Budgie

Modern Drummer, Sept 1990

If there's one thing you can't accuse Budgie and his band, Siouxsie and the Banshees of, it's standing still. Like the Damned, the Cure, and a few other bands born of British punk, the Banshees (and their spin-off, the Creatures) have shown a growing musical maturity with each new recording. Back in 1976, though, when the band debuted with Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols on drums, playing their free-form version of "The Lord's Prayer," chances are that not too many people expected big things from them.

Nonetheless, they continued on, and today are one of the most successful and adventuresome bands of that original British pop renaissance, having released ten albums, plus two albums and an EP under the Creatures banner. Former Slits and Big in Japan drummer Budgie joined the Banshees following the release of their second album, and has been with them ever since.

Budgie's style has always been very tom-oriented, with his rhythms being a central element to the Banshees' arrangements, which can span from delicacy to near violence. His drumming came into a real forefront, though, with the birth of the Creatures, the voice/percussion duo Budgie and Siouxsie Sioux began experimenting with on a lark nine years ago. Larks often result in some pleasantly surprising results, though, and indeed, Boomerang, which represents the first we've heard from the Creatures in seven years, is one of the more interesting percussion-based releases in recent memory. (When was the last time you heard a pop record written and performed almost entirely on drumset, marimba, and steel drums?)

After two years spent recording and touring behind the Banshees' last record, Peepshow, Siouxsie and Budgie retired to a retreat in the English countryside of Surrey called the House In The Woods, where the incubation of ideas for Boomerang began. Not knowing where they would eventually record the album, the pair took off to Spain with their gear and a mobile studio. After staying in various converted castles and convents, they settled on a working ranch in Jerez, and in a former convent began putting the album together.

The final project in many ways is as satisfying as any Banshees project. Because the duo limit their musical tools to percussion and voice--with the possibility of adding horn overdubs later--melodic lines had to either come from the drums or mallet instruments. Since Budgie is no expert in those fields, he was left up to his own devices to build the Creatures' songs almost from scratch. In this case, a little knowledge went a long way. But let's go back to the beginning and find out how this unusual project began....

Budgie: In 1981, when we were rehearsing for the Siouxsie and the Banshees Juju album, Siouxsie and I were playing a track called "But Not Them," while [bassist] Steve Severin and [guitarist] John McGeoch were out of the studio having some coffee. When they came back, they said, "Sounds great, let's just leave it like that and work on it in the studio." We ended up having more than enough material for Juju, so once we finished the album, "But Not Them" was still sitting around. Later Siouxsie and I decided to try to make something out of that kind of an idea--just using the drums.

It was really an electric kind of atmosphere--just the two of us; we didn't know what was going to happen. It was quite on the edge. So we worked out roughly "But Not Them," "So Unreal," "Mad Eyed Screamer," and a version of "Wild Thing" by the Troggs--with nothing else, just the drums. Then for three days we went into a brand new studio that Mike Hedges co-owned. This was the first time we had worked with him. [Hedges would later become a constant production companion to the Banshees.] So we put down the five tracks and mixed them. We didn't do any EQ on the drums--they were recorded flat--and it was live, more or less all first takes. And from there we just built up percussive layers.

AB: What sort of drums were you using at the time?

Budgie: I'd just gotten a new Gretsch kit at the time. When I joined the band I'd inherited a big black Pearl kit with heavy heads on it, like Remo CS Black Dots, and that was the Banshee drum sound I had kind of adopted--"thud thud thud thud." I'm not saying it was bad, because Kenny Morris, who I had replaced, was a good drummer. I actually adopted a lot of his style by learning his parts. But when I got down to this rehearsal space, they imported some Gretsch shells. I put on white Ambassadors, and that for me was the biggest change. It was like, "Wow, this is what drums should sound like." They should resonate. I'd heard the shells on their own, and there were the notes, and I thought, "Well, I've got to keep this," and I put some bottom heads on as well.

