This week, I sit down with Rod Drysdale, an old friend and former bandmate, to chat about our shared passion for the rock gigs that have become the soundtrack to our lives. Rod's love of music runs deep, and we go through his musical evolution, from Adult Contemporary music in the '70's, to Southern Rock, then Prog, then Metal, then everything, all at once.
Learn which band Rod took his wife to go see on their first date, which instrument he swapped for the drums, and how he got the name "Marvin Metalhead" in college. His stories are familiar even while being singular, and he tells them with a sense of passion for the music and the memories. It's a conversation that's sure to resonate with anyone who's ever been moved by the power of a live rock performance. So join us this week on The Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast!
This week, I sit down with Rod Drysdale, an old friend and former bandmate, to chat about our shared passion for the rock gigs that have become the soundtrack to our lives. Rod's love of music runs deep, and we go through his musical evolution, from Adult Contemporary music in the '70's, to Southern Rock, then Prog, then Metal, then everything, all at once.
Learn which band Rod took his wife to go see on their first date, which instrument he swapped for the drums, and how he got the name "Marvin Metalhead" in college. His stories are familiar even while being singular, and he tells them with a sense of passion for the music and the memories. It's a conversation that's sure to resonate with anyone who's ever been moved by the power of a live rock performance. So join us this week on The Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast!
Welcome to the Rock-N-R oll Show Podcast. We're here to share the thrill of experiencing live music together with strangers and friends, and to get to know our guests a little bit better through their concert experiences. I'm your host, Alex Gadd, and I find that I relate best to people when talking about music. Finding out what bands they're into and what shows they've been to allows us to get to know one another and understand one another better. Also, hey, it's just fun to swap stories about shows we've seen over the years. Today, we've got a good one for you. We'll be talking with Rod Drysdale of Drysdale Wealth Management. Rod's one of my oldest friends. He's a huge music fan and he's a pretty good drummer as well. We played together just over a decade ago in a cover band, the mighty Less Nessmen. We've seen many rock and roll shows together and we'll get into all of that, so please welcome Rod to the show How are you?
Rod Drysdale:I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. Great to be here.
Alex Gadd:Yeah, I'm glad to have you A couple of things to go over. The shows that I can remember us going to together. Just in the last four or five years, we've seen .38 Special. You and Christine, your lovely wife, introduced me to the Zac Brown Band. We saw them at Citi Field, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in 2016. We've seen Blackberry Smoke and we saw John Petrucci at Town Hall in New York. So we've got to go see another show. It's been a while. But to start off, I'm really interested in how you got into music, because you are a huge music fan. Was music something that was around your house?
Rod Drysdale:It was to music, because you are a huge music fan. Was music something that was around your house? It was my parents, like, I think, a lot of us in our generation. There was always records playing, whether it was the beatles, peter paul and mary, neil diamond, all that stuff. I think my dad turned me on to elton john I think that was probably the first beside the beatles, when just playing those records till they were smooth, probably. Man, the first time they let me even touch that record player was I was probably six or seven years old, so we're talking 71, 72, um. But I gravitated to elton john. I think that was the first real hook was Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Piano Player, and that album was where Daniel was Elderberry Wine there's some amazing and then obviously went to the first Elton John record with your song and that stuff. So yeah, that's where it started. It was just in the house. There was always music playing in the house someplace.
Alex Gadd:And your folks were music fans. It sounds like.
Rod Drysdale:They were. I think the first concert they went to was Clapton and I think they were in their 70s when they went, so they weren't concert goers, but there was always music in the house.
Alex Gadd:And from that, how did it transition for you to becoming a musician yourself? Were you always tapping on something? How did you become a drummer?
Rod Drysdale:I was a french horn player first. That's something I don't think we've ever talked about. When I was in in middle school I wanted to I don't know it was. The choices were cello, violin or some kind of horn, and my older sister played the french horn and she played all through high school in orchestra and I was like there's one in the house, we don't have to go rent another trumpet or something. And I started playing and I played for a few years in middle school and in band and orchestra.
Rod Drysdale:I was always drawn to the guys that were playing snare drums and I was like I like that. I think drumming is probably more interesting to me. And then I basically would set up pillows on my bed. I got some drumsticks. I had no drums, so I would play, get a good, good sweat going. Just in middle school I think, probably sixth grade, seventh grade just playing in my bedroom on my bed, crashing into the pillows and stuff like that. And then in seventh grade I started taking snare drum lessons and then that was it. That's when it started. It was middle school.
Alex Gadd:So did you switch from French horn to playing percussion in the orchestra at school, or did you take drumming lessons outside of school?
Rod Drysdale:school or did you take drumming lessons outside of school? Um, I took drumming lessons outside of school, I think I went to a bunch of the snare drum guys were taking lessons from one particular drum teacher and he was a broadway show percussionist. He was at night he was, he was playing in shows in new york city and during the day he gave lessons and he was a snare drummer. He could play set, but his proficiency was snare drum and so we just started. We started with rudimentary stuff and just tapping on blocks. I had a little practice pad and just doing all the left, right, left, left, left, right, left, paradiddles and all that stuff. And I was pretty bored with it really quick, because I wanted to play a set. I wanted to play. I wanted to go from tapping on this wood block in my bedroom to playing Madison Square Garden behind a huge rock band. So I dropped, blestined pretty quick.
Alex Gadd:That sounds like a lot of people. Even I think that I read in the Dave Grohl storyteller's book that he started off playing on pillows in his bedroom too. Yeah, um, it sounds to me like that's how it starts. Is that you get the bug and then you just want to go? Was for me. I started playing guitar obviously not drums, but the same thing. I just started plunking out tunes and dreaming immediately I want to go and be on stage.
Rod Drysdale:Yeah, it's funny. I filled up a sock with coin because I wanted to make the noise of a hi-hat, so I wanted something that made that kind of metallic noise and then I would use like a notebook for the snare, just so it pillows with the tom-toms and the cymbals. But I wanted to get a little bit more feel, so I started developing more of a bedroom, a bed drum set, which had a little bit more oomph to it, till I finally, and until I, until I finally got a small set so what was your first kit?
