Not once did they make me feel that I was disappointing them or that I’d failed them. Nor did they ever beat me up and tell me I needed to go to college. I just have a sense that they understood, as I did, that school wasn’t for me. They didn’t know the shame I felt at being so unable to succeed. It wasn’t easy to show them tests where I’d scored zero per cent, nor did I want to tell them that the times when I had got some paltry per cent right, I’d had to cheat. I found cheating to be worse than failing because it’s so exhausting, constantly trying to cover your bases. Dyslexia is very hard; you spend hours going in circles because you don’t know how to go in a straight line.
My days at school were nothing short of torture. I developed what I’ve come to call, since it has followed me through my life, the ‘Blackboard Syndrome’. It is a form of paralysis that I can trace back to the very first time I was asked to go to the chalkboard to answer a question. I can’t remember the subject–perhaps it was maths–but it wouldn’t have mattered; I was done for the moment my name was called. The anxiety of performing something I didn’t understand before my class was more than I could bear. If the teacher had handed me a piece of paper with the answer just before calling me, it would have made no difference. The act of walking to the front of the room and attempting to reason through anything at all in front of my peers was just too much for me.
I’ve suffered from the Blackboard Syndrome for years, so now I understand that it is a lethal combination of performance anxiety and my dyslexia, a duo of traits that renders me useless under pressure given certain conditions. If I feel the pressure to produce or to get something ‘right’, added to the fact that I know myself well enough to distrust my interpretation of ‘the facts’ and ‘the answer’, and I have no one close by who can help me reason my way through it, I find myself in a bind. You’ll see how it has played out in my life and how I’ve learned to live with it, but as a young man in school there could have been nothing worse. Absorbing knowledge in the traditional schoolbook and classroom setting is the antithesis of how I’m able to learn things. I was a fish out of water in an organised educational institution, no matter how liberal or progressive it may have been–and believe me, my parents tried everything under the sun.
School was a matter of survival for me each and every day. I did what I could; whenever I felt that a teacher might call on me, I’d raise my hand first and ask to go to the bathroom. Some of them figured this out and waited for my return to call me up front. This made things even worse, knowing that a trial awaited me upon my return to the classroom. When they got me up there, I would stand, taller than anyone else in my grade class (I’d shot up past them all by the time I was ten, suffering the bone-wrenching aches of growing pains in my legs every summer) and I’d go mute. I’d just stand there and say nothing. I’d do my best to waste time while appearing to work out the answer, which essentially consisted of doodling on the board. I wished that I could draw better, because I was crap at that too, thinking that maybe if I drew something clever at least I’d get a laugh and perhaps a benevolent pass from the teacher.
It never worked out that way. Instead I was too shy and too paralysed, which made those moments at the board last forever, until the teacher realised just how little I knew and just how poor a student I was and finally had mercy on me. What I needed was a sense of humour and a form of expression. Alas that came much, much later, after I’d abandoned school altogether.
I’m quite convinced that the brain I have comes from my mum’s side, because my mother and her kin have a very different, very wonderful way of thinking–one that’s not suited to stereotypical ‘straight’ thought. My sister Susan had the same issue that I do, and like me, she found a way to turn it into something positive and creative. She became an actress and made it a part of her art.
What I didn’t know was that my dyslexia would later serve me well once I turned to playing drums. It wasn’t clear to me until years later, when I really began to think about drumming, which was something I found myself doing quite naturally. After I’d become known for drumming, and had a ‘style’ that people talked about, I began to ponder, wonder what exactly that style was. By nature what we drummers do is manage a series of spinning plates, but I realised quite quickly when I found myself talking shop with other plate-spinners that my methods of keeping my plates spinning are entirely my own. When I tried to explain it, they thought I was having a laugh at their expense or entirely mad.
