While growing up a hair metal teen in the late 80s/very early 90s, i happily partook of every hesher lifestyle cliche in the book (with the exception of moving to Los Angeles, joining London, quitting London, and moving on to a famous butt-rock band). Covering my bedroom walls with pinups from Metal Edge and RIP? Check. Jean jacket covered in Crue and Poison patches? Still own it (and proudly break it out and wear it around today. In the age of ironic cock-rock appreciation, the ladies love it). Receiving Jack T. Chick’s epic Chick Tracts from eager-to-save fundamentalists while waiting in line to see KISS, Slaughter, and Faster Pussycat at Green Bay’s Brown County Arena? Totally. Trying to hit on my friend Sean’s hotter-than-hell 15-year-old rocker-wannabe cousin at the same show, and failing miserably? Guilty (and really, she was probably 14. But you should have seen her in fishnets and AquaNet! And i was 17, so that’s ok! Right? …Right?).

And as an aspiring hair metal rock star, i did everything necessary to achieve Drum God Immortality. I took lessons from the neighboring town’s band director. I joined a cover band started by some of my high school pals (it was called “Crazy Dawg” and the highlight of our set was our ripping Black Crowes twofer of “Hard to Handle” and “Twice as Hard”). And twice, i partook of what was at the time considered a required ritual for aspiring musicians who needed to know the Secrets of the Stars in order to take that step from the farmhouse attic to getting signed: attending clinics.

Man, what happened to the days when prominent MTV-present rock stars held drum and guitar clinics? Back in the high school days of yore, they were everyfrickinwhere. Tony’s Drum Shop in Appleton, WI regularly hosted hard rock’s big boys of instructional percussion; who can forget Carmine Appice’s regular monthly column in Circus Magazine? These days, the clinics still exist, apparently, but since i don’t pay much attention to the mainstream anymore, i really don’t care about when the Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith is coming to town. 

The one drum clinic i attended back in high school was given by Tommy Aldridge, skin-pounder for David Coverdale’s I-wish-we-were-Zeppelin outfit, Whitesnake (and before that, Black Oak Arkansas), and i can honestly say that i don’t remember learning a goddamn thing from that clinic that i could have used as an aspiring drummer. Wait, that’s not entirely true–i asked him how he preferred to utilize his china boy cymbals, and which point he replied, “what, these?” and then tore into a two-minute drum solo where he incessantly bashed his china boys, much to the delight of the audience, mostly consisting of hesher dudes donned in Zildjian t-shirts with crazily teased and permed hair. His own mushroom cloud of curly locks bouncing into the ionosphere like a prize poodle released into the wild, Tommy finally answered, “I use them for accents, mostly.” OK, great. Today, i haven’t a single china cymbal in my setup, but i do have two cracked cymbals piled on top of each other that give me basically the same effect.

About the only other thing i managed to learn that day about Tommy Aldridge is that apparently it’s possible to noisily smack your lips and annoy your intended audience simply by drinking bottled water. Cripes, it was annoying in Some Kind of Monster when Lars would insist on talking and smacking with a mouth full of pastrami, but at least meat and condiments were involved. How does one manage to make drinking water into an offensive breach of dining ettiquette?

The other clinic i attended was with the guitarist in my band, and it featured Reb Beach, known in the 80s as the right-hand axeslinger of Kip Motherfracking Winger. What did i stand to learn from this clinic? Not a god damned thing. I was merely excited by the prospect of being in the immediate vicinity of a member of Winger. There, i said it.

Apparently, one of the staples of any instrument clinic is pausing during your speech or answers at random intervals to shred on some hot lixx, because Reb managed to do the same thing Tommy did at the drum clinic. As he told the story of meeting Kip(!!) for the first time, he discussed their first conversation, as they met to talk about their new band (no shit; they met not as pals who decided to form a band–they met because Reb’s agent got him a cherry gig playing guitar in Kip Winger’s new band. OOooooooOOOOooo. Being Alice Cooper’s former bassist has its privileges. Which Kip horribly, horribly abused for years).

“Kip sat me down and said, ‘play me something.’ So i sort of went, ‘um, ok,’ and of the top of my head, i spat out this–” and then he launched into the lead riff of Winger’s signature masterpiece, “Seventeen.” Of course, the audience went apeshit. ”as soon as i played just that riff, he stopped me and said, ‘that’s a song.’ I said, ‘What? Really? I just did that off the top of my head.’ ‘Well, play it again,’ he said.” Ah, the rare peek into the mechanics of real sunset strip hitmakers.

The other quoteable bit that came out of the clinic came as Reb discussed Winger’s upcoming third album. “We’re going to record the hardest-sounding album we’ve done yet. No power ballads, no keyboards. We figured, when the guys in Metallica are throwing darts at a picture of your lead singer in their latest video, maybe your image has gotten a little soft.” Yeah, no shit, holmes. And i’m sure having a name like “Reb Beach” did nothing to contribute to that. Naaaaah.

Of course, when that third record came out, no one bought it. It didn’t help that it came out post-Nevermind, sure, but from the little i heard of it at the time, i think even most Poison and Warrant fans were scratching their heads and thinking “um, what the fuck?”

So here’s what i want. I want modern-day musician clinics that i can relate to. I want Coady Willis from the Murder City Devils to put on a drum clinic that covers lighting cymbals on fire. I want Agata from Melt-Banana to hire an interpreter and teach us about effects pedals. I want CoCo The Electronic Monkey Wizard and Tyler from Ho-Ag to teach us to play theremin with our (and others’) heads. But mostly, i want Buckethead to explain to us the benefits of recording guitar tracks in a chicken coop. Do you hear me, Guitar Center? Get on it.

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