Alex Gadd:what do you remember it?
Rod Drysdale:yeah, it was a small ludwig kit. It had a bass drum, it had a floor tom, a bass drum, a snare and a single mounted tom ride cymbal and a hi-hat. That was it. It was one, two, three, basically a five-piece set, your basic set. I had a greff snare drum which, my God, I wish I still had that snare drum man, but my drum teacher found it used. I think at the time it was probably I don't know $100 for the whole thing.
Alex Gadd:Probably I don't know $100 for the whole thing, but I set it up in my bedroom and just started really annoying my family and next-door neighbors Sounds like the classic Ringo kit that you had. It was the Ringo kit. Yeah, that's great. So let's now transition over to live music. So you started off listening to the Beatles, which I did too, and then the easy listening parent rock or parent music. For me it was Barry Manilow, peter Paul and Mary, as you mentioned, the same kinds of things that John Denver that my parents were listening to. My mom had a Motown thing and she also loved the Stones and the Beatles. How did you transition to getting your own feel for music and what you liked versus what was available to you from your parents?
Rod Drysdale:it was am radio. I think you probably had the same experience when you were a kid, is I had this tiny little transition written. It was actually. It was so funny it looked. Looked like a Coca-Cola can. It was a AM radio. Maybe it had FM, I don't know, but it was this little transistor radio that one side of the can was the tuner. It had a little volume thing.
Rod Drysdale:Oh my God, and just started listening to AM radio right and to the point where I had bought a little cassette player for a couple bucks at a garage sale and my dad played guitar.
Rod Drysdale:We just would strum to john denver or jim croce stuff when I was a kid and he got himself a little microphone that he plugged into an eight track tape deck and I don't believe he could record back then, but maybe he could and so I stole that thing and plugged it into this little cassette desk that I bought at a garage sale and you sit there waiting for your favorite song to come on the AM radio and then hit record and then try to capture it and then hope that the DJ didn't talk too much over the beginning, which they always did, and didn't talk too much over at the end and just started. You know, I was probably in sixth grade making my own mixed tapes, just grabbing stuff off the radio, so I think it was radio music at first. What I could find on AM radio was mostly the music. So back then there was a ton of Motown stuff, certain radio stations. You could hear Led Zeppelin and the Stones and the Beatle, and I think that's probably where it came from.
Alex Gadd:So do you remember the first album you ever bought?
Rod Drysdale:Yeah, it was Captain Fantastic and the Brander Cowboy at Corbett on Central Avenue in Hartsdale, new York. I don't know if I got money for Christmas or I was always cutting somebody's yard or shoveling snow. I would have to have gotten driven over there by my mom and Not Sure If Probably Someone Saved my Life. Tonight was the big song on that album for me. It's been an all-time favorite of mine. But yeah, that was the very first record Again, they were records in the house that my parents had and I would ask them, hey, can you get this particular record? The first record I actually walked into a store and bought was Elton John, captain Fantastic FM radio and more of a rock and roll vibe.
Alex Gadd:How did that happen? Because Elton John was one of those artists in the 70s that walked the line between being easy listening, adult-oriented music and also being rock and roll. So how did you, For sure, when did that transition happen for you and how did that happen?
Rod Drysdale:Probably got a nicer radio. I think that was probably. I think at one of my birthdays I got what we considered a boombox at the time which had a cassette AM FM tuner. You could carry it around with a handle and then just started. I remember lying in my bed God, I'm picturing the bedroom.
Rod Drysdale:So it had to have been like seventh or eighth grade hearing Freebird for the first time on the radio, and I don't think it was the live version, it had to have been the studio version. I don't even know what year that I. I'd be interested to look up what year freebird was released and the song just going on. It was their first record, yeah, but the record it's just going on and on and just something stirring inside me saying this is, this is the music that I love, all that other stuff, Whether even Glen Campbell listening to Glen Campbell and singing along with Glen Campbell records in the house.
Rod Drysdale:All of a sudden I'm listening to, and I think listening to Freebird for the first time. Whatever 11 o'clock at night, pitch black in my room, just having the radio on, next falling asleep to the radio every night and then plunging headfirst into Southern rock. Back then that was the Outlaws. Molly Hatchett came along a couple of years later, but it was probably the Marshall Tucker band, the Outlaws, the Bring it Back Alive live album, the One More From the Road live album, Leonard Skinner, I don't know. I listened to a lot of live albums when I was a kid because it was like a greatest hit, but it was a way that I could also hear the drum parts right. The drum parts in live recording are typically a little bit more interesting than the studio. I would always go back to studios when I was practicing and I wanted to listen to it, but I loved listening to live drumming.
Alex Gadd:So I did know that Southern rock really was your entry point into rock and roll. I believe that leads to your first concert as well. Is that correct?
Rod Drysdale:Yeah, my first concert was the Outlaws and 38th Special at Nassau Coliseum and it was sometime in 79. So I was 14. I was in eighth grade. I might have been 78 in there Somewhere eighth, ninth grade. I grabbed a ticket from somebody else was supposed to go and they had the extra ticket and I'm like, yeah, I'll definitely go. And somehow my parents let me go and that was. It was literally life-changing to be on the floor at nassau coliseum. I probably didn't know half the music, probably knew two songs from 38 special at the time, but just the whole experience I'm like, okay, this is for me 38 special.
Alex Gadd:That was really early in their career. That was when the first two records maybe had come out. Seeing the outlaws and 38 special back then must have been amazing. The outlawslaws were touring.
Rod Drysdale:They had released Bring it Back Alive the live album, and they were touring on that because Greengrass and High Tide had gotten some traction somehow. Never on radio was too long, unless it was like Freebird. It was 11 o'clock at night and they would play a song that long. They would never play anything more than three minutes during the day, but after nine or ten o'clock at night you'd hear some of these longer songs that and ghost riders and they.