That made it all crystal clear to me–my drumming was an extension of the Blackboard Syndrome. I really had no idea, nor the ability to explain in musical terms, what I was ever doing in a particular song. Upon further reflection, I’ve realised that all of this stems from my learning disability, and now that I’ve made something out of my irregular way of processing information, I’m damn glad. Dyslexia has absolutely tempered the way I think about rhythm and the way I’ve played my instrument, or any other for that matter, and that’s the long and short of it.
In the late 1970s Boz Scaggs opened up for us on tour and he had the incredibly gifted Jeff Porcaro on drums. Jeff was still a teenager, and a couple of years away from getting together with his brother to form Toto, who went on to great success in the 1980s. Jeff, may he rest in peace, died at just thirty-eight, but in a short period of time, as a session drummer, had a career that defined the sound of that decade. He was, literally, a part of every big pop and rock record that charted in the 1980s. Along with many of his bandmates, Jeff played on mega-huge records like Michael Jackson’s Thriller and so many other albums and singles of that era.
That was years ahead, but I’d been aware of Jeff even before he showed up in Boz’s band. People talk about talent like his the moment it emerges on the touring circuit, and after watching him play just once I was quite intimidated that he was in our supporting band. His style was so technically perfect and consistent that it gave me a huge dose of the Blackboard Syndrome.
It didn’t help that once the tour got under way I noticed Jeff sitting at the side of the stage watching me each and every night. He and I had met but we hadn’t spent much time together, and that didn’t change as the tour drew into its second, then its third week. Still, there he was, every night, watching me play, for the entire set. It rattled me, but I played through it, with the aid of a few additional servings of brandy and red wine. Eventually I’d forget he was there and go about my business. Then sometime during the third week of the tour he came to my dressing room.
‘I give up,’ he said. ‘I can’t figure it out so you’ve gotta tell me. Tell me how you do it.’
‘How I do what?’ I asked, completely befuddled. I really had no idea what he was talking about.
‘I’ve watched you, I’ve tried to understand it. Nothing you do up there makes sense, but it sounds beautiful. What’s your method? What are you doing during that last fill in “Go Your Own Way”? I can’t figure it out! I’ve been watching every night. What do you do in the last measure on that last beat? Is the snare ahead or behind? Is the hi-hat off beat by two quarters or is it a little more than that?’
‘Oh,’ I said, taking a huge breath. At least I had an answer, just not the one he wanted. ‘Oh, fuck. Really… I have no idea. I’m telling you, truly, Jeff, I have no idea at all.’
Jeff Porcaro didn’t believe me at first; in fact it was clear that he thought I was being coy and pretentious. I don’t blame him because the idea that a drummer with my experience had no idea of musical nomenclature was ridiculous. It was only after we continued to talk that Jeff realised I wasn’t kidding around. We eventually had a tremendous laugh about it, and when I later told him that I was dyslexic, it finally made sense. He analysed my playing from the perspective of a trained drummer and explained to me that my fills weren’t precisely the opposite of what a traditionally trained drummer would choose to play, but they were something close to it. Yet all of it worked, which is what Jeff couldn’t get his head around. I had nothing to offer, because I don’t ever make a
conscious decision to place a hi-hat accent a half beat behind the beat while my snare is just ahead, what I do just comes. I do what feels right and I always have. It’s something that Lindsey Buckingham has come to rely on me for and I’m very proud of that. I have what he calls the feel.
I might as well say it now: I have no idea what I’m playing, each and every time I play our songs. I’ve never played the same thing the same way twice–which has driven many a producer and recording engineer to near madness. I really don’t know what the hell I’m doing up there. Lindsey Buckingham can vouch for me when I say that there have been more times than either of us would care to count that he’s had to tell me what to play by sounding it out. He and I share a language all of our own comprised of noises that fall within the ‘boom-crash-buh-bump’ category. At this point we are fluent in it.
