Back To The Beach

Back To The Beach

Back to the Beach was a movie in which I played a track for the sound track record.
I got a call from Herbie Hancock's manager about it- the track was to be the infamous surf drum solo tune "Wipe Out", which as a California kid in the 60's I had played extensively (along with every other want to be drummer, on my school desk, to see who could play it faster or longer!!!)
Dweezil Zappa was to be the guitarist-and I was very excited to play with him (as I recall, he was under driving age then, and it reminded me of the first time I met him in the 70's while working with Frank - he was only 2 or 3 and was a cute little kid with long hair running around the rehearsal studio wearing a superman outfit with tights and a little cape!!!). He somehow had grown up by then and within a year or two became an amazingly accomplished guitarist!
Herbie of course was something like a god or hero to me as I had listened to and transcribed so much of his music with the Miles Davis group - so the irony of being called to play with a hero and my former boss and mentor's genius son on an almost comical surf drum classic was bordering on the absurd!
Herbie wanted us to lay down the basic track and he would over dub later, so I took control of getting a tempo, setting up a click track and ran the structure down with multiple drum solos which I edited together so they built up in complexity as they progressed.
Herbie was so impressed with my work he gave me and Dweezil co credit as artists and producers on the track which was later nominated for a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental! (more absurd irony!!!)
What I played for the solos was the classic 16th note tom part, but played with my feet on double bass drums!!! I then did the accents on top with my hands on the toms using flammed ruffs!
I must say, for whatever it's worth, that I'm proud of the drums on this and proud to have played with Herbie and Dweezil inspite of the hokey-ness of the the whole movie and music context!