Alex Gadd:They had a couple good late night rock and roll. Dj needs to go to the bathroom. Songs that you could turn on and walk out yeah, great, great stuff. So you get to high school now and you got Southern rock as your thing. How does that music taste? Progress from there.
Rod Drysdale:It changed drastically. I met, probably ninth grade. I met a kid who I'd known. He moved to our town probably when we were in middle school and he was a piano player. He was a guitar player, he basically any instrument that he would pick up and I was always in chorus and I was in band. He never played in band, he never played a concert band. He would be invited to play piano during concert but he didn't play in the band or the orchestra sections. They always asked him to and he wouldn't and I never should ask him that someday.
Rod Drysdale:But he would always play something acoustic and he started getting into. He was listening to more technical music, so he was listening to yef and pink floyd and he introduced me to rush and then we started. We went down some king crimson probably, yes, was probably the one that we listened to the most together and he would try to. He had big keyboard racks and every kind of couple basses, couple of guitars and we were eighth and ninth grade. He had this whole music room, didn't have a drum set, but we would listen to these records and he would play along with whether it was the synthesizers, the keyboards, the bass lines. And so I transitioned, probably in ninth grade, from listening to Southern rock kind of nonstop to listening to more progressive pretty much nonstop as well.
Alex Gadd:That time was interesting, right, the early 80s. Prog rock had really had its heyday in the 70s, but those bands continued on. I mean, king crimson is going out on tour this year. I just saw genesis's last tour two years ago. It's yeah that music persists. And so, yep, for someone who's getting into being a musician, I can see, and for me it was zebra and some other band where, yes, zebra, where I was like, oh yeah, that's more than the Beatles. Not that the Beatles are simple or rudimentary, but they're being more adventurous now than the Beatles, which to me had become the baseline for all music, for everything. Exactly, exactly.
Alex Gadd:So listening to yes, listening to Zebra for me in the early 80s was where I started saying, oh yeah, I really want to explore this guitar and what I can do with it. So you've seen the Outlaws and you with 38 special opening do you remember the next concert you saw after that?
Rod Drysdale:it's interesting there were some other. I went. I know I went to see james taylor at that point. The next big show was the first time I saw Rush, which was Permanent Waves Tour 80, 81, something like that. I don't remember exactly, but I know I was in ninth grade. I know I went with my friend Tom, who would turn me on to all this music and I was like, yeah, this is my band.
Rod Drysdale:I settled in because at that point there was five albums before that right. So I got Permanent Waves and listened to spirit radio and all the music on there Again, played that record till it was smooth. But I had this whole collection of of of music that I could go back to. They had been playing the early seventies and Torex is the early seventies, so there was six, seven, eight years of music, um, that I was able to go back and experience and then just count the days and the months till the next time they came around, or the next record that they produce, which was motor pictures. But yeah, that was. That was the next big show that I remember. There may have been some smaller shows like that. That was the rush. The rush show was at the Palladium in New York City, wow.
Alex Gadd:So they were still doing clubs in 1980.
Rod Drysdale:Yeah, whoa.
Alex Gadd:Yeah, I guess Moving Pictures was late 81. And so once Tom Sawyer hit in 82, there was no more clubs for them than they were an arena band from then on.
Rod Drysdale:Yeah, it was Madison Square Garden. They were playing Brenda Byrne Madison Square Garden. They were playing indoor arenas at that point.
Alex Gadd:The arena band and that's the t-shirt you have on now is clearly Rush, and I've always known that you are a massive Rush fan, which is beautiful, so they're the band I assume you've seen the most times. Yeah, I saw Rush.
Rod Drysdale:I figured out it's 23 times 23.
Alex Gadd:That's good, I've seen him twice 23 times. That's a lot more.
Rod Drysdale:Yeah, and the last show was probably the greatest live show I ever saw, just because it was the last time I saw them. It was June 29th of 2015 at the what it was, the new boston garden. I guess it's the tv garden garden.
Alex Gadd:Yeah, I just saw a show there last year. I saw gretta van fleet, who you like. Yeah, you turned me on yeah, so that. So you've seen rush the most and that's maybe the best show and also the last time that you got to see Neil play. If. Rush reformed with another drummer. Would you go see him?
Rod Drysdale:I would, without hesitation. I would just add a little asterisk to say it depends on the drummer. But I wouldn't not see them If they toured with Tommy Lee from Motley Crue, I would still go see them. I wouldn't be happy, but I would still go see them.
Alex Gadd:When they did the the Taylor Hawkins benefit shows they played with Omar Hakeem, they played with Chad Smith, right, danny Carey played with them. So they I bet they could get pretty much anyone to go play a short tour with them.
Rod Drysdale:Yeah, yeah, it was, should be Mike Portnoy.
Alex Gadd:That's who should play. Oh, that would be amazing.
Rod Drysdale:Yes, that's who should play? Gavin Harris will be great from Porcupine Tree, but it should be Portnoy, that's. Who should. Miko, maybe, or Nico. Iron Maiden, yeah, somebody that plays a big set. Taylor Hawkins could have done it, but we lost another great drummer and a great music personality too.
Alex Gadd:Yeah, yeah, I'd like to see Danny Carey do it. I thought Danny Carey of all those and honestly I thought Omar Hakeem was amazing playing with that yeah, he was. It's a definitely a different vibe that he comes from, but I thought he played great with them.
Rod Drysdale:Yeah, absolutely. Any of those guys would be fantastic.
Alex Gadd:Yeah, it would be fun. I hope they do it. There's some rumors that they're starting to talk about it again. I hope they do it. All right, let's juxtapose that with your most recent concert. What's the last show you saw?
