A Stray Cat Struts Read Free

were big events for me as a young drummer with dreams of making a life out of the drums. Anytime I could meet living proof of the possibility, it fueled the fire. Most important, I lugged my drums around and jammed with as many other people as I could.
    I met Leon Drucker in the fourth grade. He was in my class, and even at an early age, the serious rock-and-roll guys find each other. In our personalities, it’s the classic case of “he’s the bass player and I’m the drummer.” Even as a kid, he was always more pragmatic and less impulsive than I was. He always thought about things a few extra seconds longer than I did. This could be good and bad. We spent hours in his parents’ garage practicing as a rhythm section. He would play boom, and I would play bop. He was on the one beat and the three beat, and I played the snare on the two beat and the four beat. We were very tight as a unit and as friends. By the time fate weighed in, we were ready as a rhythm section. We wrote songs together and really worked at it. We played with a few of the older guys around town at backyard keg parties, and we would sneak through the back doors of a few bars to do the gigs. We were always willing and into playing. I learned a lot of songs during that time and learned all the different grooves and beats for the various types of blues songs. It’s training I still remember and use. By the end of high school, we had already formed a band, and we hustled up and played dozens of shows. In the year following school, we had secured a couple of residencies around Long Island and had written two solid sets of original songs. We augmented our songs with blues covers and were really starting to get good at it. We spent a lot of time together and knew each other very well musically and personally.
    Lee was my first true pal. I’ll use this phrase a number of times about a few people. I don’t use this term loosely. It perfectly describes what I feel and believe about a few choice people I’ve known in my life. Some of them just happen to be well known. They are the people I’ve met in my life. In a nutshell, a true pal is someone who I’d do anything in the world for, and without my expecting it, I know would do the same for me. If any of them call at 4:00 A.M. , I answer the phone. I’ll listen to anything they want to talk about. I don’t have to speak with them every day, but I do stay in touch with everyone I mention in this way. If you can count ten true pals in your life, you’ve had a success. Any adventure or life-changing event in my life between the ages of fifteen and forty somehow involved Lee.
    Brian Setzer is two years older than Lee and me. Now it means nothing, but when you’re fourteen and the other guy is sixteen, it’s a big deal. I always thought Brian was a cool guy. He was the first one I knew that had an earring and wore snakeskin boots. He had a Bowie record and could really play the guitar. He was well known in our school as the best guitar player but was also known for not sticking with anyone. He knew what he wanted and always had the dream to be a professional musician. Lee and I were in the same class and friends with Brian’s brother, who was an excellent drummer. We’ve all known each other since grade school. Brian and his brother had a band, and Lee and I had our band. We were the guys who were always looking for something musically different.
    This was 1979, and through the right research and quest for cool, we found rockabilly music and instantly fell in love with the sound and style. I started out finding out about rockabilly through some of the older English bands. The Beatles and Stones both covered classics by Carl Perkins and Buddy Holly. The Who had covered Eddie Cochran. A cousin of mine had a copy of Blind Faith, and I heard Buddy again on their version of “Well, All Right.” These types of records were easier to find than the