In 1985, during the writing and recording of Tango in the Night, which Lindsey also produced, he was keen to have my drum tracks replicated on a portable drum machine so that he could take them home with him and do further work on the songs there. That is when I think he truly understood just how deeply embedded this dyslexic drum style of mine is, and just how little I know about what I do in a conscious, calculated manner. Machines are logical and methodical and just like Lindsey’s brilliant approach to music, machines make sense. Try as he would, there was no way he could programme what I was playing in the studio into a drum machine, because none of it adhered to a set repeating rhythm that could be tracked on grid. It’s not that I was ever out of time, it’s just that I never played the basic rhythm of the songs the same way twice from verse to verse. Lindsey isn’t one to give up so he did his best, but eventually he realised that how I play doesn’t adhere to anything the drum machines of the day could be programmed to do.
It’s always been this way, since my second professional gig as a drummer. I’ve always needed a translator. Back in 1967, I played briefly for a great guitarist named Billy Thorpe (whom I would reunite with years later in my band the Zoo) who had to come over to me before every song to dictate the beat, and usually did so by singing horribly sexual lyrics in the tempo and rhythm that he wanted me to play. It would go something like this: ‘1,2,3,4, They’re going to bang it in your ass, they’re going to take it in the ass,’ which, to me, would spell out where the bass drum, snare and cymbals needed to fall within the beat.
My father was a military man, but in the true sense of what that means, he was a man who knew the value of service to others and he strove to pass that on to my sisters and me. He wasn’t ironclad in his beliefs when it came to how this should be done, however. He allowed all three of us to follow life paths that were far from the straight and narrow because he believed in us, and–along with our mother–he always helped us along the way. His faith in us was a source of strength to me and I feel lucky, because other fathers from a background like his would have been very different. Many men of his generation might have looked upon my dreams and goals as something to be plucked out like a weed, rather than be nurtured like a flower. My dad imparted something to me as a very young man that has stayed with me and set the tone for how I’ve lived my life. He told me that no matter what I chose to do with my life, if I had a chance to be a part of something I believed in, I must never let my ego get in the way.
He said that it was better to let someone else take the credit for your work if that’s the way it had to be, so long as the work got done, got out there and was of service to people. The act of doing good, of making something that served the good of everyone in and of itself, was more important than getting the credit for it, according to Dad. I do believe he was right. When I look at how my life has played out, I know I took his advice to heart because I’ve spent all of my energy keeping something going that has been for the whole more than it has ever been for my own personal ego satisfaction. There is something to Dad’s choices and efforts in that way that I know is within me as well. I don’t think it’s entirely philanthropic either. It has something to do with deep-seated issues regarding self-esteem and I mean that for both of us. It was hard for Dad to take a compliment and to truly acknowledge how many wonderful things he’d achieved in his life. I am the same way, though these days I’m doing my best to give myself a break.
One of the values my father had, which wasn’t typical for a lifelong military man of his generation, was that he valued the arts tremendously. My father always wanted to be a writer, and I believe that is why he supported my sisters and me when we gravitated toward pursuits that were hardly practical. My sister Susan became an actress, attending drama school and eventually enjoying a respected career in theatre and film. My sister Sally went to study at the London Polytechnic when she was sixteen, became a sculptor and eventually a clothing designer. When I showed an interest in playing the drums, my father, who on paper should have been against it, was completely in favour. Rather than browbeat me for having little interest in school (though in truth it was really an inability to properly participate), he and Mum supported the one interest they clearly saw that I had: playing drums.
I love them so much for that, because in my early teens I wasn’t easy. I failed miserably in every school they sent me to, and I ran away from several of the boarding schools they enrolled me in, hoping that the well-documented brand of stiff-upper-lip education practised in those institutions would break me from my school daze. That didn’t happen, so as the old adage goes, I had two choices, fight or flight, and I always chose flight.
My first exposure to the power of live music came when I was ten or eleven. During a family summer holiday in Italy, we’d all gone down to the beach one day, when I was still young enough to know nothing of sexuality, but my sister Susan had begun to mature. She was looking absolutely gorgeous and this young chap came up to her in a pair of Speedos with a big hard-on. I remember seeing it, just right there, nearly sticking out of his swimsuit, so I ran to tell my dad because Sue was young, probably fourteen, and I didn’t know what it all meant.
That night Mum and Dad let the chap take Sue into town to go to a dance and charged me with going along as the chaperone. I’m not sure if it was more cruel for them to send me along, or for Sue to have to bring her little brother on a date, but I forgot about all that when we got to the dance. There was a local band doing nothing exciting, just covering songs by surf-rock pioneers the Ventures, but they had the entire town audience in the palm of their hand. That was fandom: the entire town knew those guys, and they were all dancing, young, old and every age in between. All I could focus on was the drummer; I was fascinated with what he was doing. It was a great feeling.
My parents saw me tapping along on cardboard boxes or furniture to whatever song was on the radio and by the time I was eleven, they rewarded my initiative with a drum set. I’d play along to hits by the Shadows or Acker Bilk and his Paramount Jazz Band, and Mum used to play old 78 rpm records by Charlie Kunz, a great American piano player who came to England in World War II and never left. We listened to a lot of Charlie Kunz and still do. Mum would be humming to the radio and she also liked to make up songs off the top of her head and I learned to play listening to her. When we got our first tape recorder, she used to hum into that and I’d tap out rhythms to her little songs. I never studied music at school, it was entirely a home-grown exercise.
My parents supported my musical interest entirely, even letting me turn a shed out behind our house into my personal rehearsal space, which my mother fondly dubbed ‘Club Keller’. By then I was attending a progressive day school, a very enlightened institution. I enjoyed my time there more than any other school I attended, and perhaps if I’d started my education there from the beginning I would have been able to complete school, but that wasn’t the case.
The school was based on the Rudolf Steiner philosophy of teaching, and was one of a thousand Waldorf Schools that Rudolf Steiner’s followers had started founding as early as 1922. Steiner’s schools preached a very individualistic philosophy that was suited to me becaus
e it meant I could literally do what I liked all day, so long as I was learning. I do think that Rudolf Steiner had the right idea, but looking back it may have become watered down by the time it got to my generation. I was able to more or less do what I wanted, to learn about maths by juggling, for example, but I still found a way to not quite ‘get it’ as far as proper learning went. I can’t say that I flunked out, because that idea didn’t exist in the Steiner universe, but I came as close as possible to doing so. Somehow, I stuck out from the crowd at a place where anything went. I wasn’t a misanthrope at all, I was quite social. I just really wasn’t myself in any type of regimented school environment.
That is why I chose to spend every minute I could in Club Keller, playing drums, making any kids from the neighbourhood who chose to come by as happy as I could. I took some of my father’s old fishing nets and hung them on the walls, I borrowed the family’s wind-up Victrola gramophone to play my mum’s 78s out there, got some Coca-Cola and invited all the kids I knew to come by after school. I’d charge them admission and give them soda and they’d listen to me play drums along to the records. It was the first time I realised that I might be good at something, which was bringing people together and showing them a good time.
I was inspired to do so because I had caught a fleeting glimpse of what I wanted to do with my life. When I would go to and from boarding school, as a young boy, I’d usually pass through London and spend a night with my sister Sally at her place in Notting Hill. She was in the art scene and she’d take me to an art school party or to Café des Artistes, a famous club in the Chelsea area, where I’d see things that blew my mind.
As a young schoolboy I saw beatnik culture, people reciting poetry, girls in men’s black turtleneck sweaters and sunglasses smoking French cigarettes. There was jazz playing, people beating on bongos, wild paintings on the walls and performances of all kinds going on. It was a wonder to me and I cherished those odd nights I got to spend with my sister. Sally was my guide, my protector and in every way my catalyst, because without her I’d never have experienced any of that. I would not have grown into the man I am today. I doubt I’d even have pursued the drums with the same degree of fervour that I did because if she had not taken me around with her, I’d never have known that such a wonderland existed. I saw there was a place for me. I just had to figure out how to get there, because it was close by, just barely out of reach.
Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac: The Autobiography Page 2