Rod Drysdale:Last week I saw the Steve Morse Band and the Dreg, two steve morse's bands. Right there were three. The dixie dregs was the first rendition of that band and they shortened it just to the dregs, and steve morse's had the steve morse band and also steve morse band, so there's four different iterations of this group. When steve morse plays, he plays with a bass player by the name of Dave LaRue and he plays with a European drummer named Van Romain. So they played that, that threesome played, and then they took an intermission. And then Steve Morse comes back out with the original members of the of the dregs, which is a bass player whose name is skipping my mind and they'll come back to me a violinist who's also a an anesthesiologist, so it's dr sloan.
Alex Gadd:He's just paging dr sloan to the stage yeah, exactly, exactly.
Rod Drysdale:And one of my all-time favorite drummers, rod mortenstein and and jordan rudess, played keyboards from dream theater and, yeah, liquid tension experiment. So yeah, it was. Went and traveled to durham, north carolina the theme show last week with my buddy tom and uh, it was. It was a fantastic show I've never seen steve morris.
Alex Gadd:I almost saw him, didn't he play with deep purple for quite a while as well yeah, he did about eight years with Deep Purple. Yeah, I almost saw them on one of those shows and at the last minute I couldn't go, but I was really looking forward to it. I have one of the Steve Moore solo records and I've always just loved it. And then I love the Dregs. Although they were proggy metal before, that was a thing. They were.
Rod Drysdale:Yep. It's funny when you look at iTunes and I've been listening to them, knowing that I was going to see the show they got their way back up until the top of my playlist and the first couple albums were listed as jazz fusion and then some of the later stuff was classified as rock and roll. I know some of the Steve Morse band stuff is real, real twangy Southern rock, almost hillbilly bluegrass stuff too, and then he's Scottish descent so he'll play a lot of stuff that's more English sounding or Scottish sounding, irish, almost jig music Such a diverse catalog that he has and yeah, he's been fighting with some arthritis. So the impetus for me to drive the eight hours both ways to see this show was the fact that hopefully he'll keep going and he played lights out. I saw no deterioration in his playing, but I've heard he's struggling with his hands right now.
Alex Gadd:Oh, that's terrible, but again a great reason to go see him. Yeah, for sure, he's a lefty. I just learned that last time, but again a great reason to go see him.
Rod Drysdale:Yeah, for sure he's a lefty. I just learned that last time he's a lefty and he plays righty and he's always played righty and he felt his stronger hand on the fret board. So he's a lefty. So he wanted the more dexterity on the fret board than with the pick. Yeah, it's interesting.
Alex Gadd:I'm right-handed and I play right-handed and I don't understand why. Because you do need more dexterity to finger complex pieces anyway to play chords it's not all that hard and rhythm. I guess the reason that right-handers play the way we do is because that's where you keep the rhythm is in your right hand and that should be, I would assume, done with your dominant hand.
Rod Drysdale:But it never made sense to me, never. Yep. And rod borgerstein is a lefty and um his first, probably 15 or 20 years of playing live and when he was a kid they forced him to play a right-handed set. So it forced him to really be able to develop his non-dominant hand, because as a drummer we do much more with our dominant hand and the left hand is following, trailing, keeping the beat, and about 10 years ago he shifted to a lefty set. So, yeah, when we saw last week he was playing a full lefty set and that was one of the things we were kind of talking about during the intermission, I'm like, is he gonna? And we couldn't tell from the set, looking at it on stage, whether it was going to be a lefty set or a righty set.
Alex Gadd:That is interesting. I've never heard of a drummer changing orientation halfway through their career. All right, you covered your most memorable concert just being the last time you saw Rush. Any other concerts in your history that have stood out?
Rod Drysdale:Yeah, I have to say the concert, aside from the Rush concerts, because it's redundant, I would have to say going to see Diver Down, November of 82, was the first date with my wife Because she was 14. And somehow our parents let me drive to the Brennenburn Arena to see Van Halen concert.
Alex Gadd:That was a good tour. I really liked that tour.
Rod Drysdale:The original dates were early October and I was supposed to take another girl. The two Brendan Byrne shows and the Nassau Collins CM show were canceled because Eddie did something to his thumb or one of his finger and so he couldn't play. So there were a bunch of rescheduled shows from that tour and so this they pushed it to the middle of November and I had broken up with that girl and had started dating my wife Again, going out, when you're in high school we ate lunch together, that basically and I drove her home from play practice at night. That was going out back then. Oh, I remember, I remember it well.
Alex Gadd:If you're going to go on a first date. That's a pretty good one. That tour was good. I didn't love the Diver Down record, but they were as good a live act in 1982 as any rock band ever has been. They were really at the prime of their power.
Rod Drysdale:Dave was at his peak. Eddie was running all over the stage. It was a great show.
Alex Gadd:Have you ever seen a concert where you were disappointed? Or you went in with big expectations and you walked out saying, eh, that wasn't so great.
Rod Drysdale:I don't know whether I had high expectations, but I went to see Hootie and the Blowfish show in Feech and I almost left and I liked some of that music. It wasn't really my genre it was really poppy and stuff like that but it was good stuff and I thought he had a good voice and they were huge for a few years. They were the biggest band in the world for a few years Huge, and they were awful.
Alex Gadd:That's exactly how I envisioned the question being answered. So is there an act you've seen other than Rush that you consider the best live act? Because there's a difference between your favorite band, the best recording band and the best live act. Do you have a live act you walked away from just saying, wow, they are so great live.
Rod Drysdale:I do and it may surprise you, one of my favorite shows ever that I think about was and maybe just because I wasn't expecting much I was a peripheral fan to this band. I liked some of their stuff never really and this is probably blasphemy for anybody that likes them. I never loved the lead singer's voice. I loved the musicianship, I loved the music. I loved the songs and I again got invited.
Rod Drysdale:Somebody had a ticket to go see iron maiden at the new Haven Coliseum and it was in college. It was probably freshman or sophomore year in college and another buddy that became a concert buddy of mine still is today said let's go see Iron Maiden. I was like sure I'll go see Iron Maiden. Maiden and just and I and we were sitting pretty close, so that always helps to be when in the first 10 or 20 rows of any show, versus seeing the same show from, I could touch the ceiling from from when I saw diver down.
