Welcome to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. Hi my friends, I hope you’re travelling well. Don’t forget to send me a message through the website at breathoffreshair.com.au if you’d like to request a special guest that you’d like to hear interviewed.
This week, thanks to Damien in Manchester in the UK, I’m pleased to introduce you to a musician who’s written, produced and played on albums that have sold millions and millions of copies worldwide. In 2016, Rolling Stone magazine listed him among their 100 greatest drummers and in 2011, the same magazine’s readers chose him as one of the top 10 drummers of all time. Pretty high praise indeed for the original drummer of Santana, Michael Shrieve, who joins us today and reluctantly admits that that sort of publicity does make him feel pretty good.
It does, but the drummers know better. You haven’t got the egos of the singers, right? Well, you know, yeah, it’s very nice to be in that list. Sometimes I just gotta say yes instead of complaining that there’s much better drummers than me out there or something like that.
Are there? Who do you admire as a drummer? Well, when I came up, I was listening to jazz drummers. You know, I started with big band drummers like Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa and then I got into Tony Williams, Jackie Jeanette, Roy Haynes, the jazz drummers. And nowadays there’s really wonderful drummers as well.
Mark Giuliani, Brian Blade, Ian Chang. There’s great people all over the place. Yeah.
Well, Michael, you seem to have been a drummer for most of your life. You grew up in San Francisco and you already had a band in your teens. Was that because that was the era when everyone had to be in a band? Kind of, you know, it just seemed like there were the Beatles and then there was the British invasion and then I was there in the Bay Area and there was the hippie invasions.
Along with that was Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead and a whole bunch of music. And so the time I grew up was a very fruitful time musically. It must be getting early in the morning sky, it looks so full.
Dawn is breaking everywhere, light a candle, curse the glare. Toilet curtains, I don’t care, cause it’s alright, I’ll survive. Aside from there being a lot of blues stuff and exciting things happening in jazz, everything was exploding.
So did you know from a very early age that that’s what you wanted to give your life to? I kind of knew in my first year of high school, probably since I was about 15 or so. You formed your own band called Glass Menagerie and you were the house band working with people like B.B. King and Etta James at the time. That must have been insane.
I was fortunate enough to be playing with some guys in a club. I think I was the only white person in the club. It was the African-American club.
And so these kind of people like Etta James and B.B. King would come through and play at the club and we would back them up. You weren’t even old enough to be allowed in the club, were you? I wasn’t even old enough to be allowed in there. What was that like for you in those days? You know, I just took it in stride.
A lot of magical things were happening, but you just kind of take it in stride. And when you look back later, you go, wow, that was really amazing. Situations where I shouldn’t have been in and I was.
Your parents must have been upset about this whole new world that you were entering. I’m sure they had other plans for you, did they? They were very supportive. When I look back now and have my kids of my own and I realize what they allowed me to do, I’m pretty amazed that they gave me that freedom.
Did you come from a musical family? There’s a lot of music in the household and my brothers and my sisters played instruments. So there was definitely music in the house a lot. You say that they were really sketchy times that you grew up in.
In what way? Well, when I say sketchy, I mean, there was a lot of opportunity to mess up. There were drugs around. It became kind of a drug culture.
And I even moved up to Haight-Ashbury when I was very young, like 17 or something, because I thought that’s where the music was. And there was music, but it was also very funky. People were begging in the streets, basically.
It wasn’t really like love and light. Who was around there at the time? Well, I remember that Elvin Bishop lived right around the corner. I would go play with him.
Jefferson Airplane, they had a huge mansion. Somehow I got to know them. And as a matter of fact, before I ever joined Santana, there was a possibility I was going to play with Jefferson Airplane.
And the first airplane ride, literally airplane ride I took, was with some of the guys from Jefferson Airplane. They were considering me to play for them. And Jim Morrison stops by the hotel, and Eric Clapton comes by with a cassette tape of a group he’s very excited about called The Band.
And then I go to the studio with them, and David Crosby comes down with a song that the Byrds didn’t want to do called Triad. I mean, this is a period, though, when Jim Morrison wasn’t mythical yet, you know what I mean? He was just a singer in a band. But it turned out I didn’t end up playing with Jefferson Airplane, but I was having these experiences, like I was saying earlier, where you wouldn’t think I’d be in those situations, and there I was.
