley Dunbar: Rocker With A Jazz Heart

By Robyn Plans

Modern Drummer, October 2007

Aynsley Dunbar is probably best known for his work with successful pop/rock bands like Journey and Jefferson Starship. But his distinctive jazz roots always set him apart from more straight-ahead rockers. It was Aynsley's musical creativity that generally got him hired. Ironically, it was often that same characteristic – his desire to stretch within the music – that also got him fired.

Aynsley never took formal lessons. Instead, he absorbed the influences of his drum idols, including Gene Krupa, Louie Bellson, and Buddy Rich. He also incorporated odd time signatures into his approach, which helped attract the attention of such notable musicians as John Mayall, Jeff Beck, David Bowie, and Frank Zappa.

Aynsley currently lives in Las Vegas, where he enjoys the active music scene."There are lots of places to go jammin'," he says, "so I'll just jump in with a band." Aynsley also plays with a band called The World Classic Rockers, doing corporate performances all over the world. And he's in the midst of recording an album for a German record company.

In this Playback feature, Aynsley was asked to talk about the significant recordings of his career. He not only spoke about his proudest moments, he was also honest enough to include some of his most difficult ones.

A Hard Road
John Mayall (1966)

The first thing I did that was really outstanding would be John Mayall, in 1966. I had done only a couple of recordings before that, mainly demos with my first band, The Mojos. Then I joined John Mayall, and the next minute we were in the studio. We had no idea what the songs were, so we learned them in the studio. John had an idea of what he wanted to do because they were his songs, but we had to put them together. John McVie and Peter Green [later of Fleetwood Mac] were in the band, and it was a really good group.

I learned a great deal with Mayall – mostly that sometimes when you play less, it sounds a lot better. There was one song, called "Another Kinda Love," that I didn't even play cymbals on, except on a couple of downbeats. It was mainly top drums. It was just one of those things where it sounded a lot better without cymbals.

John also did a song called " The Supernatural," which was the first time anybody had ever done a song with feedback. I played timpani mallets on the drums.

" Tallyman" b/w " Rock My Plimsoul"
(singles) Jeff Beck
(''Tallyman" appears on Beckology "Rock My Plimsoul" appears on Truth)

That was the Jeff Beck group with Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood. It was another great band.

Mickey Most, the producer, had me tape my drums so they had no sound whatsoever. It was absolutely awful. But he kept saying he'd " do it in the mix." In those days we didn't have great headphones or headphone mixes, so the only way you could tell if a track sounded good was to go into the studio to listen to it after you played. Afterwards, the drums sounded okay because Mickey put a lot of EQ on the track and got the sounds he wanted.

Doctor Dunbar's Prescription
The Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation (1969)

Retaliation was a blues band that I put together in 1967, and that lasted through 1970. Doctor Dunbar's Prescription was the first of our four albums, and I did a drum solo on one of the tracks. It was an ad lib solo on top of a song we basically threw together in the studio – very reminiscent of the way things were done in John Mayall's band. Everything I did in those days was about feeling and just playing.

"Waka/Jawaka"
Waka/Jawaka Frank Zappa (1972)

Frank had a broken leg. He had been pushed offstage about six months earlier, and he was sitting in a wheel chair. He was playing guitar, sitting down, and writing all these complex things. We had charts for the openings, and then we were to ad lib from there on out, so we just played the songs through. From cues that Frank gave by pointing his fingers, we would do what we did. Frank gave me a drum solo on that tune, and when it rides out, I was just playing a bass drum part. I only had a single bass drum in those days. When Frank came back with the finished product, he had put a trumpet fanfare over that bass drum ride-out at the end. He wrote that part to the feel of the bass drum, which I had played between a straight and a triplet feel. He just changed the whole thing to fit the bass drum pattern.

Playing with Frank was the most tremendous time of my life. He was one of those guys who brought you to another level. He was the only guy who played different time signatures like that. I was already playing time changes; I'd started doing that with my own bands many years earlier. I did "Take Five" with The Mojos as my drum solo in 1964.

Frank found me when I was performing at a record festival in Brussels. A French TV producer who knew me grabbed Frank and brought him on stage while I was playing. We played two songs together, after which we sat in a car and he chatted to me about coming to America. The next thing I knew, he was in London at one of the big clubs everyone went to, and that's when he offered me a job. That was in February of 1970. I moved over at that point, and I was with Frank for three years. I played on Chunga's Revenge, Fillmore East: June 1971, 200 Motels, Just Another Band From LA, Waka/Jawaka, The Grand Wazoo, and Apostrophe'.

"Oh, Jim"
Berlin Lou Reed (1973)

Lou found me through [producer] Bob Ezrin. Bob called and came down to LA, and we flew back to his house in Canada where we spent our time going over the songs and charting them out. Bob could write things out, but he needed me to chart the time signatures, the bar structure, and so on. I had to do all that so I had an idea of what the songs would be when I got there. The song called " Oh, Jim" comes to mind because I put a drum opening on it. I started playing a repetitive little fill in the studio, and Bob Ezrin said," Keep that thought, let's put that on a song," and so we put it on " Oh, Jim."

Berlin was the most depressing album I ever did in my life, for many reasons that I can't elaborate on. In a situation like that, you just have to plow through it. We were staying at the Churchill Hotel in London, and we'd go to the gig just as night was falling. We'd leave the session at 9:00 in the morning as the sun was coming up. One day I got back to the hotel on a day off and the phone rang. David Bowie was on the line, and he asked me if I'd like to go down and sit in with the band at the last gig that the Spiders From Mars were doing. I said, "Do you mind if I call Lou and ask if he wants to go?" David said okay, so I called Lou. He got so pissed that he called a four-hour session – on our day off – so I couldn't go sit in. I went to the party afterwards and there are pictures of me, Jeff Beck, David Bowie, Lou, and Mick Jagger all sitting at a table. It was after that that Bowie called to ask if I'd like to work as his in-house session drummer.

"Rebel Rebel"
Diamond Dogs David Bowie (1974)

I joined Bowie for six months. I was flying back and forth from America to England every two weeks. I was staying at the Duke of Norfolk's house behind Buckingham Palace in London, and I was having a great time, but I was getting tired of it. We did Pin-Ups and Diamond Dogs." Rebel Rebel" would be the best thing off Diamond Dogs.

Bowie was huge in Europe at that time, but he hadn't made a dent in America. "Rebel Rebel" helped him get started there. Bowie knew what he wanted to hear on the song, but he didn't know how to explain it. He told me he wanted a straight feel with just snare drum hits. He didn't want tom-tom hits, which was hard for me because I play tom-toms as a feel thing. David wanted something straight and simple. When David's manager gave me a legal piece of paper with like six clauses – all on their side, with nothing for me on it – I left. That was Christmas of' 73.

"Kohoutek"
Journey Journey (1975)

When I got back to LA I had messages on my answering machine from Journey. They were pretty much a jazz/rock fusion band at that time, which appealed to me. So I moved to San Francisco to join them." Kohoutek" is a very different kind of song – something you still don't hear a lot of people doing. It was also a very difficult track for a drummer to play with a single bass drum. It's pretty fast – we played it double time and half time – and there are a lot of nice little bits and pieces on it. In fact, there were a lot of things on that whole first album that were interesting.

I began playing double bass with Journey [on Next] because Neal Schon couldn't hear the downbeat when I played the single bass drum. It was pretty silly. When I was playing a 16th-note fill with the bass drum, I'd play the first, third, fifth ... and so on ... beats on the hi-hat, and the second, fourth, sixth ... and so on ... beats on the bass drum. When you heard it played, you'd think I was actually playing sixteen beats per measure. I was only playing eight, but it was where the bass drum was. Neal played so damn loud – his echoes echoed – that he couldn't hear the downbeat. It was the stupidest thing ever, but I went along with it to be part of the band. Double bass drums are very difficult to record for a producer, and they're also tough to mike on stage – you have to put them out of phase. Nowadays I use a double pedal.

The early Journey material, like "Kohoutek," was great. But by Infinity (1978) things started to get more "commercial." I had to play more like Mick Fleetwood, otherwise it just didn't fit. I was fired after I played a Chinese cymbal to create a gasping sound on "Something To Hide." Steve Perry didn't want me to play it, but I played it anyway, and that led to my departure.

Freedom At Point Zero
Jefferson Starship (1979)

I did a sixteen-bar opening to the title song on that album. The rest of the band left me alone to work on the opening. They thought they were going to be gone for an hour or two, but once I got the beginning of the song in my head, the opening just came to me and I played it down. I think I spent about three minutes working on it.

Starship was a lot of fun when Paul Kantner was out of the mix. The rest of the band was great. We found vocalist Mickey Thomas, and we had a big hit with "Jane." "Girl With The Hungry Eyes," which was a Paul Kantner song, had a little bit of a time change in it. I was in the band for five years.

"Crying In The Rain"
Whitesnake Whitesnake (1987)

We recorded that album in Vancouver, in a big room with ambient mics inside, and on either side of and in back of the drums. Mike Stone was recording us, and he got a really big sound by opening the loading dock doors and putting microphones in the loading dock. It was sub-zero temperature outside, so my front would be burning hot and my back would be frozen.

That was when David Coverdale asked me if I could get the biggest drums possible. I used to play 22" bass drums and just regular toms. David made me get 26" bass drums and power toms ... and I really couldn't play them. We ended up getting rid of the power toms and going back to my own toms on top, but David wanted the big bass drums. He was all about how big everything was. The sound would have been better – and bigger – if he had let me use the 22" bass drums, because they sounded better. It's not the size of the drum, it's what sounds best.

Making that album was hard because of attitudes and personalities involved. But from a musical standpoint, it was one of the best recordings I ever did.