Rod Drysdale:But to see a show like that was so theatrical and just the pyrotechnics and just they built a pirate ship on the stage and they have eddie comes, a giant monster comes out and I had never seen anything that big and that it was a spectacle. So of all the live shows, and I've seen a ton of really good live shows and very talented musicians. I've seen bands where I just sit in my seat and just are in awe of guitarists and drummers. This was incredible. So I'll say it was. It might have been two minutes to midnight tour. I don't remember what album that was on, but I think that was. If iron maiden had a single, it was probably two minutes to midnight, so I'm not sure what tour it was got it now.
Alex Gadd:That syncs up well for me, because when I met you were we're fraternity brothers as well. Your nickname was Marvin Middlehead. And so, talking with you today and in the past, getting to know more about you than I did when I first met you. I was always fascinated to hear that it started with Elton John and then it got into Leonard Skinner and the Outlaws and then it got into Prog rock before you actually got to your metal phase.
Alex Gadd:That gave you that sure name but though I have to feel that we went to, our fraternity was filled with a lot of waspy guys for whom any hard rock would be considered heavy metal, so that was an easy tag to put on you, without it actually being a full representation of your musical tastes. How did you get that nickname?
Rod Drysdale:freshman year I went through my first led zeppelin fade I had always liked the music freshman year of college.
Rod Drysdale:Of college I don't know why. I mean it was always around and there were songs here and there that I loved, but I never spent a lot of time. I didn't own my first album until I got to college, which is, I don't know, maybe attributed to Southern rock stuff and then frog rock stuff and then kind of circling back. I wasn't crazy about the rush stuff that came out after signals. I wasn't a big fan of power windows and presto and some of the stuff that where they started getting you know kind of flock of seagulls beyond me. My power trio, my my who and zeppelin-ish power trio from canada with the greatest drummer that ever walked the earth in my opinion, started playing like thomas dolby shit. I moved on and yeah, and then, and so I went through a big led zeppelin phase and then, I believe from led zeppelin, I think that led into some of the and at the same time, I guess you know I I listened to ACDC, obviously Back in Black. I think how old were we when? What year did Back?
Alex Gadd:in Black come out. It came out in 1980, 80. 82? No, 80. Yep, okay. Bon Scott died after Highway to Hell in 79, so so I listened to that.
Rod Drysdale:I was aware of it in high school. Wasn't a lot of room there. And then this Zeppelin kind of leading me to English hard rock band Never went deep into Motorhead or that kind of stuff, but just played all those records. Played all the Zeppelin records smooth, went through a who phase for a while, went through an ACDC phase. That was really in college that I started, I don't know, just wanted to piss off my neighbors who were all listening to the Grateful Dead. I had a gigantic Iron Maiden poster in my dorm room. It was perfect for University of Vermont.
Alex Gadd:That is great. Yeah, I don't recall seeing anyone having that poster in my freshman year dorm. Yeah, no Eddie posters, no killers poster, no, nothing. Have you ever discovered a band after only seeing them live? I went to see a number of bands where I got there early and saw the opening act and usually it was like not so great. But I did go see the scorpions in 1984 and bon jovi was opening and I had never heard of them ever.
Speaker 3:and I was like, oh, they're pretty good yeah, so that's the idea of the question.
Alex Gadd:Have you ever discovered a band seeing them as an opening act, never having heard of them before?
Rod Drysdale:There were here and there. There was a band out of Southern California named Riot that had an album called Guns and Tequila. They opened for Russ and they were great. We'll be right back.
Rod Drysdale:I went to see Rat and Poison Opened. Had never heard of them. They had been a club band in Los Angeles so I never really got into poison. I listened to them just like the rest of us did there. I don't think I ever bought a record, but that was an interesting like. Yeah, these guys are really good and they're young, yeah, and it's a little bit different than what we've heard before. And that great guitarist. Most recently there was an opening act for brett Van Fleet by the name of Crownland and it's two guys and it's the drummer, vocalist and then another guy that plays everything else. And the quote that I heard was if you had taken two guys and put them in a room full of instruments for 15 years with nothing to listen to but all the Rush albums from moving pictures backwards, this is the band that would come out on the other side guitar solo ¶¶.
Rod Drysdale:So they are, yeah, pretty good, but they probably only have 15 or 20 songs out. I'm waiting for them to do something different, or at least to come out with some new music but yeah, so yeah, I've had some fun surprises over the years. I wish I was the guy that could say that they went to see a band and Pearl Jam was the opener and nobody ever heard of them when they saw them at the.
Alex Gadd:Beacon Theater or something like that. I don't have that many good stories, and they're all from the 80s for sure. Seeing Bon Jovi was definitely the biggest one of them, though All right, looking at venues that you've gone to, do you have a favorite venue that you've been to?
Rod Drysdale:I do like the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, New York, just because you can either sit or you can stand. I like moving around at concerts. I don't necessarily like just sitting. Still sit, or you can stand. I like moving around at concerts, I don't necessarily like just sitting still. I did like Town Hall where we went recently. I like the Beacon. I like those kind of theater type places. I would say a place like BB's or maybe the Iridium. Some of those clubby type places are fun as well. Mostly smaller venues. My favorites are the smaller venues. I go see stadium shows but I don't like them. I think for the most part the sound is terrible. I prefer small venues. Is that typical?
Alex Gadd:You know it's interesting. I feel the exact same way. The interesting observation that I've realized more doing this podcast is that the bands that people like you and I tend to like are no longer club bands and so you can't see them in a club. So you end up spending a lot more time in arenas and stadiums, but going to see a show in a club is far preferential. Having said that, I just released a concert review this past week for the podcast of seeing Bruce up in Syracuse, this past week for the podcast of seeing bruce up in syracuse, and I was close enough in a 70 000 seat football indoor football stadium. I was close enough that I didn't have to watch the screens the whole time to enjoy the show okay, and that changed it for me for a big stadium show, so I really got to enjoy it in a different way. But I agree with you a hundred percent that if you were to ask me that question, the answer would be the beacon theater. It's the best combination for me of size it's 4,000 seats, I think yeah, sound quality and every seat's a good seat. You can see from almost anywhere. They don't use screens, so you don't need screens, screens but the sound quality is exceptional and you can see all different kinds of bands there.