That's really where I started to learn my own personal way of treating drums. I didn't put anything on the kick drum so that the shell wasn't interrupted at all, and I used a floor stand for the toms. I think that's when I started to become aware of the tuning of the drums, because I had to work more closely with the vocals. I didn't tune to specific notes, but I definitely had to coordinate the notes.

While we were doing this recording, which would end up being the Creatures' EP Wild Things, I'd gotten a marimba, and we'd start to pick out the notes of the drums with it. There's a song called "Thumb" on there, where it's a drum pattern from the floor tom up to the top rack tom, just building over a phrase. I used the marimba to pick out the notes and play harmonies with that. So we started to do songs that had the melodies suggested by just the drums. And the more I did that, the more tuneful they got. Sometimes it would jibe with the chords of the song, sometimes it made weird kinds of fourths and fifths and different musical intervals. What we're doing now really developed from there.

AB: You don't use that kit anymore, do you?

Budgie: The Gretsch kit toured with me for years, and I wanted to keep it, but it was getting knocked around a bit. I loved the sound I got from it. I put it on a Pearl rack, but now it's gone into storage for a while, because Tama approached me with a deal. It was like being a kid in a candy store: "I'll have one of those, and one of those..." [laughs]

AB: Did this new choice allow you to experiment more with "tuning" your kit?

Budgie: "Well, I got one of those 20" gong drums that they make, with the head pulled over it like a timpani head. I'd seen Zildjian clinics in Windsor and London with Mel Gaynor and Simon Phillips, and they both had used one, but they always seemed quite flappy to me. But if you put an Ambassador on it, and get a real low note out of it, it can work quite well. I had the idea that when you roll around on the toms, instead of ending up on the cymbal, you end on this really resonant low note--much more attuned to Balinese music or something. Anyway, that sort of ended up somewhere around a low C, and I found that then the kit almost came out in octaves. The middle tom would be a high C, and then a higher tom is like an E or an E flat, and then on to D and F. It slightly altered on different songs. On the last Siouxsie and the Banshees tour, for Peepshow, I was tuning a lot between songs, maybe bumping things just a half step--not to specific notes, but just to what sounded right.

AB: The toms in your basic kit are pretty big.

Budgie: They're power toms as well. I'm considering that they're maybe on the large side. Just really experiencing them for the last year, I think they have a really great sound, but I think I'd like something a bit quicker in response. The nice thing about having the opportunity to choose what you want is being able to choose a whole rack of small toms. I began to use them in addition to my basic kit. They come in 8", 9", 10", 11", 12", and 13" sizes. It's hard to get a 9" head, but this way there's no gap in the interval. I'd have five of these toms rack-mounted up to my left. I even tuned these to some kind of a Chinese scale, a weird kind of Eastern scale. I've got a piccolo snare to the left of me, which I've always used as a second snare or with the snares off. I would also have another floor tom behind that, which I put an Evans Hydraulic head on, which is kind of "doooojg" --you know, that Evans flap. So I'd have this kind of very tight, kind of Eastern thing, and then this "doooojg" --so again it's that similar kind of thing to having the gong drum on the other side of the kit. I'd have a remote hi-hat back there as well, plus a Tama double kick on the one kick drum. So what I could do was swivel around and put my right foot on the left pedal of the double bass pedal, put my left foot on the remote hi-hat, and use a second kit. Now, that worked great for the live show, but it's quite different in rehearsal situations and when you want to move quickly. It's a hell of a lot of gear to set up. So I've recently limited it down to kind of a basic, five-tom kit. And now we are getting more into the realm of sampling and pads, which I started getting more into on the last tour with the Banshees. I've already sampled all the small toms, and I've gotten Octapads, so rather than having this one huge kit, I can have several other kits.

AB: When you went to Spain to record Boomerang, I would imagine you didn't want to carry too much stuff around.

