An Interview With Woody Woodmansey (1/3) By Steve Rudd

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3).

Yorkshire-born Woody Woodmansey might be best remembered as being the drummer for The Spiders From Mars, the legendary band who played with David Bowie during the early Seventies. But since The Spiders went their separate ways in the mid-Seventies, Woody has forged a fantastic career in his own right, having performed with plenty of fantastic musicians and played on a whole host of great albums. His latest release is called Future Primitive. An extraordinary project in many respects, a smattering of amazing drum-beats rage at the forefront of all the tracks.

What’s more, the recording of the album in LA was a family affair, as Woody’s two sons – Nick and Danny – also got involved. Here, in an exclusive interview for the site, former Driffield lad Woody chats candidly to Steve Rudd about his fascinating career in music, and about exciting plans to tour with his new 3-d project…

Hi Woody, how are things? Things are very good thanks! You have recently recorded an album called Future Primitive. What inspired such a recording? Two of my sons, Nick and Danny, are both great drummers and percussionists. Since they were younger they have both been doing their own thing. They have both been in various indie bands and over the years have been developing their skills as producers.

A couple of years ago we were asked to put a piece of music together as a finale for an arts festival in Sussex. The piece involved 12 drummers playing snares and various tom toms with me on a kit.

Half way through the piece we turned all the stage lights off except one ultraviolet light. Each drummer was wearing white gloves and the sticks were painted white. The audience went crazy! This response led to doing a few more shows using only drums and percussion. 3 drum kits now. We did a few nights playing along with DJs at a club on Regent Street in London. Part of the night was us doing our own thing with no other music accompanying us. The audience response was always brilliant. We then started to put some ideas together at Danny’s home studio. We all wanted to create music that really ‘featured’ the drums rather than how they are traditionally used as a backing instrument.

As we are all in to many genres of music we decided to use all our influences and make it work. Nick’s area is the jazz, funk, soul thing, Danny’s in to breakbeat, hip hop etc. I kind of lean towards tribal rhythms, funk, Latin… and we’re all in to bits of all these! So in November 2006 we got the opportunity to go in to Mad Hatter Studios in LA for a month. At that time we only had a few basic ideas together, mainly drum grooves, so it was a case of hold your nose and jump in! It was an exciting way to work, actually creating it in the studio.

One thing that makes Future Primitive so extraordinary is the way in which drumbeats and elements of percussion are at the album’s heart. Other than the beats, what other instruments are featured? First we created the drum and percussion tracks so that we had a rhythmic feel, message etc. Then we added whatever each track suggested. We used upright bass on some tracks and also created bass parts using samples and messing about with them. There are also keyboards and strings on quite a few of the tracks; some of these were ‘flown’ in by email from the UK!

A friend had put down parts in his studio and they ‘magically’ arrived in LA! We also have sax on some tracks. We wanted a real mix of live and electronic sounds. Future Primitive was the perfect title!

Continued .... Next Page (2/3)

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