Alex Gadd:But the reality is that I've seen the majority of the shows that I've ever seen by a long margin at the garden. I've seen 50 something shows at the garden out of the 200 and something shows that I've seen, and I've seen I don't know six beacon shows, eight beacon show, maybe 10 total at the Beacon Yep, and those clubs in New York are so fun to go to. But you really you have to work at it to find a band that you're going to love. I saw a band called the London Souls downtown in New York and that was a great show. So just fewer and further between. But most of the bands that we like are arena rock bands and either they're playing arenas or they're so big Like I'm going to see the stones at the end of the month they don't even do arenas anymore, they only do stadiums.
Rod Drysdale:It's all just stadiums.
Alex Gadd:Yeah, yeah. So it's crazy, but do you have a place that you've seen the most shows at?
Rod Drysdale:It's the garden by far. Yeah, yeah yeah, madison Square Garden by far. Seen a handful of shows at Jones Beach, a bunch of shows at Nassau Coliseum, bunch at the old Brendan Brown Arena Giant Stadium, which is now MetLife Stadium. Those are probably the just being from New York and those are the venues that were available to us. Yeah, by far Madison.
Alex Gadd:Square Garden. Do you have a least favorite?
Rod Drysdale:Yeah, I would say my least favorite venues are that you can't see a show there anymore, but the old Brennanburn Arena, which is just a big concrete you know room, just the work. Unless you were on the floor in front of the speakers, I always thought the sound was just bouncing all over the place, echoey and bad. Yeah, any indoor concrete arena that's a basketball court or a hockey rink that's been turned into a somehow they do a good job at at the garden, I think is probably the soft seat in the ceiling and the fact that it's a little bit more round than it is rectangle.
Alex Gadd:Yeah, I think the ceiling there really makes a huge difference because it's not a concrete ceiling, it's all those cables are hung and there's soft spots above it. Yeah, I never liked, I never loved the Brendan Byrne arena, but I saw so many good shows there that I'd never. I know me too. There are places in the city like terminal five. I really don't like. That is like small clubs that don't that have really like irving plaza. They redid it made the sound. It's so overwhelmingly loud that it's not cool rock and roll loud. It's devastatingly deafening loud, oh not for me.
Rod Drysdale:Do you remember the summer concert series? I think it, it was Miller, the Miller concert series On the pier. Yeah, yeah, on the off the West side highway I saw Huey Lewis to the news there.
Alex Gadd:That was a great show NEW used to sponsor all those concerts and that's right.
Rod Drysdale:It was NEW Yep On a hundred percent Scott Muni.
Alex Gadd:Oh good, scott Muni, yeah, richard near, and all those guys it was great. Pat St John, thinking about recorded live music. Do you have a favorite live album? You said you used to listen to a lot of live albums, so this one's right up your alley.
Rod Drysdale:It has to be All the World's a Stade. The first Rush live album that came out right after 2112. There's not a second of that album that doesn't give me chills.
Alex Gadd:Do you still listen to it?
Rod Drysdale:No. Greatest drum solo ever recorded, absolutely.
Alex Gadd:Which one.
Rod Drysdale:It's the working man drum solo where Getty announces Neil as the first time ever. It was the first time they ever referred to him as the professor on the drum kit.
Alex Gadd:Changed my life. Do that again. Yeah, cool Changed my life man. Yeah, cool changed my life man and changed your life.
Rod Drysdale:I don't know, just the music affected me. I can't really say just that he could do what he was doing. No, I never heard anything like it, like listening to Eruption the first time you ever heard, or anything from Van Halen 1, and you just listen to that. I try to explain that to my kids. I'm like nobody had ever done anything like that. Now everybody does it, including his kid but I had never heard anything like what neil was able to do in that drum solo. It was otherworldly.
Alex Gadd:He's incredible yeah, how about concert films? Because that was big for our generation. I've talked to younger people who blank when I say concert film because it doesn't resonate with them at all. But for us, I had to explain to someone recently, before mtv, there was no way to see your favorite bands. No, you hadn't. I had no idea what most of my favorite bands looked like, other than what was on the pictures on the covers of their records. So seeing the song remains the same, the last waltz, those things were massive things for me when I was young. How?
Rod Drysdale:about you. I totally agree with you. We have only the pictures on the inside of the records and not all the bands would put pictures in. There would be lyrics or something like that would put pictures in. Those be lyrics or something like that. That's why we would go to the record stores and buy the concert posters to have roder plant or any picture of ruff. That's how we saw, aside from going to the shows. There was no video. So I think song remains the same. Probably is the one. I don't know if I consider the Wall a concert film, but I would say Song Remains the Same because of the concert footage. There's a lot of other stuff in that, but to be able to see John Bonham play and they're like 20. They were so young.
Rod Drysdale:But, yeah, that would be it.
Alex Gadd:Have you ever met any musician at a show, especially?
Rod Drysdale:I met Jordan Redef. That's probably the only one. He played the Tarrytown Music Hall and I paid to have after the show backstage, and it was like a month and a half after Portnoy had left Dream Theater. So we had lots of questions and he cut everybody short. He. The first thing he said when he walked out on stage he welcomed every. He played a song and then after the first song he said look, he goes. I don't know what happened, I don't know who's next and that's all I have to say about that. So he nipped it in the butt pretty quick and played a great show. But but yeah, he was really young, really very down to earth. My friend, tom, who went to Berkeley, the guy that I keep referring to. He went to Berkeley for a couple of years and he was there at the same time. Rudefs was there and Mike Portney was there and Petrucci was there. He knew them just as guys that he went to school with, but didn't know them better than that. But yeah, jordan Rudefs was the only one who I've really met.