Budgie: Actually, I took the whole lot. That was one of the reasons for going to Spain. When we went to Hawaii to record the first Creatures album, we flew off with a pair of drumsticks, and that was it. So we had to hire everything in Hawaii. We also hadn't done a lot of preparation for that first album. This time I had been writing ahead of time; we spent seven days figuring out rhythms and beats--not specifically songs, but ideas for vocal melodies and drum patterns with drums on top. I'd used the full extent of all this equipment on the music I'd been working on, so I had to take it with me. We had to go somewhere in Europe so that we could transport it all, and Spain had a lot of things that we were familiar with or that we thought we'd like to investigate further. We had always been aware of Spanish film directors, versions of Carmen and the power of the Flamencan dance troupes--the brilliant syncopation of the beat, the clapping.

AB: You did a little recording of that for the song "Manchild."

Budgie: We got some of the young kids from the local ballet school in Jerez, which is where we ended up recording the album. That was a good experience, but it was a difficult one as well. We couldn't all have individual headphones, so we had to have an open speaker at the side, just playing the rhythm box track. So they weren't really aware of the format of the song. I was singing the song to myself and trying to conduct them as well: "Que, que?" "Si, si." It was pretty frustrating, and it all had to be done very quickly. We really enjoyed it though. They thought I was a bit crazy. We were able to communicate, mostly by signs. Mike, Siouxsie, and I were the only ones who spoke English, and that had a lot of effect of the final outcome of the record as well. We didn't have a lot of conversation; we did have a lot of time to think.

One of the reasons we recorded in Jerez is because it is in the area of Andalucia where the Flamencan dance troupe La Cumbre Flamenca is from. Before we left we had seen a performance of theirs. One of the dancers, an old lady of about 80 years old, was the grandame of the troupe. Their performance was variations on every possible angle they could take with two acoustic guitars, walking sticks--which they would bang on the floor--and their dancing. She did this thing where she would come to the front of the stage, doing this very loud thing, and suddenly it would come down to just a whisper. She would just be doing this heel-to-toe movement, and the noise was like the best double-stroke roll you've ever heard. And then she just shifted her weight to the other foot without interrupting a thing. The whole place was just hushed. And she had this stern face just glaring out, like, "I am totally in control," and then she just brought it all up to a crescendo again. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. I suddenly realized that that was so humbling. So much of what we see around today is kind of geared for show and is so much macho bravado.

AB: Especially in drumming...

Budgie: Drumming is a very physical thing, yeah. This was very physical, but very sex-less. It didn't matter that she was a woman, she was a strong person. And it was so simple. It really hit you how you don't need all the excess; it was pure control, and it was just the right amount of delivery. I just think it's so important. It's like when I saw a clinic with Peter Erskine. He held everybody captivated for an hour or so, and all he was doing--"all he was doing," I say --what he was doing was "ding dinga ding dinga ding," and all the permutations. Every other limb was doing something different, while the hand was still going "ding dinga ding dinga ding" ...and I just going, "How is he doing this?" [laughs] But he just taught you the same thing. I mean I'm sure with other groups he has played at people, but I think something you learn in time is economy. And I think coming from that experience and then going to Spain.......You see, where we were working was on a working ranch, where people were simple farmers who worked the land every day. You suddenly realize that their lives are so important. I know now that they are still there today, while I'm sitting here in New York doing an interview; they're out there waiting for the sun to be in the right place or whatever. And that really brought me down to some different place; I needed that. It was like a recharging, to realize how above your station you must not get.

AB: Do you think that attitude worked itself into the music?

Budgie: I think so. Because it certainly wasn't like we went out trying to find a lot of flamenco guitar players or the local percussionist: "Hey, come along and jam." It was really a place to go and connect all our ideas together and make something that was personal; it helped us to find an expression.

The conditions were almost totally against us, though. We were in a stone barn about 40'x60', and it was like this cacophonous sound. I had one drum sound -- loud! That was it. There was very little control over it. We recorded the whole thing on a PZM with a parabolic reflector sitting above my kit, behind my head. If I was using the snare and toms primarily, then we could close-mike those. But if I hit anything else, then we just used close ambience. And then anything further away from that just sounded like it was 60' away. So we had to devise new techniques; make it up as we went along. And we were using a 16-track mobile desk, with no Dolby, so automatic drop-ins were out of the question.

