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Scott Hansen also wrote: "pps-the other funny story i remember about live bands and sound in the 60's, this lady i used to work for 20 yrs ago, saw the beatles on their 1st american tour (she was older than i, and was an early teen when they came). she saw them in big football stadium, she said the place was filled w/ teen girls, you couldn't hear a thing (the vox amps not loud enough!) and all she remembered from the concert was some girl behind her was so excited and crazy when they came on, she leaped over a couple of rows of girls to get closer and broke her leg. guess that was the beatlemania hysteria....." RINGO STARR Yeah, it's cool that you mention that. Ringo Starr, it is shocking for some people to learn, came up with a very unusual way of doing fills (think all the fills in Abbey Road) that was so influential that the Los Angeles mafia of drummers in the 70's (Jim Gordon, Russ Kunkel and others including the 80's studio drum legends) based their playing off his approach. If you know the record 'Sweet Baby James' , which was James Taylor's breakthrough commercial success in 1971 imagine all the drum fills in 'Fire and Rain'. These are the types of fills that Ringo innovated. They were very syncopated with a lot of space inbetween strokes and they frequently occurred at unusual places in the song form (not always right before the chorus or bridge as is typical) Ringo was, however, not a very technically adept drummer. He could only roll with the left hand leading as an example which is ass backwards viz a vis most of the right handed rock and roll drumming that has occurred over the years. In an interview one time, he was asked how he developed such an idiosyncratic approach to filling and he replied that when the Beatles toured the last time, that the PA was so terrible (and the drums WEREN'T miced in Shea Stadium if you can believe that) and the screaming so loud that the Beatles had a horrible time performing because they just couldn't even hear themselves play. He said the screaming was so ubiquitous that it would go on the whole time they would be playing. Occasionally, however, the screaming would subside a little and he said he would just play a tom fill whenever that happened JUST TO BE ABLE TO HEAR HIMSELF PLAY. It was completely random. SHITTY SOUND = INNOVATION lol! I love it. MAX ROACH Another story of bad sound causing innovation was the famed modern jazz drummer/innovator Max Roach who was credited with freeing the modern jazz drummer from the hegemony of having to play quite quarter notes along with the walking bass line. I forget which record it was off the top of my head, but on one record the bass drum was suddenly just punctuating periodically and not playing time as everyone had always done since the invention of jazz drumming. When asked about that, he said that doing the sessions, someone accidentally kicked over the bass drum microphone and noone noticed till the end of the session. Because the kicks were always played really softly (but definitely audibly) the only kick drums you heard were when he would accent a particular phrase. Well the overheads only picked up the bombs, leaving the quarter note ride inaudible. The takes were so good that they decided not to retrack and the shit hit the fan as conservative jazz fans lambasted him for this daring new style and all the young drummers worshipped at his feet for liberating them from the tyranny of always playing quarter notes. SHITTY SOUND = INNOVATION <mutters as he wanders off contemplating how to turn horrible over subwoofed PA systems into some kind of innovation>