Alex Gadd:Unfortunately, yeah, but he was nice, so that's good.
Rod Drysdale:Yeah, not, unfortunately, with him. It was unfortunate that I haven't met more of my, my idol.
Alex Gadd:Sometimes I think it's better not to. Yeah, hopefully, I've met a lot of my idols, and most of them. I said as little as possible and then got out of there. I didn't want to have the illusion ruined for me. Yeah, that's a good point, although Bruce was very nice to me for the one second that he talked to me Very nice.
Rod Drysdale:Nice, that's awesome and I was 11, so that changed my life, there you go.
Alex Gadd:Yeah I bet, oh yeah. Nice, that's awesome. I was 11, so that changed my life. There you go. Yeah I bet, oh yeah, thinking about bucket list stuff if there's a concert venue out there that you haven't been to that you'd like to see a show at, where would that be?
Rod Drysdale:to come to mind I'd like to see, and I and they're very different and my reasonings for going is is different. I want to go to red rocks in denver. Seen enough footage and concert films. Rush played there and filmed some stuff obviously that became famous with you too. There, that film, that video, so just picturesque, and sunset and a really cool outdoor venue that would be the one. I want to go to, royal albert hall. Thought about wimbley, another big stadium I'd have to be close, but yeah, probably royal albert holes is definitely on my bucket list. So those two, one, one indoor, one out there.
Alex Gadd:Well, I have to say, yeah, red rocks is by far the number one answer on this show so far. Literally everyone except one person who had already been there, so it wasn't on the bucket list for him anymore, so for me it's red rocks and the rhyman in nashville. I'd love to go see anybody play at the rhyman, but royal albert hall is a great one that I never really thought of until very recently and thought maybe that'd be a good answer too, because there have been so many classic shows there exactly really good, and I'd love to.
Alex Gadd:I'd love to go to the cavern club and see what that's all about yeah, exactly, yeah but I'd love to see it, even as a tourist. Not for a show, I just love to go look. Yeah, if you could see anyone perform, living or dead, that you've never seen, who would it be? It's the best talk.
Rod Drysdale:I'm going to say Stevie Ray. I missed him. I never saw him. They played the Memorial auditorium in Burlington and I know like two, three guys that went. I don't know if I was working that night, but I didn't go thinking there'll be time and then he disappeared for a while while he was getting this shit together and then he passed away. So anytime he shows up in my Instagram feed because it's guitarist, when I flip I will freeze. Anytime there's a closeup of Stevie Wright playing almost any show, any song, yeah.
Rod Drysdale:That's the one that always comes to the top of my mind I would. I love watching virtuoso guitar, I love my drummers, but to go. That's why I love Steve Morris. I just sit there and watch him pick and play just the most diverse songs. Yeah. I would. Stevie Ray, I think, yeah, I want to say Elvis or I would go. Certainly would love to see Zeppelin in their heyday, but realistically I think it would probably still be, Stevie.
Alex Gadd:Yeah, I think that's pretty much my answer as well, and I the same exact experience up in college, sitting there thinking, oh, I'll get to see him once I'm back in New York, I'll go see him sometime. Then he passed away. I remember exactly. That's one of the few moments in my life I know exactly where I was and how I remember how I felt when I heard over the radio that he had just passed away.
Alex Gadd:Yeah, that was a shocker. Where were you? I was in the driveway of my apartment. I was pulling out of the driveway of my apartment. I was pulling out of the driveway of my apartment that I was living in up for the summer, going to pick up my roommate who was flying in from Minneapolis to start the school year, cause it was on August 25th. I think he passed away August 24th, one or the other, but I think it was the 25th, or he passed away the night of the 24th, I don't remember the date is one of those two dates, but I remember I was going backing out of the driveway to go to the Burlington international airport to pick up my roommate for the year, my friend Steve, and he was flying in from Minneapolis and I heard the news and I literally almost ran into a car, backing out because I was so shocked. Almost ran into a car backing out, yeah, cause I was so shocked.
Rod Drysdale:I had graduated, so you were still in school. I had graduated and I was with Christine and Glenn had an aunt who had a house. They had a house on the North shore of Long Island, way out at a place called Matatok, and I had just bought my first Jeep Wrangler and it was August, as you said, and it was hotter at Blavis, and Glenn had convinced me that I needed to take the top off, the hard top off the Jeep because we were going to take a ferry to. We weren't going to Block Island, but there's another place you could take a ferry to and it was gorgeous. So I was on my way to a Jeep dealership on the North Fork of Long Island when I heard the news and had to pull over, had to pull over to the side of the road, and was bawling Like that's not. That didn't happen. No, um, it was just complete. I remember how I felt. Yeah, it was crazy.
Alex Gadd:Yeah, terrible, especially cause he had done all that work to clean up and to get his act together.
Rod Drysdale:Yep, I don't know if I'm a famous rock star. I'm never getting into a helicopter. I don't care, small airplanes and helicopters, man.
Alex Gadd:They have enough lessons as to why you don't do that. There are enough examples. Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, all right, looking forward that there are enough examples. Yeah, all right, looking forward what's? Do you have any tickets for concerts coming up?
Rod Drysdale:I do. I'm going to see alanis morissette in toronto in july. That's my next show okay, my wife's birthday work.
Alex Gadd:Oh cool, why toronto?
Rod Drysdale:somebody bought tickets and said you want to go see Alanis Morissette and I'm like when? And they're like July, whatever, it is 13th, 12th, 11th, something like that, and I'm like, yeah, that sounds like a nice birthday weekend for my wife. I'll take two and that's it.
Alex Gadd:Love it. Do you have any other shows you want to go see this year that you may or may not have tickets for yet?