Wouldn’t you love somebody to love? You’d better find somebody to love, love. When the garden’s lost, baby, you’re dead, yes, and your mind, your mind is so full of bread. Don’t you want somebody to love? Don’t you need somebody to love? Wouldn’t you love somebody to love? You’d better find somebody to love.
Michael, how did you come to the attention of Santana? Well, this was during the period, of course, of Bill Graham and Fillmore West. And Fillmore West was where all the music happened. That was the mecca of the music scene.
And Bill Graham had a particular way. He presented all the local groups, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother, but he also paired them with really interesting blues people or jazz people. That was the place to be, to hear music.
And at one point, I noticed that there was a thing called Super Session with Stephen Stills and Michael Bloomfield, who’s a very popular guitar player, and Al Cooper. And I asked all my musician friends, I said, let’s go see if we can sit in. They all said, yeah, right.
And I went by myself. I borrowed my father’s car, and I went to just say, least I can say I tried. And I went up to Michael Bloomfield, and I looked up, and I asked him if I could sit in.
And before you know it, I’m on the stage sitting in with these guys. I really did not expect that. I was in shock.
So I go backstage, and then the manager and the bass player, Santana, were there. And I was familiar with Santana. They were a very popular group already.
They had no record out, but they were very popular in the area. They said, we’re thinking about getting another drummer. Can we get your number? So I gave my number.
I never heard from them. But sometime later, I’m walking into a recording studio. As I was walking in the studio, the drummer and Santana was walking out.
And they were recording their first album. They just had a big falling out with the drummer. And a couple of the guys remembered me from that night at the Film War.
It was just coincidence. And asked if I wanted to jam. And we did for a long time.
And at the end of the night, they asked me if I wanted to join the group. So really right place at the right time. Really right place at the right time.
They literally followed me home to my parents’ house, where I woke up my parents and packed a few things, said I’m going. And then went up to the city with those guys that night. How old were you? I guess I was 18.
And that was it. There was no turning back. That was the end of you living at your parents’ house, and you were on the road with Santana.
That was it. That was it. Was your head turning? Were you pinching yourself? Or again, was that something you just took in your stride? I just took it in stride.
But I was impressed by the band’s discipline, and how hard they worked, and how hard they rehearsed every day. And they were popular enough that they had an office. People were getting paid weekly.
And that was a new thing for me. So I was very serious about playing. There was a time when my parents would go to work.
I would start playing at 8 a.m. And I would play up until 3 or 4 every single day, and then go play at night in different places. So if it felt right, it just felt right. I wasn’t pinching myself.
I don’t know why I wasn’t pinching myself. I guess I felt like I belonged there as much as anybody else. Michael, why the drums for you? Why had you chosen them in the first place? In the eighth grade, I got kicked out of class one day and told to go to the principal’s office.
And the principal scolded me. And then I was walking back to the class, and I passed the band room. And right by the door of the band room, which was open, was the percussion section.
That was it. I stayed there so long, I got in trouble for taking so long to get back to the class. But that day, I bought the drumsticks and some carpet samples, and I started playing.
I’ve always wondered why the carpet with drummers. Can you explain that? Well, it just seemed like three separate things to play on that were not going to be loud. And it was like a drum set kind of thing.
But it took a while for me to get drums. I started with just a snare drum. And for the longest time, I didn’t even have my own drums.
And I was playing in bands and stuff. I was always borrowing drums. Simply because you couldn’t afford them? Yeah.
The first time I had my own drums, I was already on the road after high school with a cover band playing in about three or four states. And I saved up the money from that while I was on the road and bought my first drum set while I was on the road. And those were the drums that I played at Woodstock.
It was 1969. Santana was going to Woodstock. Tell us about your experience there.
Is it true that you’re the youngest person to play there? No, there was a younger person than I was. One of the guys in a band called Sha Na Na. Every time I saw him, well, I never see him, but I did see him some years back.
And he was like, I was the youngest. He laid claim to that. I mean, I had people try to convince me I was 16, 17 years old.
