I have been chasing the man behind Sir Paul McCartney for an interview for the past couple of years, but being so busy he is not easy to track down, so imagine my delight when the opportunity arose at this years NAMM show in L.A. Abe was only too happy to spend some time talking about the passion in his life- music-, the influence his Dad had on him and giving a drum lesson.

Abe has been playing for Sir Paul for the past few years and before that he was behind Sting, but not only can he play those tubs, he has a mean voice - just check out the YouTube clip titled ‘Mylene Farmer and Abe Laboriel Jr - Les Mots’. He has recently been getting into producing.

MD: What was your background like as a kid and how much of an influence did you father play?

AL: My father is a huge influence. When I was born my dad was going to Berklee College of Music in Boston, so I was surrounded by all of his pals from college. Then we moved to Cleveland, Ohio, when I was about 3 and I can remember going to rehearsals with him and guys like Joe Lovano and Jamie Haddad. They would rehearse songs and I would sit there singing the melodies back before they learned them and they’d look at me like I was kind of crazy. When I was 4, Jamie Haddad, a great percussionist with Paul Simon, gave me my first drum kit. He converted a floor tom into a kick drum and added a little snare and hi-hats. My dad would show me stuff to play and he’d jam with me. My mother’s a classically trained singer, and she sang folk music and played guitar. So, in our house we would listen to all varieties of music

Did you have any formal tuition as you got older?

When I was 10, I told my dad I wanted to be a professional musician. He sat me down and told me the positives and negatives. He explained that it was not an easy road and that I would need to commit to being well rounded. When I answered that I was ready to take it seriously he asked his good friend Alex Acuña if I could take lessons with him, so I started studying with him when I was 10.

Not bad for your first teacher!

He was an amazing teacher! Alex didn’t just throw books at me or take the traditional teaching road. He sat down and we played grooves together. He’d start to show me variations just by talking about displacement and he encouraged me to feel my own rhythms. I learned so much about jazz, funk, and Latin music from him. Then in High School, around the age of 16, I went to a school in L.A., the Dick Grove College of Music. I would go there at night; 3 nights a week and I’d study with Peter Donald. I also studied ear training and harmony. For my last 2 years of High School, I went to a great music High School that opened up in L.A. called Hamilton Academy of Music. I was exposed to electronic music and programming as well as playing in the marching band and jazz band. I also had a jazz trio with a pianist named Vernell Brown and a bassist named Mike Elizondo. Mike has gone on to become an incredibly talented bass player and producer. As a result of playing in that trio I received a full scholarship to Berklee College of Music in Boston.

A lot of the stuff you said there is very jazz or Latin, that isn’t what you’re known for now.

My dad asks me the same question. "How did you get form there to here?" My favourite bands growing up were the Beatles, the Police, Big Country and Journey. I also listened to Chick Corea with the electric band and a lot of straight ahead like Miles, Coltrane and Monk. I was a big fan of Elvin and Dejohnette. However, I discovered that I was passionate about listening to and playing music with singers. I prefer it to instrumental, self-gratification stuff. I enjoy melody and lyrics. That’s what I identify with musically.

Is it true you’d be playing and your dad would come in, play with you, say ‘you haven’t got it yet son’ and leave you?

Well the story is I’d be practising and he’d say "play for me", he’d just want to listen, he wasn’t playing with me. I’d play; 10 minutes would go by and he’d tap me on the shoulder and say "that was a good bar" and I’d be surprised, so I’d go back to playing and trying to figure it out and then he’d tap me again and say "yeah, that was good, that was one good bar". So after a while it’d become 2 good bars and then I started to realise that there was a difference. As an example he’d play me records with one of our favourite drummers, Jeff Porcaro. Where he’d play the back beat and the consistency from beat 1 all the way through to the end of beat 4 was undeniable. That heartbeat, that feel, there’s nobody like that, so I started to realise what he was talking about. Steve Gadd has a similar approach. A lot of drummers get one, two, three, four and then they get back to one a bit too soon. They forget they have to carry through until the next one and that was something my dad really impressed upon me.

How do you think you learnt that, just by listening?

One of the things I loved to do practise wise was to play along to records and to feel like I was a part of the band. Like I was the drummer playing with all these other guys. I was always more interested in listening to what the bass player was doing, or the guitar player and the singer rather than what the drummer was doing when I was listening. But I got to a point, without getting too over analytical about it, but there was definitely a tendency of a lot of live drummers to not carry through and I was starting to pick up their bad habits, so I searched for records that were a little more machine sounding but that had the right pocket. Scritti Pollitti; I wore that record out, because it felt so good for being mostly programmed. The back beats were always correct so I felt I could practise all the time with that record to get that consistency and make that part of my own heartbeat.

So if you were teaching today, what would you emphasise?

I think it would be to keep track of the simplicity. A lot of drummers get ahead of themselves. They want to try and learn some superfast fill before they learn how to just play time. One of the things I think is lost is, knowing how to play just kick, snare, and hi-hat first. To really make as much music out of that as you can. I learned that from a great teacher at Berklee. Phil Wilson, a great trombone player and the conductor of one of the best big bands at Berklee. He really took me under his wing. He asked me to jam with him during his lunch hour, in his office, once a week. So I excitedly showed up the first day and I had my entire drum kit with me, and he says "oh man what are you doing? It’s a little office…" To which I replied "well you want to jam" and he said "yeah but just set up your snare." So we’d sit there and we’d jam and all I had was my snare after a while I started to realise how much tonality I could get out of it, brush in one hand, stick in the other, hitting on the side, hitting on the stand, hitting on the music stand, suddenly I was making more music with less and then little by little he’d make a little more room so I could bring a kick drum and a hi-hat but we would jam with the smallest kit possible. It’s very easy for drummers to get overwhelmed with having too much choice. I think sometimes when you’re making music you have to break it down to the basics and really get to the core of it and that’s when things start to feel good and then feel clear. So that would be my first thing, to try and get someone to almost ignore half the drum kit and then concentrate on feel and groove and listening to who your playing with and making sure your motor is right. 

