Johnny Marter

PM: So, what was the show like?

JM: "Basically, it was a big show with Razorlight opening up, then Peter Gabriel went on and he did 45 minutes or so, then we [the SAS Band] were on as the house band. Being the house band, as you probably know, you kind of get everything thrown at you all the other stuff everybody else is not sure about playing. I absolutely adore it, because you get to play everything, all ranges of material, which is something I love to do. We were working with Jamelia, we were working with Corinne Bailey Ray — we did three of her numbers and also three of Jamelia's too. Then there were many South African acts we backed also I just can't remember the names of all of them! Of course, the great thing about it is that it's all completely different — we were interpreting many styles, including hip-hop and complex African rhythms, and translating that to the stage from each of the CDs we were given."

PM: So, once you have had a listen to the CDs, is there much time for rehearsing with each act?

JM: "There is little chance of rehearsing in this sort of environment, and there are often no musical scores handed around either this is 'seat of the pants' stuff! We try to emulate all the material as closely as possible, but if we followed it exactly (especially with the hip-hop stuff), it would just seem too 'tight' and kind of, what's the word soulless, when played by 'real' musicians in a live concert environment. We basically rocked it up a little bit, although Corrine Bailey Ray's material was probably easier to interpret, especially as the recordings were originally made with real musicians, so it was kind of more 'organic'. Some of the other stuff we had to do, as I say, was translating the rhythms of beat boxes and programmed synths, sequencers etc. When playing it live, you want to make it a bit more organic, 'hefty' or whatever, and a bit more 'stadium rock', so instead of it being tight, bitty little drums, you kind of lash out, open up and rock it up!

PM: Have you ever had to work with any pre-recorded material or sequencers?

JM: "We have done in the past, but on this occasion but we decided not to. This was actually decided very early on, but, of course, if anyone had insisted on it we would have. In fact, the first 46664 gig I did was out in Tromso in Norway, and we did a thing with Zuchero. We did a couple of his big hits and I was asked to play along to a click [due to pre-programmed sequences], and they spent many weeks trying to perfect this click mechanism, which was run from a laptop. Needless to say, it worked perfectly in rehearsals but come the live gig it completely fell to pieces! So, of course, being halfway through the gig and having it all drop out from my monitors, I made some sort of 'signs' to our MD, Spikey, to tell him, 'Hey, the click's dropped out! All the extra stuff's gone!' and we kinda had to make it up! Spike quickly hit a few buttons on his keyboard and fattened everything out a bit, Jamie played a bit more too, and we all padded it out a little bit more, and it was seamless!

PM: Playing massive stadiums in front of thousands of people must be pretty nerve-wracking, but what about performing many songs you're not too familiar with, some of which you've never even heard before the gig?

JM: "To be absolutely honest, and it may seem weird, but I've been playing for a long time now and I don't get nervy, I actually don't get nervy. Of course, you're still out on a limb and you know that things can go wrong or whatever, but you do kind of feel 'equipped'."

PM: Do you find that performing, especially under these circumstances, sharpens the senses?

JM: "Yeah, listen I am never, ever more alert in my life than when I am on stage. Every sense you've got is working overtime, everything. Visually, with the wave of somebody's hand or a different nuance in the way a band member is playing their part — your senses are absolutely electric. I think I would have been more nervous about going on and playing with a click that I hadn't actually rehearsed too closely with, and was just hoping it would be all right. That's when I would possibly get nervous."

PM: When you do play to a click track, do the other band members hear it as well?

JM: "No, it's just down to me. They kind of play to me and I am 'queuing' them. But the guys are so good in the SAS Band — they are SO good! I cannot sing their praises highly enough to give them credit. If I go wrong you can sort of, metaphorically speaking, feel a hand on your collar, guiding you in the right direction. It's a bit like falling on an assault course and somebody just picks you up, puts you back in line again. All of the guys are like that; it just seems all so automatic. Should somebody ever stumble, the slightest flicker, there will always be somebody to cover it up! We work so closely together and we are not really 'saying' anything to each other during performance, but we might have a good laugh afterwards!"

PM: Now, I know it's big and it's yellow, but can you tell me about your kit?

JM: "It's actually a Tama Starclassic [in a Red/Yellow fade], and there are a lot of drums there. It's a huge kit. I basically bought everything they did, in every size, in that particular range. It's got two bass drums, 18-inch and 16-inch floor toms, 15-, 14-, 13-, 12-, 10-, 8-inch rack toms and they're all power toms too! Now, I don't use all of those drums all of the time; it's a bit of a mix and match depending on what I have to do. That's the reason I need a big kit, which I know is probably unfashionable at this time. It just depends on what I am doing because, with the SAS Band, we're playing such diverse material. For instance, if I am doing a punky gig, I just use one bass drum, one rack and one floor, but for the tight, funky stuff, I use all the little toms. Then if you're doing Queen numbers or whatever and trying to emulate something big, then you need BIG drums! I'll use perhaps three different snare drums on a gig, which I'll swap over and whip quickly into place. I've got a little 12-inch snare, and I've got a big beefy snare which I use for the big, huge, sort of 'soggy' numbers, and there's another which I can use for just about anything."

PM: Are you endorsed by any manufacturer?

JM: "I have an endorsement deal with Zildjian, and they do look after me very, very well. Previously I have also had endorsements with kits before — with Premier and Sonor — and it was brilliant. They really did look after me and it was marvellous. The problem I ran into, because I play in so many separate bands and so many separate outfits, was actually continuing to use that particular make of equipment abroad, especially in particularly obscure places. Of course, sometimes we have to hire in a kit, because we wouldn't necessarily truck all the gear over to each and every country. Then, if I have to specify the brand of kit (the one with the endorsement deal), and do my 'duty' for the people who have supplied the kit in the UK, they seem to dig up the grottiest, most thrashed, low-end kit possible! This way, not having an actual deal with the kit seems to work out fine for me. I've bought my kit — bought it 'hard cash' — and when I go abroad I just order the best kit they've got. I'll just send my spec through and they give me the best of whatever they've got available, be it Tama, Pearl, Yamaha, DW etc. In fact, anything that is top spec."

PM: Given that you rarely have much time to rehearse, do you find it essential to be able to read music?

JM: "Thereby hangs a tale I got sent to Music College by my music teacher at school, who thought I might be good at it. I have a very quick mind, but only in music! Somehow, and I don't know why or how, I can gather in an awful lot of information very quickly, which is kind of what we need in the SAS Band, where you're having to learn a song in 15 minutes — when you have to learn it, you have to learn it!

PM: How did you get involved in production and engineering?

JM: "Well, that's funny many moons ago, I was in a band called Alaska, which was an offshoot of members from Whitesnake, with Neil Murray, Don Airey and Bernie Marsden. Basically, Bernie managed to get some studio downtime in a little 16-track demo studio, and it wasn't until we all arrived there and put all our gear in that we realized — the reason we got it so cheap was that it didn't actually include an engineer! So it was literally a 'Who wants to do it?' sort of thing. I just sat behind the desk and got into it, and loved it! I made the most horrific mistakes and really pee'd everyone off at the time — losing an amazing guitar take or some great vocal offering — but I did learn to engineer at an early age and very quickly. I just loved it. For me, it's like painting pictures with sound, and I seemed to get pretty good, even as a 'seat of the pants' engineer. I knew very little about the technical side of it, but if things work and you've got a bit of savvy it seems OK. You learn very quickly that you can't plug that into there without getting a huge bang or a buzz; it's like managing to solve one huge puzzle — I absolutely love it.

PM: So how did you and Spike meet?