AB: How did you go about choosing that sort of equipment?

Budgie: Mike Hedges told us about the quality you get with a 16-track. Rather than spreading 24 tracks out on a 2" tape, you're only dealing with 16. Plus the desk was primarily designed for recording classical music performances. We were able to do compression between the channels, so we could put everything down to two channels and then compress that to the next one, and then pass it on--in theory at least. You get a very warm compression with the desk itself, much more so than any outboard compressors you could bring in.

Now, that was the plus side of it. The thing is that this board had probably never been used in as harsh an environment as the central plains of Spain, where it's dusty and hot, and the amps couldn't cope with it. We had to make leads up as we were going along. Mike was doing a lot of wiring, a lot of engineering. We ended up using about 18 days to record out of 30, so we were pretty nervous out there. But I'm sure in a way that helped, that was kind of part of the creative process. The recording is more like a diary, a document of where we were.

AB: You were saying before how you didn't really go out and get Flamenco guitarists and jam with them just to sound "Spanish." In a similar vein, you used steel drums and other instruments that people might be used to hearing in other contexts, like in Caribbean music. But the way you used them, one doesn't really think of "Caribbean music." It doesn't sound like you're trying to imitate.

Budgie: It sounds to me more Chinese in a way. Take a song like "Venus Sands": It's got these heavy backbeat drums, and it's steeped in reverb. And I just wanted a phrase to go on top. And basically I found two steel drum pans, two that have high melody--the lead pans-- and it was more kind of like finding an expressive movement. I find that has a lot to do with playing as well. It's more like dancing sometimes, seeing where your hands fall. Because there's no real logical tuning to our eyes. It's more convenient for the rhythms and melodies they're most likely to play in Caribbean songs. But when you come to it with Western eyes, if you like, with that kind of scale we're used to on our marimba or piano, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. So that's what I found nice about it; I wasn't limited to having to understand where everything was. If I were used to playing steel drums pans I would probably end up playing Caribbean-sounding parts. But it started to come out like Chinese or Balinese or something. And I love that kind of juxtaposing and mixing instruments, mixing the steel drums with the marimba and the vibes, and then putting the whole thing out of context anyway.

AB: That reminds me of a statement Boris Williams of the Cure made about limitations actually being something he likes to hear in a band.

Budgie: I don't know if this is a cheap excuse, having a lack of technical ability on certain instruments. I mean, we were talking about Peter Erskine before, and obviously we admire his technical prowess. I know my limitations, but I'm not willing to let it put me off. And sometimes you can find things because you are stumbling for a way to do it. When nobody is showing you what's supposedly the correct way or the tried and tested way to do it, you may well come across a way that's as effective as something that you can be taught.

AB: Before you went to Spain, how much did you have worked out? Did you actually have any melodies or words?

Budgie: Siouxsie had a few lyrics written, certain ideas, motifs for songs. "Standing There" and "Venus Sands"--probably the idea for those songs were there. And we had "You!" with the 808 track, the drum part; that was all coming through the PA system. Siouxsie had a Dictaphone and started singing a melody and just the word "you," which was like a punctuation, and that kind of gave us an arrangement of things as the key word. When she sang "you" into the Dictaphone and we played it back, it was so crunchy that the thing would go "crackle," and everything else just crunched into the background. We wanted to retain that idea when it came time to mix it. We actually only achieved it when we came to cut it. We put more compression on the cut so when the "you" comes in, the rest of the track kind of gets pushed down and comes out again.

We also had "Speeding" in a far different version. Siouxsie was on the harmonica, and I was on the Roland Space Echo, just going mad. With "Fury Eyes" I think I had almost written the whole marimba part. For "Pluto Drive" I pieced the words together, got a meter together, and then thought of a way to put a tune together as well. That was the first time I actually sat down and worked a song out. I had two or three different parts on the marimba all worked out, and it was quite complicated because they were all different cuts and I had to actually envision it all together.