And in fact, I had just turned 20 the month before Woodstock. So my birthday’s in July and we played in August. So you drive up to Woodstock.
Well, I assume you drive to Woodstock. Or do you fly in? Tell us about your experience there. Well, we had been on the road that summer.
Bill Graham was a big fan of the band. He kind of managed the band. The producers of Woodstock asked his help because it was getting out of control and they needed someone as professional as him.
And he said he’d do it if we could play on the bill. And that’s how we got in Woodstock. So what he did was he said, there’s going to be a festival that’s so big, it’s going to change all your lives.
What we’re going to do is we’re going to put you on the road and have you play festivals during the summer, big festivals, because we were gigging all the time. But those big festivals of those days, big pop festivals got us used to playing in front of those kind of crowds.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. We arrived at Woodstock about a week and a half early and rented a house.
So we set up all the gear there and we could just play or anything like that. And then the day before the concert on the news they were talking about the traffic that was coming up to this small town and that it was so backed up that people were leaving their cars. So there was no way in except by helicopter.
So there was a helicopter that would take off from the local Holiday Inn Hotel. Everybody would load up there. I think we went with Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin.
And you’re flying in and you’re just seeing this crowd like you’ve never seen before. You can’t relate it to anything else in your experience. So yeah, it was pretty amazing.
Summer time, time, time Child living’s easy Fish are jumping out Hear the cotton lawn, cotton’s high Cotton’s high Your daughter’s rich And your ma’s so good looking, babe She’s looking good now Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby No, no, no, no, don’t you cry What do you think it was about Woodstock that attracted all the kids? As you said, it wasn’t the first of its kind. There were festivals happening everywhere anyway. Why the big buzz around Woodstock? Well, it was a big festival.
It was three days. But I don’t think anybody knows why it all happened. It really felt like it was a convergence of energies that happened at that time.
It was a huge festival with huge names. It was bigger than any of the others. And everybody wanted to go.
I mean, I speak to people all the time who said, oh, my mother wouldn’t let me go or this, that, you know. But it seemed just like the times that we were living in that made the music and made, you know, the Beatles and then San Francisco. And there was a drug culture with LSD and marijuana.
That was something that changed people’s minds. I mean, really changed their heads, the way they were thinking. And people were really thinking that there’s another way to live than the way our parents taught us.
This spread throughout the country. This spread throughout the land. And quite literally, it was a pinnacle at Woodstock.
Literally a pinnacle. Michael, why was Bill Graham so enamored with Santana? Did he have a financial interest or it was simply that he really liked the band? I think he met Carlos first sneaking into the Fillmore. And he took a liking to Carlos.
And then he let the band play one time. And the band had congas. And there were no timbales yet.
But Bill Graham was from New York and he was a salsa music fan, a Latin music fan. And he took a liking to the scrappiness of the group. Like every night after we rehearsed, we would go straight to the Fillmore.
That was like our second home. But Bill just took a liking to the band and liked its work ethic. And he offered plenty of opportunities as well.
Yeah. Tell us about that incredible drum solo that you pulled off at Woodstock. Well, I mean, I think that the beauty of it was that it was filmed.
Because we were doing that every night. It’s just that here it was filmed and magnificently filmed. And it just caught the moment.
I mean, I have better solos, in my opinion, that are on film. But there’s a number of reasons why it still remains popular with people. It amazes me.
I think it’s because, again, it’s a moment. And I look so young. I mean, I look like I’m 16 or 15 or something.
And I’m playing with this motley crew up there. And that’s another question that people always ask. How the hell did you hook up with these people, you know? Like a Puerto Rican, a Nicaraguan, an African-American, a Mexican, and you got your two white boys.
And then the music was so raw. You know, when we played Woodstock, we didn’t have a record out. So nobody was familiar with us whatsoever.
So to win the crowd over like that was really something. And I think the reason was because we were tribal and they were tribal. And I think we just hit that with the groove and everything, the wall of rhythm.
And we were intense. I mean, we were intense. I mean, we were always intense.
It just happened to be caught on film. I know why, in retrospect, when people keep talking about, or I see something, somebody, since YouTube now, it just doesn’t stop. I mean, people say, I just keep coming back to it.
