Nigel clinic in Richmond

By Shirley Purvis

I traveled to Richmond yesterday to attend Nigel's drum clinic at Southern Music in Richmond, and what a great time it was! It was in a nice, intimate setting with both fans and drummers in attendance. Nigel looked great and opened the evening by playing Restless along with the studio recording. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road followed and then he came out front to chat and answer questions. The rest of the evening followed this format, with Nigel playing a couple tunes then answering questions before playing some more. The other songs he played were Bennie And The Jets, Don't Let The Sun Go down On Me, (questions), Danny Bailey, Someone Saved My Life Tonight (questions), Philadelphia Freedom, Harmony, and finished the clinic up with I'm Still Standing. How fabulous to be right there watching him play the parts that he made famous!

During the Q & A segments, he had lots of interesting stories to tell. Here are some (some of this has been mentioned in recent interviews):

• When Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting was recorded, he had to mute his hi-hats to keep them from bleeding into other mics, so the hi-hat parts were all overdubbed. He said if you listen closely you can hear things that it would be impossible for one drummer to play at once.
• When recording Benny And The Jets they were trying to get a stomping sound during the "electric boots..." part and nothing was working. So at 4 in the morning they went out to the barn at the chateau and ripped up the floorboards, brought them into the studio, and all started stomping on them to get the sound they wanted.
• To get the huge snare "explosion" at the beginning of Danny Bailey they actually threw a stick of dynamite out the window and recorded the explosion, and played that along with a snare hit to get the finished sound.
• Apparently they were bored while recording Sick City because instead of simply singing the background vocal line "sick city, sick city.." they SANG what it would sound like if played backwards, which was something like "aaytisskiss, aaytisskiss". Then they played THAT backwards to get the final, forward recording!!
• Whenever they recorded an album at Caribou, because the studio was so high up they could sing an octave higher than normal! The only problem was that when they came down and had to perform those songs on tour, they could no longer hit the notes they'd recorded!

Nigel said that his favorite recorded performances (that he'd done) were the albums Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Captain Fantastic. His favorite gig was the 1974 concert with a guest appearance by John Lennon at Madison Square Garden.

His own first gig was when he was 13, and he played rhythm guitar. One day the drummer didn't show and he filled in and loved it from then on.

There are several upcoming projects that Nigel is involved in. He is looking forward to doing an album (CD, whatever) with Davey, Guy and also Paul Schaeffer and Will Lee from the Letterman show. He wants to have guest female vocalists, and is trying to get Kiki Dee to work on it. In January a book will be coming out featuring transcriptions of Nigel's drum parts in Elton songs! There may also be a companion CD or video with it. In addition, in a few weeks Nigel is going to be doing some background parts for Elton's new project (and I believe he was referring to Eldorado).

After the clinic Nigel stuck around to sign autographs and greet fans. He was most patient, generous, friendly and funny. And as always, he was full of heart. The overwhelming impression I came away with is that he deeply loves Elton and the music that he helped create, and is very thankful that he had the opportunity to experience everything that he did. And we were all thankful as well.

Shirley Purvis

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