Do you think that’s why you got the Sting gig or Paul McCartney and what do you think you bring to that set up?

I think so. I think it’s very easy to want to show off and to want to show guys like that everything you can do. When I first started playing with them it had nothing to do with what I could do but everything to do with listening to them and supporting them. That’s what I consider my job is; to make sure I can hear everything I want to hear out of them and do my best to draw the best out of them whether that’s to really stay out of the way or to kick their arse a little bit and punch tempos up a little bit. I’m a fan first and for me to play drums with these guys is just an excuse of getting to listen to some of the greatest musicians in the world.

When you’re playing with Sting and you do a Police song or Paul and you’re doing Beatle songs, what do you do, do you look at Stewart Copeland or Ringo Starr guys you grew up listening to. Do you do what they did or do your own thing?

It’s a combination. As much as I would love to say I have an original sound, I think the truth is I have an original filter. I’d listen so much and so hard to so many different people that what’s original about me is not necessarily what I play but how I play it, how I interpret it hasn’t already been done. For instance with Sting I would play a fill exactly like it was engrained in my head, how Stewart would have done it, and he would look back at me and say "man, I’ve been having this argument with Stewart for the last 30 years, I don’t want to start having it with you." So I started to learn which ones were important to the song and which were part of their history. It’s more about the energy and the intensity. Again with guys like that it’s not about the specific fills, its more about the intention. 

Paul and Sting are both different in their approach to playing the bass how do you compensate that?

Sting really likes to be on top and he believes that it sounds great when he’s ahead of the beat and the drums are behind. That’s how he loves to hear it and I get it. It makes sense; because he uses a pretty round tone so there’s something about it that does work. Like when he’s a little ahead the downbeats sound fatter.

With Paul, it’s the opposite. His internal clock is intensely good as well. If I get a bit distracted because there are 20,000 people in front of us, he’ll look back and remind me to stay focussed. At the same time he’s a very generous musician. He listens to where I put the beat and he adjusts to that which is really amazing to me. We’re jamming and I can see him taking a minute to listen and then he’ll start to play and he’ll put the bass with my kick drum and he’ll find where I put things. It’s a beautiful give and take between both guys.

Again it’s a compliment to you, because obviously Ringo again was a completely opposite drummer to you, you’re playing Beatles songs everybody knows, it’s like a function band, and you’re approaching that completely different. Were there ever any issues when you were rehearsing, how Paul wanted you to play songs?

Yeah there were a lot of discussions. I think what is great with this band that Paul has put together is that we approach this with so much care. We love the band, we love The Beatles, we love Wings, we love all that, and we want it to sound right but at the same time we don’t want it to sound weak, because the records are amazing. But if you listen to, for example, Its Getting Better All The Time, the drum pattern is great on record, you can turn it up, press the hell out of it and it sounds great, live in an arena you can’t get away with doing that so to keep that intention what I would do is play four on the floor on the kick drum and hit the snare with both hands with the flam and then hit that back beat which was just hi-hat with the floor tom , so it’s the same part, it’s the same intention but it’s a little more rock, making it thicker. We would approach each song with that intention. Let Me Roll It, a great Paul song, vibey, very stony kind of song. On the original it’s very lightly hit, it’s all about the guitar riff, but when you play that thing live, it’s like the heaviest 6/8 you’ve ever heard, we’re really giving it some. So just little things like that, we approach the songs more in spirit than note for note, like a covers band.

You have a great sound and you hit real hard. Does that have any impact on your body and, do you have to warm up?

I should do more warming up, that’s something I’m getting back into. I am also trying to get healthier by going to the gym and eating better. There is a serious impact when I play. When we play 3 hour shows I sometimes lose about 10 pounds in water weight, just from sweating like that every night. The intensity with which I play has caused some pain, like tennis elbow. I brought my kit in a little bit. I used to set up pretty wide out so I just brought things in a little bit and just learnt my own limitations.

You’re an in demand drummer, but you’ve never got into the clinics why?

No, it’s hard for me to work that out timing wise because often when I’m asked I don’t know what my schedule is going to be. For example, The Modern Drummer Festival, they book those things almost a year and a half ahead and I don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing, so the only thing I can do is say maybe I can make it. What’s happening more often than not is I can’t because I end up being on the road.

What would you do?

I know I would want to talk, although a lot of people would rather just hear drumming which is great, I think it’s valid; I always find that the one on one conversations are a little more powerful. Again, I know how to play all of the dazzle kind of stuff, but it doesn’t really hold meaning for me, I feel I would love to show up with just a kick, snare and hi-hat but again, it’s getting people to realise that you have to listen, take your time with where you place beats, fills, space. 

Final question, what’s coming up, what’s happening?

A lot of fun things, I am dipping my toes into doing some production. I’m working with an artist now who’s on Geffen Records, a guy called Trevor Hall. My brother and I are producing it together. We have also produced a couple of songs on the Bratz Soundtrack, one by Matt White and another by ‘Brick and Lace’. I’m sure there will be some more shows with Paul and Sting. I’m trying to figure out how to juggle my heroes and get to play as much music as possible.

Thank you for your time

Well thank you man, it was a pleasure talking.

Words by: Mike Dolbear