I keep coming back to it. I keep coming back to it. And I don’t.
But when I do, I get it. I could play, too. You know, I could play.
I had good technique. And I think there was a certain kind of sort of joy that was prominent in me that comes through the film. I think that joy that you talk about in you, I think, was pretty evident with each band member, wasn’t it? And you all seemed to share an incredible chemistry, which would have only helped to prop up the music further.
Exactly. And you know what we didn’t do? We always played like this. We played to each other.
We don’t play to the crowd. We played to each other. And we try to turn each other on.
We were always challenging each other. And I think that that comes across. You know, we were so intense.
We were different in that way. We didn’t look at ourselves like entertainers so much as musicians. But we practiced really well, rehearsed and stuff like that.
Did you get on well with the other guys? Oh, yeah. And you hung out with them outside of practicing and playing? All the time. All the time.
Yeah. When I accepted the award at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I said when I first moved up to be with the band in the city, I said, I’m going to play with you. And I said, I soon found out that this was no hippie love thing.
This was like a street gang and the weapon was music. And so we were like a gang. You know, we were like together.
We lived together until we got money and everybody bought their own houses. But, you know, other than that, we were always together. And even after that, we were together too.
You were with them for a number of years. Yeah, I was with them longer than anybody else from the original band. I was with Carlos.
Also, Carlos and I went in a different direction than the other guys wanted to. It was more of a jazz-flavored direction. So the way I look at it is me and Carlos wanted to do this other direction and nobody else liked it.
And that’s when they went and started Journey, a couple of the guys. And the roadie became the manager of Journey. So I always figured if it wasn’t for me, there wouldn’t be any Journey.
laughs Loving, touching, squeezing each other You’re tearing me apart Every, every day You’re tearing me apart Oh, you’re tearing me apart Who was writing all of the Santana stuff at the time? Who was writing the tunes? Yeah. Everybody was writing. I mean, the big hits were cover tunes.
Black Magic Woman came from Fleetwood Mac. Oya Komova came as a suggestion from Bill Graham. And that’s a Tito Puente song.
Let’s see, what else is there? Jingo came from Ola Tunji Record, who, by the way, opens my new album. Jingo was a song that was on a record by Ola Tunji, African percussionist from Nigeria, in 1959 or 69, I forget, it came out. And Jingo was recorded on Santana’s first album, Electrified.
And on my album, which is called Drums of Compassion, where his was called Drums of Passion, and he does the opening. He’s not alive anymore, but I recorded this years ago. He does the opening incantation on my current album.
It’s a beautiful full circle. Why did Santana choose covers to do? I understand that the band put their own spin on all of those songs and worked magically for them. But why choose the covers in the first place? Was the writing not strong enough to try and push out hits? Well, not initially.
It takes a while to get that together. I found that out when I moved in with those guys. Everybody was listening to their own stuff.
And a lot of the music was Latin music. Mongo Santamaria and Tito Puente. And so, if they liked the groove, they just played it.
Because really, they were a groove band. And they did them well. Black magic woman Got me so blind, I can’t see That she’s a black magic woman She’s trying to make the devil love me Don’t turn your back on me, baby Don’t turn your back on me, baby Yes, don’t turn your back on me, baby Stop messing around with your tricks Don’t turn your back on me, baby You just might rid of my majesty You’re turning my heart into stone I need you so bad, magic woman, I can’t Michael, how would you describe that spin that Santana put on whatever the song was? It was like a spell that turned it into something new.
What was that? Well, we would play it over and over again. And we would just play the groove. At rehearsals, we never practiced vocals.
And only Greg Raleigh sang anyway. Except for maybe Oya Komova, one of those kind of chants. But we would just groove.
And just keep working the groove. And I remember thinking, these guys never rehearse vocals. You know, it’s just always the music.
And so in doing that, you create different sections. And you go, oh, where would it go? What would sound good if it went here? Or where should it go now? Black Magic Woman, I brought that tune to Greg Raleigh. And he kept trying to play it at sound checks.
And it took the longest time for people to even desire to do it. But then started working on it. And then Carlos started working on the melody at the top.