AB: Did you use any sort of notation while you were doing this?

Budgie: I've since started to figure it out. But most of the actual musical parts were in my head. I can work out the bar counts and things and use little notations as to cues. But it was hard for me to envision how it was going to come together at the time. For "Manchild," we got the 808 driving on its own, but also driving an old analog synth. Mike is getting a collection of analog synthesizers together. He loves old equipment, and he thinks it's got more quality of sound. So this thing was pumping away going [mimics driving beat], and that just kicks off the marimba melody, and the lyrics were already there.

AB: When you were recording Boomerang, were you using click tracks or sequencers? I would imagine you knew ahead of time you were going to be doing a lot of overdubbing.

Budgie: I used the 808, but not all the time. Some things were live takes, like "Standing There," which was quantized later for the 12" single. There are several stops within the song that were just a bit too long. "Killing Time" is a classic for that. I'd be jumping up in my seat and then coming in just in time on a cymbal crash. It was like, "Phew, just about made it." But I love things like that. Sometimes it didn't quite work--the pause is a little too long--but you've got to put yourself that far out because you only do it once. You're earning that one chance to record, and that recording stays around for the rest of your life. So you might as well have a go for it. What you've got to do is combine all the best things you'd like to hear happen in 20 concerts--all into one moment.

AB: Do you think that the way you worked with the Creatures will influence your work with the Banshees at all, or has it in the past?

Budgie: Yeah, I think so. With the B-sides of the Banshees singles, we've always been pretty experimental, but it's always been hard to get that to come through on the album tracks. And I think what we've tried to do with the Creatures is exploit that kind of mischievous nature you have when the pressure is not really on. Plus, with a band, like with the Banshees, a lot of your ideas are focused in a certain way, because you know you are going to pass them around to the other members of the band, and they're going to come out of some sort of filtration system. With the Creatures it's just me and Siouxsie, which is the reason I think the overall feel of the album is more direct, more spontaneous. And I think some of that attitude has got to run through to the next Banshees thing--just to kind of step out of the pressure and enjoy it a lot more, be more spontaneous.

Even though Boomerang has become more popular than we might have expected--we certainly didn't intend to be in the States doing press, and we certainly hadn't considered playing live--the pressures of the Creatures is different. It's almost like we've reinvented ourselves. People have had so many preconceptions of us for such a long time. We did some live TV in Britain just before Christmas, and we got in the two brass players from the album, and we got Martin Ditcham who plays with Sade. He was playing percussion and coming around the marimba a bit. I had also met up with Tony Butler, the bass player with Big Country. And it was nice getting the feedback from them as musicians that we respect. They would say, "Some of these song are great. The arrangements and stuff are really unusual." And I had never thought of other people listening to it in that kind of way--going through them and working out the arrangements. Everything just took on a new kind of shape. I was banging at the kit kind of suddenly realizing, "These guys ar playing the song." And I was keeping time, feeling something like Count Basie in a very small way. When you're listening to all the parts to see if they're all doing the right things, it's really difficult to think about what you're doing as well. But it worked. It was a real good experience, and it was also the first time we played with other people outside of the Banshees.

Then we did the Jonathan Ross show, which is a TV show along the line of the David Letterman show, and they have a house band. We wanted to do "Pluto Drive," and we thought we'd use the house band. We let their drummer play the drum parts; it's live TV, so I thought I'd let him cope with the nerves on that one. I just played a couple of choir voices on the keyboard, and that was another good experince, because I felt, "Yeah, I can actually control it from another angle. You don't have to be behind a drumkit." And it didn't feel wrong. I thought that I would feel out of control, I thought I might feel superfluous, like I wasn't involved in it. And that was the first time I stepped out from behind the kit and played another instrument in a live situation.

AB: Standing up must have been unusual.

