This month's Reader's Column comes from an individual who frequents Gibson's forum on Compuserve. Always full of insight derived from years slugging it out in "garage bands," Mr. Joe Brannen was asked by The Amplifier to phrase his perspectives in the form of a contribution to the magazine.

by Joe G. Brannon

I can't tell you exactly when I first realized I wanted to be a musician. It might have been when as a child I saw Elvis perform on Steve Allen's television show. But I can easily tell you when I realized I wanted to be a guitar player: it was when the Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan's show. Girls were screaming, the music made you want to get up and dance, and there was just something about those electric guitars John and George were playing

Several years later, having graduated from my Montgomery Ward acoustic guitar, and after trying every ploy known to teenage boys (which included pointing out that my sister had both a clarinet and a piano), I was successful in getting my first electric guitar and amplifier. Seems like Dad gave around $75 for both, and in 1967 this would certainly buy more than today, but in retrospect this was an inauspicious beginning to my garage band career.

I would estimate that it was all of two weeks later that I joined my first band. The five members included four guitarists and one drummer. I can remember practices where we would literally hang our only microphone from the ceiling and all four guitarists would crowd around and try to sing at the same time as we banged out the chords to classics like "Louie, Louie" and "Gloria". [Side note: of course the microphone was plugged into whichever guitar amp had a free input jack.] These first practices weren't held in a garage, but we were close-- the abandoned upper floor of a garage apartment. Certainly this qualified us as a "garage band".

It was in that first band where I quickly learned my first lesson about bands: bands are made up of musicians and musicians are strange people. Now you may be a musician and still see yourself as just a regular guy, and you may be right. But the odds are that "normal" people would see you a little differently. I've never figured out (a) if it takes a certain kind of person to become a musician or (b) if becoming a musician turns you into a different sort of person. [Side note: among musicians, certain types, such as bass players, are even weird by musician standards.] So if you take a few musicians and mix them together in a band, there are all sorts of good and bad things that can happen, but this is clearly unpredictable.

Take the there's a band where mostly good things happened. The same for the Who, the Stones, and many others. These bands were made up of highly talented and, in some cases, very strange musicians who managed to overcome their egos and produce good music over a period of years. Unfortunately I seemed to always be in the "other" kind of band: the kind where moderately talented and, in virtually all cases, very, very strange musicians managed to parlay their egos into the destruction of the band within a matter of months.

When I was trying to come up with the specific topic of this article, I considered writing about drummers, or about singers, or even about bass players, but I decided that I would briefly address the particular quirks of each of these different band members, based purely on my own experiences, of course.

Take drummers. Take 'em all, for all I care. Well, I guess I'd make an exception for the sure, dependable, steady drummers, like Ringo, who can keep a beat and keep a level head. But for the most part, every band I've ever been in has eventually collapsed because of the drummer. First of all, while almost any kid can get his hands on a guitar, there aren't nearly as many who can come up with a whole drum set of their own. So right there, the few who are able to acquire drums begin to see themselves as "special". They are not averse to using the old "if I can't have my way, I'll take my drums and go home" tactic. [Side note: thank goodness for the electronic rhythm machines which followed in the wake of the Linn drum and allowed us to do away with drummers in the studio if we wished.]

For every Don Henley who plays the drums, but also composes and sings, there are somewhere around five hundred drummers who just play along with whatever the other band members decide to play. Of course they do this only so long as they get their moment in the spotlight. Ever been in a blues band and had to play "In a Gadda da Vida" and "Wipeout" because they were the only drum solos the drummer knew? I have. Ever been in a country band playing gigs in small bars with stages barely larger than the bed of a small pickup truck and have a drummer who insisted on two bass drums, six toms, and about forty cymbals? I have. Ever been in a rock band where you had to turn every amp up to 10 just to be heard over the drummer? I have.

It seems like in almost every band of which I've been a member, most of the band members spent a lot of their time stroking the drummer's ego so he wouldn't quit. One time I became so frustrated with a drummer that I went ahead and lined up a replacement in advance, and sure enough, within a few days our regular drummer started moaning and groaning about his lack of input into our song choices, basically saying that if we didn't play what he wanted to play, that he would find another band. Knowing his replacement was waiting in the wings, I quickly suggested to him that if he was so miserable, then he should go ahead and quit. Thinking he had us over a barrel, he announced his retirement then and there. Few moments in my music career have given me as much pleasure as telling him that there were no hard feelings because we already had another drummer ready to come aboard. He spent the next three days apologizing and asking to be given a second chance, to no avail, I might add.

The best drummer I ever played with was about 15 years older than the rest of the band, he only had about three good teeth, and his drum kit consisted of one bass, one tom, one snare, and two cymbals. But this guy was willing to play anything the band decided upon, he never demanded a solo, he always showed up for practice, he didn't have his name painted on the bass drum, he had his own transportation, his wife didn't interfere in the band's business, he owned his own drums, and most of all, he could keep a steady beat and he understood the dynamics of drumming. Unfortunately, his work forced him to move hundreds of miles away, ending a wonderful era in that band's history and leaving us at the mercy of a drummer less skilled and less mentally stable.

One time a band I was in played a gig for the guards who worked at the state prison system. The only drummer we could find was adequate, but he was only sixteen years old and immature to boot. Since we were spending the night in the town where the dance was to be held, the drummer's mother "entrusted" him to us older guys. I recall everything at the gig going just great until the drummer disappeared during one of our breaks. Twenty minutes into what should have been our next set, one of the guards found him passed out under a truck in the parking lot with an empty whiskey bottle beside him. Needless to say, this was quite a disruption, and when we finally got him sobered up enough to play, the warden literally manacled one of his legs to his drum throne.