Rod Drysdale:I really want to go see Wolf Van Halen. I've been obsessing over his two records that he recorded himself and played every single instrument. It's just been on constant replay for a couple of weeks. I think he's incredibly talented and he's a better drummer than most drummers. And he's not a drummer, he is a drummer. But the fact that he can play everything and layer it all in and it's very good, it's very technical, it's got some proggy feel to it. It doesn't sound like Van Halen to me. He will pay homage to his dad every once in a while with a riff here and there that true Van Halen fans will hear, but it's his own it's his own music.
Alex Gadd:Have you had a chance to spend any time with it? Yeah, you're talking about Mammoth WVH.
Alex Gadd:I have both records downloaded. I've been listening for a couple months now to the first record and then the second record came out and I got that and started listening to that. I haven't listened to the newer one as often, but he is opening for Foo Fighters and I do have tickets With that. I leave it to you Anything else that I didn't ask about that you think might be interesting for the folks to listen to. Can you tell me what the most outrageous experience you ever had at a concert was? Because I know there's one.
Rod Drysdale:Yeah, it has to be the first time I got close to a mosh pit, like a mosh pit, where I was physically scared and I was in my. I was in. I was probably 22 when it happened. So we're talking 1987, 88. I was in college and I went to see the Monsters of Rock tour at Dover Motor Speedway in Dover, New Hampshire. It was pouring, absolutely pouring that day and the lineup was like a greatest hits of my life, except for the first act, which they weren't bad, but it was Kingdom Come, Dokken, Scorpion Van Halen and Metallica, scorpion van halen and metallic. Right now, at the time the order of the show was kingdom come. I want to say it was then metallica, then the Scorpion.
Alex Gadd:I'm sorry. No, no, no, no, doc, a hundred percent.
Rod Drysdale:It was Kingdom Come, doc and Metallica. Scorpion Van Halen was the cut, was the close and it was Injustice for All. Tour for Metallica. And I had listened to Masters of Puppets, I had done it. It was actually. It was that stuff was actually even a little bit too hard for me when I first heard that stuff and people would just look at you and what is that Right? So it was. I knew it was out there, but I put that in the same genre as, like Motorhead and some of the really harder stuff that I didn't love. So we're.
Rod Drysdale:They changed Doc and Lee's the stage. It's a half an hour for them to set up and people are starting to and everybody's muddy, everybody's wet already and we're standing out in the rain waiting for the next act. And I knew who it was and I knew the reputation. But then once they started playing and people started just rushing and it was the craziest thing I'd ever seen in my life and we were. We stayed in for a couple of songs and we just started getting. You're like this, somebody, some people are coming out bloodied, um. So we backed away and just watched. It was. I'd heard about mosh pits, but I'd never seen anyone any of it in person. So, yeah, that was. It was a great show. It was a great show. Um, Metallica should have closed. They should have been. The closing act was and it was Sammy. It wasn't Dave at that point,
Alex Gadd:right, that's what I always found funny about that tour and the reason I didn't go was because I didn't like Van Hagar. I didn't think and I didn't think they were a hard rock band anymore, they were like a pop band.
Alex Gadd:They were a synth band Like Rush. During that same period of time they made a transition and they wrote pop songs and that's not bad or good they're very catchy and I still listen to them now and think, oh, I remember how fun it was to be in college and listening to this, but it wasn't something you go see with Scorpions and Dokken and Metallica a mismatched band. And what's interesting is that they took most of those bands to Russia the next year, but they took Ozzy, and instead of Metallica they took Ozzy and instead of Van Halen they took Bon Jovi and I think Motley Crue went too, and they all went to Russia. But it was a Monsters of Rock kind of thing too. That would have been more interesting.
Alex Gadd:To me that was just a weird mismatched lineup. But the other thing to think about that you bring up is that before the black album, metallica was much more aggressive. They were an aggressive band and their fans were super aggressive until they opened up with the Black album and they brought in a whole new audience of more mainstream rock fans who weren't so down for walking out with no teeth and having to go to the hospital just to go see your favorite band my understanding was that cliff was the their original bass player who had passed away in the bus.
Rod Drysdale:Cliff was so dominant in terms of their songwriting that Jason when Jason came in, he wasn't really songwriting, he was just hanging on for dear life trying to learn everything that they were doing. But I think the other guys started taking over the songwriting and it got a little bit more mainstream, acceptable and it was Injustice for All Tour that album, which I thought was when the music started shifting to things that were more palatable to playing at a frat party as opposed to trying to play Masters of P uppets, and just the girls are running out the door Like what, what? This is not the party I wanted to go to.
Alex Gadd:With that Rod. Thank you so much for your time. I love taking that journey with you before we go. At the very beginning you mentioned that your real entrance to rock and roll was Elton John. Have you ever seen Elton live?
Rod Drysdale:Yeah, I have. Yeah, I've seen Elton four or five times and I think every time was at the garden because he would tour the. He would come back to the Garden. It's like Billy Joel he doesn't take up residency, but whenever he plays New York he plays the garden. I actually saw him at Radio City too. I've seen him at Radio City, which we haven't talked about, which is interesting. It doesn't really come up as a favorite venue, but it's a great place to see a show if you want to sit.
Alex Gadd:I saw Iron Maiden there. There you go. That's the only time I've ever seen Iron Maiden. I've also seen Phil Collins there. The Pretenders Madonna. I saw Madonna on her first headlining tour.
Rod Drysdale:She played there I saw that.
Alex Gadd:But yeah, I, radio city is a weird one because you do feel like you have to sit down the whole time. Can't get wild. Anyway, Rod, thanks, this has been an absolute pleasure. I look forward to seeing you in person very soon and going to a show with you this year, hopefully, and I appreciate your time today and with that I'll thank everyone for joining us. We'll be back next Tuesday and if you like what you heard today, we'd appreciate it if you would like and subscribe or follow to make sure you get notified about every new episode. And please tell your friends. Additionally, we want to know what you think, so please leave us a comment and we'll try to respond to every one of them. The Rock-N- Roll Show Podcast is a World Highway Media production. I'm your host, Alex Gadd, and until next time, I want to remind you that life is short, so get those concert tickets.