Budgie: I could dance and move around, you know, shake me ass, tap the boot. [laughs] But I've no intentions of wanting to be up front all the time. Though I suppose that was a little pointer to what we're doing now with the Creatures live

AB: How are you going about recreating the older material? Technology has changed quite a bit since the earlier Creatures recordings.

Budgie: We spent the last week before we came here getting all the old tapes out from the first album and the EP and just going through all these great old analog sounds that were recorded with old pre-digital compressors and noise gates. We've got some really raucous kinds of shaker and percussion sounds, and pieces of metal that I hit. This was all before the days of sampling. So we put them onto DAT tape and stuck them all onto an Akai S1000 sampler, and then rigged up the sequencers and played the marimba parts back in again. It sounded so much harder. It was more like Suicide meets the Creatures or something. It's really more of a dance feel. But then some things had to be thought of differently. Some things I've got to go out and play the top line melodies; some Im just going crazy, thrashing about on the set.

AB: When it's time to write or arragne a Banshees or Creatures song, do you ever find yourself going for particular sounds or instruments or moods in your playing, based on what the lyrics are?

Budgie: Actually, I usually write down the lyrical cues rather than the number of bars, for instance. I write down the bar counts, but the way I know where I should be on the bars is by writing down the key word at the end of that phrase. I listen to the lyrics all the time. When I started playing I always knew the lines of songs. When we were working out the Banshees arrangements from day one, I knew the patterns, and I would take the key from when the vocal changed. And I've always been that way with every band I've worked with.

It's always so important to back the vocalist up. Back up every inflection, every word. If the word comes down one night, you come back behind it. Almost every beat has got to change. I found very much so with Siouxsie that the arrangements took on different shades because her inflections changed. It's very important, I think. You can bombast a lot of songs into submission. Everybody knows the tune so well that you tend not to feel that you need to know the lyrics. But the voice is the subtlest instrument. It's got to be the most personal instrument that that exists. Something I've always tried to do is punch out syllables. Try to find a subtle way to do that without losing the beat. Or you can even make the whole beat around it; the syllable can suggest the meter. With just drums and voice, it's different, because you're really supporting in a more general way.

AB: Does Siouxsie ever suggest drum parts? I've heard that she plays some drums.

Budgie: She played drums and percussion on a couple of the songs on Boomerang. She's a frustrated drummer. She always says, "Play like this." The song "Burnup" from Peepshow is about a mad pyrotechnic person who is burning up the rain forests. The way the song went was like an analogy of that. So it was like this hoedown, this hurtling along feeling, and Siouxsie said, "Play like a train." Her favorite trick is taking away my hi-hats. It's great doing things like that. Little disciplines like that are quite interesting. Taking away the crutch you always lean on. It's really difficult; suddenly you've got to keep the tempo some other way. It's recommended.

AB: You've never overdone it with cymbals on Banshees records, and Boomerang doesn't have too much in the way of cymbal crashes, either.

Budgie: One that I do use is the Zildjian EFX. I went down to Zildjian before going away and thought, "What are all these about?" I found they actually had slightly different notes within the same size, and they're like somewhere between a cymbal and a crotale. I'd almost be quite happy just playing them because they are so small and quick--and I love splash cymbals. On "Manchild," for instance, you can hear the whole pattern; it's quicker and simpler. They don't clutter up the top line, and they don't get in the way of the voice. Cymbals take up so many frequencies. I always like that Peter Gabriel album where he didn't have any cymbals at all. It had such a clarity of sound. And the thing was you could use the gates down on the toms in a massive way because, if you gate the cymbals on the same track, obviously you change the tom sound. And big cymbals can be such an obvious way of punctuating things, like after the end of a fill, or at the end of a song. It's like, "This...Is...Going...To...Be...The...END!"

AB: As far as mallet instruments go, have you ever gotten to play them with the Banshees to the extent that you do with the Creatures?