And the arrangement. We made a beautiful arrangement of these tunes. I think we had a good sensibility for arrangement before writing.
And why weren’t the vocals ever rehearsed? It wasn’t a priority. Really? Clearly, it wasn’t a priority. Because nobody sang except for Greg.
And it was just taken for granted. Whereas the music was like over and over and over again. It must have been exhausting for you.
If it’s true that the drummer’s the hardest working in a band. And it’s like a physical workout every time you start playing. Are you telling me that you were rehearsing for hours, playing for hours after that? You must have been the fittest guy alive.
I was skinny, yeah. Not anymore. But yeah, I mean, everybody was.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. Playing in that band was definitely a workout.
Nobody put up with anything except full air, you know? They would call you out on it. That’s why I said this was no hippie love thing, because they would get on you. You couldn’t slack off for a minute.
Was it really taxing? I never thought of it that way. To me it was just exhilarating. You must have slept well at night, though, in those days, after working out like that all day long.
Yeah, yeah. Carlos and I would go back to the hotel on the road, and we would listen to music late into the night, the two of us, and we still share that, where we share music that we listen to, you know, that we’re, oh, have you heard this? Oh, have you heard that? And is it old music you listen to these days, or are you listening to the modern stuff too? Oh, I don’t listen to the old stuff so much. I look for new stuff all the time.
So what have you discovered? There’s a couple of things. There’s a woman named Noga, N-O-G-A, Erez, E-R-E-Z. She’s from Tel Aviv, and she’s so cool.
It’s like rap, but it’s just the coolest vibe. I bought a car in the cottage. I got some sand in my baggage.
Got ear licks in my bucket. Spare some spines, drop the pocket. I fit in any socket.
Close the door, I’m a nothing. I got my ticket, I’m a fleecy. I just blink and get a fee.
Watch out, whatcha think of me? So you were with Santana. The last album you played on was Lotus in 1974. Why did you leave them? Well, the last record I played on was, it might have been Lotus, but it was Borbaletta.
And I kind of left in the middle of that record. I was thinking about going, it seemed like it was time, but it was just me and Carlos. Then it became Carlos, where before I always felt it was like he and I, and then it kind of like, it became clear, this is Carlos’ ballgame.
And I had an incident that happened where I had to go to emergency hospital. I thought I was dying and I promised myself if I woke up alive, I’d do the things that I’ve been putting off. And one of them was leaving the band.
I woke up alive, it turned out to be a kidney stone. I got on the phone from the hospital and I quit the band. That’s when I left.
It was time. I remember I took a month off and went to like a health spa in Mexico to just start fresh. And then I put a band together called Automatic Man.
You moved yourself to London to do that, didn’t you? That’s right. Yeah, I moved to London because I was also doing the GO! project with Stormy Amashta and Steve Winwood and Al Di Meola. So they were both on the same label, Island Records, with Chris Blackwell.
And so the band moved to London and I was able to kind of do both projects at the same time. That’s a big change for you to have upped yourself from the US and settled in the UK. It was great.
We loved it. Yeah, I also felt the first time I felt the difference between, of course, I’d been to London a lot, but living there, it’s the first time I realized I felt like safe. Police didn’t carry guns.
There was no there’s nothing like that going on where in the States, a little more dangerous. It’s the first time I kind of realized the difference, felt the difference in my body. And what was the music scene like there in the mid 70s? Well, let’s see what was happening.
Automatic Man was a band that we rehearsed every day as well, and it just never happened that we played well live and the group ended up not being together after we finished that first album. They went on to do a second album, but I didn’t join them for that. So then you were out on your own and started playing with bands like Hagar, Sean Aronson, that was Sammy Hagar, Neil Sean, Kenny Aronson.
Yeah, that was a one off thing. I was living in New York City. So after Automatic Man broke up, I moved to New York City because I’d always wanted to be in New York City.
I started another band called Novo Combo, and we also have a new record coming out, Novo Combo. It’s a bunch of old stuff that was never heard. So if anybody’s interested in Novo Combo, you can go to the Novo Combo Facebook page.
