spell, and he wasn’t a thinker. Still, we agreed to go see him play a gig he had coming up in a bar in Brooklyn. The place was called the King’s Lounge, and the other two guys in his band looked like they should be making pizzas or cement shoes. Peter looked completely different from them, and he exuded an air of confidence. He had swagger.
The crowd was sparse, but something about his performance struck me: he played that bar like it was a packed arena. He was into it. After that, we asked him to come to our rehearsal space the next day to try playing together.
When he played with us the first time at 23rd Street, it didn’t sound particularly good. Peter didn’t know much about British music. He knew the Beatles. And he liked Charlie Watts of the Stones. But that was probably because he liked to believe he played like Charlie Watts—basic, not showy. As for any other drummers—the ones he couldn’t play like—he disliked them all.
Peter also didn’t understand the basics of song structure. Verse, chorus, bridge—it all meant nothing to him. If I said, “Let’s pick up at the second verse,” he just sat there. He had to memorize a song from beginning to end, and if we stopped in the middle or he lost his place, he was fucked. Perhaps as a result, his playing was wild. You could call it unorthodox, but that wouldn’t be accurate—it was just plain erratic. His drum parts would change verse to verse. Still, for all he lacked in continuity, he played with fire and vitality. He was scrappy.
We asked him back for another rehearsal.
The next rehearsal went much better. Again, his playing showed personality and a real zest for life. Some of the songs developed a different feel than Gene and I originally might have had in mind—Peter just couldn’t play like the drummers we had in our heads as we wrote—but what he delivered still worked as a blueprint for the band we wanted to be. Looking back now, there’s no denying that a drummer like John Bonham wouldn’t have fit what we were doing, although if we’d had our druthers, Gene and I would certainly have gone in that direction. Back then, Peter was the right guy for the band. His drumming was brash and full of piss and vinegar.
Peter instinctively played ahead. At times we had to catch up to him. In the best-case scenario, a drummer is like the back of a chair: you can lean back on it and know it’s there for you. It’s a foundation. But Peter ran alongside us, which was a different animal altogether. Even so, things just clicked. Even as a trio, we sounded very promising. So promising, in fact, that we decided to once again play for Epic Records to see whether or not they wanted to keep us under our existing contract.
By this point, Gene and I had scraped together the money to buy new gear. I’d bought two guitars: a tobacco sunburst Gibson Firebird and a guitar I had custom-made by a guy named Charlie Lebeau. I got to know Charlie when he worked at a little second-floor shop on 48th Street—it was the first shop I’d ever seen that specialized in vintage guitars. Dan Armstrong’s stocked sunburst Les Pauls from the 1950s—beautiful instruments that were always out of my reach financially. But Charlie, who specialized in repairing the instruments, had struck out on his own and started building guitars. I bought a walnut-colored double-cutaway from him. The Gibson Firebird started off as a standard. I liked it because it reminded me of one Eric Clapton had played in Cream. I sent it to work with my dad one day and asked him to have the guys at the furniture shop paint it black. It didn’t end up with the finish you might normally get on a piano or guitar, but it was black.
We had also bought a Peavey sound system, with two big speakers on telescoping stands and a mixing board with huge Frankenstein dials. We needed it for the vocals. In our rehearsal space—and any small clubs we figured we might soon play—we didn’t need to mic our guitar
The crowd was sparse, but something about his performance struck me: he played that bar like it was a packed arena. He was into it. After that, we asked him to come to our rehearsal space the next day to try playing together.
When he played with us the first time at 23rd Street, it didn’t sound particularly good. Peter didn’t know much about British music. He knew the Beatles. And he liked Charlie Watts of the Stones. But that was probably because he liked to believe he played like Charlie Watts—basic, not showy. As for any other drummers—the ones he couldn’t play like—he disliked them all.
Peter also didn’t understand the basics of song structure. Verse, chorus, bridge—it all meant nothing to him. If I said, “Let’s pick up at the second verse,” he just sat there. He had to memorize a song from beginning to end, and if we stopped in the middle or he lost his place, he was fucked. Perhaps as a result, his playing was wild. You could call it unorthodox, but that wouldn’t be accurate—it was just plain erratic. His drum parts would change verse to verse. Still, for all he lacked in continuity, he played with fire and vitality. He was scrappy.
We asked him back for another rehearsal.
The next rehearsal went much better. Again, his playing showed personality and a real zest for life. Some of the songs developed a different feel than Gene and I originally might have had in mind—Peter just couldn’t play like the drummers we had in our heads as we wrote—but what he delivered still worked as a blueprint for the band we wanted to be. Looking back now, there’s no denying that a drummer like John Bonham wouldn’t have fit what we were doing, although if we’d had our druthers, Gene and I would certainly have gone in that direction. Back then, Peter was the right guy for the band. His drumming was brash and full of piss and vinegar.
Peter instinctively played ahead. At times we had to catch up to him. In the best-case scenario, a drummer is like the back of a chair: you can lean back on it and know it’s there for you. It’s a foundation. But Peter ran alongside us, which was a different animal altogether. Even so, things just clicked. Even as a trio, we sounded very promising. So promising, in fact, that we decided to once again play for Epic Records to see whether or not they wanted to keep us under our existing contract.
By this point, Gene and I had scraped together the money to buy new gear. I’d bought two guitars: a tobacco sunburst Gibson Firebird and a guitar I had custom-made by a guy named Charlie Lebeau. I got to know Charlie when he worked at a little second-floor shop on 48th Street—it was the first shop I’d ever seen that specialized in vintage guitars. Dan Armstrong’s stocked sunburst Les Pauls from the 1950s—beautiful instruments that were always out of my reach financially. But Charlie, who specialized in repairing the instruments, had struck out on his own and started building guitars. I bought a walnut-colored double-cutaway from him. The Gibson Firebird started off as a standard. I liked it because it reminded me of one Eric Clapton had played in Cream. I sent it to work with my dad one day and asked him to have the guys at the furniture shop paint it black. It didn’t end up with the finish you might normally get on a piano or guitar, but it was black.
We had also bought a Peavey sound system, with two big speakers on telescoping stands and a mixing board with huge Frankenstein dials. We needed it for the vocals. In our rehearsal space—and any small clubs we figured we might soon play—we didn’t need to mic our guitar
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