Budgie: I think I first used marimba on the Banshees record Hyaena, on the song "Swimming Horses." The song started with Robert Smith playing it on piano, so I was doing this kind of melody, which is more like a sequence-sounding thing. I really love Phillip Glass, that kind of repetitive music. I always tend to do things more in that kind of linear way. I used it quite a lot on the cover versions album, Through the Looking Glass. I loved doing it on "Gun," the John Cale song. That part is a reversal of the guitar parts, just the same notes on a different beat, and we just played around with different time signatures.

AB: Have you ever taken lessons on melodic instruments?

Budgie: No, I still have to figure out where middle C is. I just haven't had the time or the inclination.

AB: You seem to have a somewhat of a knowledge, though.

Budgie: I think you can't help but pick that up somehow when you're in a band. It's trial and error, watching the people and picking up the chords. There's a great marimba player, Evelyn Glennie, and she's deaf. Again, it's totally humbling to watch someone like that who's so gifted struggle with a handicap. When she tunes, she knows what C is by the way it makes her finger vibrate. C goes to about here, and the lower the note, the more it comes up the hand, and then through the foot. And it's great to see that. I love it. It kind of knocks you back 50 yards. And you just realize that there is so much more going on than the simple kind of expression you're allowed within pop music. I think you need to always be aware of that, because it's so easy to latch on to what was successful about your last record. And you owe it to yourself to keep pushing for something more--something new.

BUDGIE'S LISTENERS' GUIDE:

For readers who would like to listen to recordings that best represent your drumming, which ones would you recommend?

Boomerang - The Creatures
Peepshow - Siouxsie and the Banshees
Feast - The Creatures
Kaleidoscope - Siouxsie and the Banshees
Wild Things (EP) - The Creatures
Cut - The Slits
Tinderbox - Siouxsie and the Banshees
Juju - Siouxsie and the Banshees

Which recordings do you listen to most for inspiration?

with Honorary Mentions to Charlie Watts, Ringo, and John Bonham.

BUDGIE'S EQUIPMENT:

According to Budgie, "This is my basic kit as it stands after ten years of development with Siouxsie and the Banshees. On the most recent tour with the Creatures, the bass drum was fitted with triggers to drive a Kahler Human Clock to fire the sequencers, enabling me to control the tempo of the show from the drum seat! Clear as a bell?"

Drumset: Tama Grandstar in red wine finish.
A. 8x13 wood snare (Sonor Phonic Plus)
B. 3 1/2x14 piccolo snare (Pearl)
C. 6x13 timbale
D. 6x14 timbale
E. 14x14 tom
F. 15x15 tom
G. 16x16 tom
H. 18x18 tom
I. 18x20 gong drum
J. 16x22 bass drum

Cymbals: Zildjian
1. 15" New Beat hi-hats (with a Rhythm-Tech DST [ching ring] attached)
2. 18" China Boy low
3. 18" medium-thin crash
4. 20" Rock ride
5. 16" medium-thin crash
6. 22" China Boy low (swish)

[In the magazine, there is an illustration of his drumset that tells where all of these letters and numbers are located.]

Hardware: All hardware Tama, including a Power Tower rack system.

Heads: Remo coated Pinstripe on snare. Remo coated Ambassadors on toms. Remo Pinstripe on bass drum. Premier SD Field Batter on piccolo.

Sticks: Vic Firth Rock model.

Electronics: In his live setup, Budgie uses two Akai S1000 samplers, an S900 sampler, a Kahler Human Clock, two Roland MC500 sequencers, a Sony DAT 1000 ES, a Korg M1 Workstation, and a Roland Octapad II.

From: Allan Bolt <jinxb@CITYNET.NET>
Subject:      Modern Drummer Interview w/Budgie
Date:         Sat, 8 Nov 1997 22:51:49 -0500

Featured in the September 1990 issue of Modern Drummer: "Budgie." pp.29-31, 110-114. Interview by Adam Budofsky. Pictures (2) by Ebet Roberts.

Included : "Budgie's Listener's Guide" and "Budgie's Equipment." (ahem..drums, that is!)

The transcript is the Modern Drummer article, verbatim. No commentary has been added on my part: