Post by Eric Albronda on May 30, 2008 11:01:53 GMT -5
Fortunate to have worked with Mickey Waller both in the studio and live I am saddened by his passing . Mickey Waller was a natural drummer and super respected by some of the best like Charlie Watts------Mickey also became a friend mostly during my time in England . Mickey was a great historian and great fun to talk to about history . I doubt seriously that Mickey was happy with mostly being religated to the sidelines as his friends went on to bigger and better , ie Ronnie Wood. Mickey liked Blue Cheer and their novelty he also liked the fine young ladies that passed their way. Anyway , I consider Mickey Waller a friend although my attempts in recent years to contact him have failed, and now he is gone. Kevin Westlake was also a friend of Blue Cheer and a drummer and he and Mickey had a mutual respect for each other although both were hard as hell to get on with for any length of time . Hard Headed Drummers.
It is a shame that we are seeing so many people and musicians pass from liver failure .
Obituary
Mickey Waller
Drummer with the Jeff Beck Group who was a familiar face on the 1960s music scene
Peter Mason
Wednesday May 28, 2008
The Guardian
Mickey Waller, who has died of liver failure aged 66, was a ubiquitous face on the 1960s music scene in London, a superb drummer who played with a merry-go-round of bands, was much in demand as a session musician, and eventually became Rod Stewart's sticksman of choice. He also worked with the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, the Jeff Beck Group, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, and, in 1968, was involved in staging the rock musical Hair in London.
Reserved and unassuming but quietly tough and always his own man, Waller was sought after for his individualist heavy drumming style, known as the "Waller wallop". Always willing to try something different, he would often simply stop in the middle of a song - a legacy of his jazz training - and would also play melodies on the tom-toms. A highly intelligent man, he later took a law degree in his spare time and used his knowledge to win claims for various unpaid royalties. But he was pleased to say that he always made his living through music.
Born in Hammersmith, west London, the son of a council clerk of works, Waller was evacuated as a war baby to his Aunt Nora's home in Belper, Derbyshire. After he returned to his parents' home in Greenford, Middlesex, his father encouraged his interest in drumming by taking him to see the 1955 film The Benny Goodman Story; Gene Krupa's big-band drumming virtually hypnotised the teenager. Waller took lessons with Jim Marshall, maker of the world-famous Marshall amplifiers, and later partly credited his unusual style to the fact that as a lefthander he had learned on a righthanded set of drums.
Although he once aspired to become a professional cyclist, he opted for music, first making his living as a 19-year-old in a rock'n'roll band called the Flee-Rekkers, who had a low-key hit in 1960 with a version of the song Green Jeans. He soon left to play with the higher profile Joe Brown and the Bruvvers, and in 1963 joined the Cyril Davies R&B All Stars, a band that featured Long John Baldry on vocals.
As was common at the time, Waller flitted from band to band, fitting in stints with Marty Wilde and the Wildcats and Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, before being chosen by Little Richard as his drummer on two British tours. While with Wilde in 1964, he also stood in for the Rolling Stones' Charlie Watts at a gig at Chatham town hall, after Watts (a long-time friend) failed to return from a holiday.
By 1965, Waller had joined a new band, the Steampacket, which featured Rod Stewart. Two years later, he joined Stewart, Jeff Beck and Ron Wood in the highly regarded Jeff Beck Group, contributing to their heavy blues feel on two well-received albums - Truth (1968) and Beck-Ola (1969). Both were transatlantic hits that to some extent laid the ground for Led Zeppelin's brand of blues-influenced heavy rock.
Around this time Waller played a couple of gigs with Hendrix in the US, and is also believed to have been earmarked by the Stones' Brian Jones as the drummer for a proposed Brian Jones Band, which failed to come to fruition because of Jones's death in 1969. Now at the height of his prominence, he had already been chosen as musical co-director of Hair, occasionally playing drums in the show that opened in London in September 1968.
When both Waller and Stewart left the Jeff Beck Group, Stewart asked Waller to feature on his debut solo album, An Old Raincoat Won't Ever Let You Down (1969) - and thereafter Waller became a fixture at the drumming stool on many of Stewart's solo efforts, including Every Picture Tells a Story (1971), the album which included Maggie May.
A great lover of dogs, Waller would, on occasion, turn down lucrative work if it prevented him from walking and feeding his pets. He was especially proud that one of his boxers, Zak, barked the opening to Sweet Little Rock'n'Roller on Stewart's 1974 album, Smiler.
Over the years Waller built up an impressive array of playing credits with musicians such as the Walker Brothers, Cat Stevens, Berry, Eric Clapton, Bo Diddley, Dusty Springfield and Paul McCartney. He also played in the band of Tex- Mex accordion player Flaco Jimenez in the mid-1980s. Blues and R&B were, however, his true love, and after much studio work in the 1970s and 80s he continued, throughout his later years, to play live in outfits such as the Deluxe Blues Band, the Terry Smith Blues Band, and his own Mickey Waller Band - mainly in pub venues that catered to his love of Guinness.
