Born Sander L. Nelson in Santa Monica, California on December 1st, 1938, Sandy was the first of the rock and roll generation to explore the possibilities of drums as solo instruments on record in the new music. His first attempt was ‘Teenbeat’ in September 1959 and features a rhythm he borrowed from another drummer he heard playing it at a ‘bump and grind’ topless nightclub. In the absence of a record company he paid $19 to record this himself! His next attempt was almost exactly two years later and was called ‘Let There Be Drums’ and the record became equally successful around the world.
Of course there had been successful drum records before Sandy’s namely: ’Skin Deep’, ‘Topsy Part 2’ (which in some ways it resembled) and ‘Big Noise from Winnetka’ to name but three. They all loosely shared the same ‘ten-to-two’ feel with melodies based on big-band jazz instrumentation. They certainly didn’t have new-fangled electric guitars playing the arguably naive melody line!
To begin close to the beginning, at seven years old Sandy Nelson’s earliest musical recollections were formed upon hearing Gene Krupa for the first time and hammering along on pots and pans to Spike Jones. He immediately requested a drum set for Christmas although before long he took up the piano with a desire to be an arranger. By his own admission he discovered he was no good at tuned instruments, so he took up the drums for 65 years! His love for music stemmed from visits to the sound recording stage at Fox Film Studios where his father worked as a projectionist.
While he was making a name for himself as a drum soloist he was also making records with other people like Phil Spector, Kim Fowley, Jan Berry and Dean Torrance – all of whom he went to school with. While I’m on the subject he dropped- out of that school in 1956 or 7 (even he’s not sure when) and became a professional drummer playing with the likes of Gene Vincent’s ‘Bluecaps’, ‘The Coasters’, Duane Eddy, ‘The Penquins’ and ‘The Platters’ – frequently for $10 a gig.
Phil Spector was in a vocal group called the ‘Teddy Bears’ and he wrote them a huge hit song called “To Know Him Is To Love Him” (my wife’s favourite song) which was poignantly the inscription on his father’s tombstone. Sandy Nelson played on the record and he also played on another huge hit, this one for ‘The Hollywood Argyles’ called “Alley Oop”. He freely admits that he, and all the other musicians on it were roaring drunk at the time although this didn’t stop the record from going to Number One in the charts. He also is alleged to have played on a doo-wop record with ‘Kathy Young and the Innocents’ called ”A Thousand Stars’ even though there’s certainly no evidence of this if you Google her.
In 1963 (after the success of ‘Let There Be Drums’) he was riding a motorbike and involved in a collision with a school bus, on which, believe it or not, Bonnie Raitt was a passenger. This accident resulted in the loss of part of his leg although he carried on drumming. Some reports say it was his left leg, but it was actually his right and he stopped playing the hi-hat and instead switched his left foot on the bass drum.
I said that as a kid Sandy was turned on by Gene Krupa, but his ultimate hero was Earl Palmer whose straight-eight-with-a-hint-of-shuffle rhythms he really loved. Now I have never met Sandy Nelson but I have a friend who has, and like many drummers he’s an eccentric who by all accounts turns out to be as least as zany as Keith Moon. I’m not making the following story up because its published in an interview with him which is available to read on the internet. It came from the Las Vegas Sun – his local paper – but apparently as a hobby he builds caves and tunnels in his garden in Boulder City, outside of Vegas, When the mood takes him he removes his leg before going into them to escape the desert heat and chip away at the rock some more . He is frequently to be found engaged in single-handedly constructing these caves along with a couple of moats which he has flooded with water and filled with inflatable toys.
I said at the beginning he admitted to not being any good at keyboards but these days he plays them in a band with a guy called James Quill Smith who played with Dr John. Sandy still says he isn’t any good at this but the band appear to let him get away with it so long as he keeps it simple and eventually plays drums on both of his hit tunes.
As far as drums are concerned he certainly did have a round badge, blue/green Gretsch kit because it’s in all the early photos and I’ve seen parts of it safely screwed to the wall in the Hard Rock Café in Tokyo. I’ve also seen him with a couple of silver glitter Ludwig kits one with a single mounted tom, two floor toms and a 400 snare drum (with a wallet to dampen it) and another with two mounted toms with a ‘clip’ fixing and what appears to be an 18” floor tom. He also seems to have had a ‘Stop Sign’ Gretsch and there’s a recent video of him on the internet with a DW. This shows him playing with the aforementioned James Quill Smith (aka James ‘Smithy’ Smith) who played guitar in one of the versions of Three Dog Night who I never met but who I have a little in common with since they very successfully covered an Argent song I played on called ‘Liar’ as well as one from Leo Sayer song called ‘The Show Must Go On’. I know Sandy plays keyboards in that band too so the DW may not belong to him at all.
To sum Sandy Nelson up, every young drummer worth his salt who came after him (whether they chose to admit it or not) couldn’t help being influenced – possibly because ostensibly (unlike the other drum virtuosos of the time) he wasn’t too difficult to copy (much like the early Beatles). And, I believe he showed us how drums should sound, even if at the time ours certainly didn’t!
The acronym KISS (for Keep It Simple Stupid) hadn’t been coined in Sandy Nelson’s heyday but that is exactly what he did. It’s a salutary lesson to drummers today that simple is good – so long as you swing.
Bob Henrit
January 2015