I'm sure many of you reading this (except for the drummers) can relate very well to what I'm saying. However, I shouldn't pick on drummers exclusively. I also have some complaints about bassists. Now in the small town where I grew up, bass players tended to be guys who wanted to be in a band, but couldn't quite learn to play guitar well enough. (Any of you bass players reading this, I'm not talking about I'm sure you were born wanting to play the bass.) At any rate, a guy who knew nothing about music could get a bass guitar and amp, and he would have no trouble landing a spot in a local band. And the bigger his bass amp, the faster he landed! Of course while almost anyone can become a bassist, I still believe it takes a special type of person to "enjoy" playing the bass. I'm sure some of you guitar players reading this can relate to what I'm saying. Ever had to tell your bass player, "no, no, G is the THIRD fret on the big string"? I sure have.

In fact, I tell few people this, but I actually had to fill the role of bassist in a band I played in one summer during college. I even bought a McCartney-type violin bass from that noted guitar seller, Sears and Roebuck. Notice though that I did not refer to myself specifically as a "bassist." I said that I "had to fill the role of bassist." There is a distinction there that protects my honor as a guitarist. But I was sure grateful when our regular bassist rejoined the band later that year.

I played in a band one time with a bass player who swore up and down he improved his tone by soaking his bass strings in milk after every practice or gig and then reinstalling them. Funny, but to the rest of us his tone sounded sort of like "mush". But then, maybe that is the tone he was looking for.

This really I swear! Our band showed up at a gig one time which involved playing for a bunch of high school and college aged kids at a summer church camp (and no, they weren't Baptists). We were excited because it was the first major chance for this particular band to get to play in front of a big crowd of people. As we were unloading our equipment [Side note: I've never been lucky enough to be in a band with roadies], some of the kids were there to watch us. We noticed our bass player got upset and walked away, so we followed him to find out what was wrong. It turned out that one of those kids watching us was his ex-girlfriend who dumped him, and he refused to play if she was going to be there in the audience. We begged, we pleaded, we threatened, but nothing worked. Finally we asked the girl to keep out of his field of vision during the dance, we told him that we had "banned" her from the dance, and only then did he grudgingly agree to play. Fortunately he never spotted her in the dark while we were playing. And this was one of the more "normal" bassists I've played with.

These kinds of incidents lead one to want to wrap one's hands about the throat of the offending band member and squeeze with vigor, but then you would have the problem of replacing them, and besides, I really don't want to belabor bassists when I haven't even addressed the subject of vocalists. Now I have no gripes with any vocalist who also plays an even if it's someone like Mick Jagger who only occasionally plays a guitar onstage, however I've sure played with my share of prima donna vocalists who couldn't do anything but sing. [Side note: if I had been born with a God-given singing voice, I'd have never had to deal with these egocentric individuals.]

Let me explain what I mean. We were preparing to play a gig one time and the night before our performance, a friend of the band dropped by the rehearsal hall and asked us if we would do a favor for him. As a surprise for his girlfriend, he wanted us to play "Jailhouse Rock" the next night at our performance and he wanted to sing it. No problem: in about five minutes we had it worked out and we ran through it with him singing. There was only one problem: we noticed as we were running through it that our regular singer looked angry and this was very obvious as he stomped out of the building. We saw him drive off, so we sent two band members to go catch him and find out what was wrong. In about thirty minutes they were back, and to make a long story short, we had to tell our friend that we couldn't allow him to sing with the band. He was very disappointed and so were we, but it was the only way we could get our singer to perform. He was simply so insecure that he couldn't stand what he perceived as the competition.

Heck, I remember one band where the singer insisted that his girlfriend be right there on stage with him the whole show. Of course she couldn't sing, dance, or play an instrument, but he wanted her in contact all night and he wouldn't perform unless she was very close beside him.

If you've followed all this, then you may be thinking, "man, this guy has played with some weird individuals." On the other hand, you may be thinking, "I know right where he's coming from." See, for every well-known band with top name musicians playing under the spotlights in stadiums, there are hundreds of unknown bands out there busting their chops every night in lesser venues, playing for chump change and having to make do without beer company subsidies, etc. My guess is that the readers of this article tend to be in the latter group, and if you are, then you certainly must share some of my experiences with drummers, bassists, and singers. [Side note: notice that I carefully avoided any criticism of guitarists.]

Don't get me I wouldn't take five hundred bucks for all the memories of my garage band days, but I could have sure done without all the personality problems over the years. With that in mind, I'll leave you with my top ten signs that your band is in trouble. (1) If one of the band members wants to name the band after himself or his mother, it is a bad sign. (2) If a band member has to pawn his equipment in order to get his car fixed, it is a bad sign. (3) If you got paid in alcoholic beverages at your last gig, it is a bad sign. (4) If your band's signature song is "Feelings", it is a bad sign. (5) If it is not unusual for band members to punch one another out on stage while the band keeps playing and the audiences seem to enjoy this more than your music, it is a bad sign. [Side note: if your band thinks "Battle of the Bands" refers to your band and another band fighting with bare knuckles, you are in the wrong business completely.] (6) If one of your band members says, "my girlfriend would make a great backup singer", it is a bad sign. (7) If you lose your only practice facility when a tornado blows down your grandmother's chicken house, it is a bad sign. (8) If your PA system was bought second-hand from a fast food restaurant, it is a bad sign. (9) If all you ever play for are "charity" events, it is a bad sign. (10) If your band is known more for the members' tattoos than for playing ability, it is a bad, bad sign!