Although never married, he remained on close terms with his former long-standing girlfriend Gabrielle; his daughter Louise, by another relationship, died at an early age of meningitis.
ยท Mickey Waller, drummer, born September 6 1941; died April 29 2008
It is a shame that we are seeing so many people and musicians pass from liver failure .
Obituary
Mickey Waller
Drummer with the Jeff Beck Group who was a familiar face on the 1960s music scene
Peter Mason
Wednesday May 28, 2008
The Guardian
Mickey Waller, who has died of liver failure aged 66, was a ubiquitous face on the 1960s music scene in London, a superb drummer who played with a merry-go-round of bands, was much in demand as a session musician, and eventually became Rod Stewart's sticksman of choice. He also worked with the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, the Jeff Beck Group, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, and, in 1968, was involved in staging the rock musical Hair in London.
Reserved and unassuming but quietly tough and always his own man, Waller was sought after for his individualist heavy drumming style, known as the "Waller wallop". Always willing to try something different, he would often simply stop in the middle of a song - a legacy of his jazz training - and would also play melodies on the tom-toms. A highly intelligent man, he later took a law degree in his spare time and used his knowledge to win claims for various unpaid royalties. But he was pleased to say that he always made his living through music.
Born in Hammersmith, west London, the son of a council clerk of works, Waller was evacuated as a war baby to his Aunt Nora's home in Belper, Derbyshire. After he returned to his parents' home in Greenford, Middlesex, his father encouraged his interest in drumming by taking him to see the 1955 film The Benny Goodman Story; Gene Krupa's big-band drumming virtually hypnotised the teenager. Waller took lessons with Jim Marshall, maker of the world-famous Marshall amplifiers, and later partly credited his unusual style to the fact that as a lefthander he had learned on a righthanded set of drums.
Although he once aspired to become a professional cyclist, he opted for music, first making his living as a 19-year-old in a rock'n'roll band called the Flee-Rekkers, who had a low-key hit in 1960 with a version of the song Green Jeans. He soon left to play with the higher profile Joe Brown and the Bruvvers, and in 1963 joined the Cyril Davies R&B All Stars, a band that featured Long John Baldry on vocals.
As was common at the time, Waller flitted from band to band, fitting in stints with Marty Wilde and the Wildcats and Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, before being chosen by Little Richard as his drummer on two British tours. While with Wilde in 1964, he also stood in for the Rolling Stones' Charlie Watts at a gig at Chatham town hall, after Watts (a long-time friend) failed to return from a holiday.
By 1965, Waller had joined a new band, the Steampacket, which featured Rod Stewart. Two years later, he joined Stewart, Jeff Beck and Ron Wood in the highly regarded Jeff Beck Group, contributing to their heavy blues feel on two well-received albums - Truth (1968) and Beck-Ola (1969). Both were transatlantic hits that to some extent laid the ground for Led Zeppelin's brand of blues-influenced heavy rock.
Around this time Waller played a couple of gigs with Hendrix in the US, and is also believed to have been earmarked by the Stones' Brian Jones as the drummer for a proposed Brian Jones Band, which failed to come to fruition because of Jones's death in 1969. Now at the height of his prominence, he had already been chosen as musical co-director of Hair, occasionally playing drums in the show that opened in London in September 1968.
When both Waller and Stewart left the Jeff Beck Group, Stewart asked Waller to feature on his debut solo album, An Old Raincoat Won't Ever Let You Down (1969) - and thereafter Waller became a fixture at the drumming stool on many of Stewart's solo efforts, including Every Picture Tells a Story (1971), the album which included Maggie May.
A great lover of dogs, Waller would, on occasion, turn down lucrative work if it prevented him from walking and feeding his pets. He was especially proud that one of his boxers, Zak, barked the opening to Sweet Little Rock'n'Roller on Stewart's 1974 album, Smiler.
Over the years Waller built up an impressive array of playing credits with musicians such as the Walker Brothers, Cat Stevens, Berry, Eric Clapton, Bo Diddley, Dusty Springfield and Paul McCartney. He also played in the band of Tex- Mex accordion player Flaco Jimenez in the mid-1980s. Blues and R&B were, however, his true love, and after much studio work in the 1970s and 80s he continued, throughout his later years, to play live in outfits such as the Deluxe Blues Band, the Terry Smith Blues Band, and his own Mickey Waller Band - mainly in pub venues that catered to his love of Guinness.
Although never married, he remained on close terms with his former long-standing girlfriend Gabrielle; his daughter Louise, by another relationship, died at an early age of meningitis.
ยท Mickey Waller, drummer, born September 6 1941; died April 29 2008