JM: "What actually happened was, we had a blues band in the studio and they had a gig on at a blues festival. I did a bit of front-of-house sound for a bit of a laugh as there seemed to be a shortage of engineers, so I wandered over there and helped them with the gear. There was this particular blues band that I just completely flipped over — instead of playing boring 12-bar blues, they were really innovative and there was nothing 12-bar about it. In fact, the only 12-bar they did, I think, was a 13-bar! Anyway, they were really, really good — a bunch of guys called the Rhinomen, and I thought, 'My God, they can play!' We were recording them live and someone forgot to replace or change the tape — not me, I hasten to add! I remember they had this great drummer with them, and anyway, I had them back in the studio and kind of faked it being live, and they were so chuffed with it, they decided to do their album down at our place. They said they had a keyboard player coming along to put some overdubs on and, lo and behold, Spikey rolls up. I didn't really know who he was and proceeded to put these amazing overdubs on. It was fantastic stuff, amazing. Great strings, organ parts, and what really blew me away was, he put a squeezebox or accordion sound down, but with the keyboard. It sounded so brilliant the way he played and I was knocked out by it, and that was how I met Spikey!

PM: So, do you have a favourite SAS line-up?

JM: "Oh, that's impossible to answer — everybody is brilliant. There isn't a favourite line-up because it changes all of the time and it's all pretty short notice. We never usually know, perhaps we'll get a run of a couple of gigs, or something will come up in some country or other and basically we won't know until roughly two weeks before who is actually going to be on it and what they are going to do!"

PM: Do you ever get uneasy or feel threatened when backing other drummers, like Roger Taylor, for instance?

JM: "Roger's come up on some very memorable occasions and patted me on the back saying, 'Listen, you're a really great player', which I have really appreciated. However, one of the most daunting things that has ever happened, and that I will never forget, was when we were doing a huge open-air festival in Switzerland, and sometimes you just don't get all of the information or things are lost in translation or something. Anyway, we rolled up and there and I thought we were just on for a small spot during the day. What we'll often do is back some of the local stars, and they can sing in whatever language they like and we'll just learn their stuff — but things runs into absolute hilarity with our female backing singers, who have to phonetically learn all of the backing vocal stuff! Anyway, we had rolled up there and I was appalled the kit they had hired for me was about two sizes too small — I don't know how they managed to get it that wrong; even the cymbals were tiny! So I ended up with this smallish kit, and I walked up to the side of the stage and I thought, 'I know that band I know that band' And its bloody Toto, one of my favourites, with one of my all-time heroes, Simon Phillips on drums! The sun was just going down and the band was sounding the dog's bollocks. I thought, 'Oh, shit, I am not following with this,' looking at my little kit! So anyway, they finished and they were brilliant, and then we get on and do our thing and I was on stage for bloody hours! It was one of the longest [sets] we have ever done and there were so many people on. We were playing away, and Roger Taylor was finishing off with Led Zep's 'Rock & Roll' and we were near the end — the bit where you have to chuck the kit down the stairs — that bit. I had been playing for something like three hours and 20 minutes, my arms were like rubber and I was absolutely shagged. So we got to that bit, 'Lonely, lonely, lonely time', and Roger turned around and looked at me, and there's 150,000 kids all waiting and it's all quiet and I glance over to my left and there's Simon Phillips with one leg up on a bit of rack, with his arms folded and one eyebrow raised; a sort of, 'Go on then!' expression. I just held my sticks out to Roger, saying, 'Do you want to?' He just says 'Nope!' So, anyway, I just went for it, you know, and luckily I just made as much noise as I possibly could and I think it was OK. Anyway, yes, that was pretty daunting, I've got to say!

PM: Very recently you had the opportunity to play with Jack Bruce from Cream (one of Johnny's biggest influences). What was that like?

JM: "Well, there you are, see — its dead funny, it's all come around and last Friday I played with the man! We did 'White Room', 'Sunshine of Your Love' — as a three-piece, which was just brilliant. We basically threw everyone else off stage, leaving me, Jamie and Jack, and it was fantastic! There is nothing like a good three-piece. It was amazing, and one of the highlights of my life!"  0