Work with him, do avant garde percussion, that’s what he was doing. And when I finally met him, he wanted to do a pop group with a twist, you know, with Steve Winwood. But I’m not going to say no to that either.
Yeah, so a lot of different things happen, you know, working on people’s records and doing various things. Yeah, one of them that certainly captured my imagination and for anybody who hears it, that you’re also credited for playing percussion on the 1980 album Emotional Rescue by the Rolling Stones. And again in 84, you played on Mick Jagger’s She’s the Boss album.
Tell me about Emotional Rescue. How did that come about? Well, I knew Mick, he used to come to some shows and when Santana played in London, I went to his wedding in the south of France with Bianca on the Celebrity Plane. And then Chris Kimsey, who was an engineer who worked on Automatic Man, was producing the Stones in the 80s, engineering, you know, recording them throughout the 80s in New York City.
So I was friends with Mick, I was friends with Chris. And so I would just go down to the studio and hang out. And, you know, sometimes it’s just me and Mick and Chris.
And then they’d say, oh, you know, we need some percussion on this track or this, that and the other. That’s how it was. I mean, nobody played drums except for Charlie Watts.
But if they needed some percussion, I happened to be there, you know, right place, right time again. It was not a big deal, but I did Emotional Rescue and Tattoo You. And then Mick was working on his first solo album in Nassau, Bahamas.
And he called me and asked me to come down and play some drums. You know, it was with Jeff Beck and I didn’t end up on a lot of tracks. But the track I ended up on is Jeff Beck, Herbie Hancock, Pete Townsend, Mick, myself.
And it’s called Lonely at the Top. It’s the first song on the record. That was fun.
That’s another hard working. I mean, Mick is hard working and steady. And I stayed with him at Chris Blackwell’s house.
So it was just me and him. So it was fun because he’s such a cricket fan. Right.
And so every day he received VHS tapes of the latest cricket game and he’d watch them every night. Yeah. They didn’t ask you to join the band after Charlie’s passing.
Oh, no. Steve Jordan and Keith are really close. And Steve played in Keith’s band when he had a band.
And his style and the way he plays is much more effective than mine for the Stones. So and I think Charlie told them, if I ever go, you know, Steve is the guy. Michael, you’ve collaborated with so many people, with people like Andy Summers, Steve Roach, Buckethead, Freddie Hubbard, Todd Rundgren.
You have written for several films, including Paul Mazurski’s Tempest and Apollo 13. You’ve always been super, super busy. And now you have your own album out.
Well, you tell us about it. Yeah, I mean, I have six or seven solo albums out that I’ve done over the years, and they’re all instrumental. They’re all either jazzy or quirky, adventurous, not weird.
And this is an album that has some of the world’s greatest percussionists on it, with Shaq D Jeanette, Ola Tunji, Ayrto, Zakir Hussain, Stéphane Moss, just a whole bunch of people. It took me many years to complete this record. And I think it’s the record I’m most proud of making, at least for my solo material.
This was the most beautiful record I’ve made, I think. I designed it to be like a chill record. I thought of it one night, I came home from listening to music at two in the morning, and I said, what kind of music could I make that I would want to put on at two in the morning? And that was the premise of starting that record.
So are you a better drummer and interpreter of music today than you were when you started out? I’m a better interpreter of music. I’m not a better drummer anymore. I’m getting arthritis in my hands and this and I really don’t play a lot, although I’m surrounded right here by electronic percussion stuff and I make music every day and I’ve got several albums still coming.
But I don’t go out and play so much anymore and I don’t really have a desire to. So my desire is just to make music, which I find to be really exciting. Michael, thank you so much for your time today, you’ve been extraordinary to listen to and I’m so grateful for your time sharing all of your stories.
An amazing career. You are still living and fabulous stuff you’re putting out. People can go to your website.
You can go to 7D Media and also I have a lot of music and material that I’ve put together that nobody’s heard that I’m putting out on Bandcamp. So if you go to my Bandcamp page, there’s a lot of music that people haven’t heard. Great.
I’m sure everybody listening will be heading straight there. And I’m glad that it’s not over yet. We can look forward to more coming from Michael Shriek.
That’s wonderful. Thank you so much. You’ve been listening to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye.