Watching Duran Duran play the New Year’s Eve festivities from Times Square last night, I was reminded once again how incredibly fortunate I was to have new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nick Rhodes agree to write the foreword for my new book, Dancing to the Drum Machine.
I was also incredibly surprised that he agreed—because until we spoke in 2020, I hadn't realized his powerful affinity for drum machines. But it’s real, and lifelong.
“I’ve got a load of rhythm boxes I couldn’t even tell you the name of,” Rhodes told me. “They’re fun to play with because of their personality. That’s really what were talking about. Rhythm boxes all have a personality, you know.”
Contacted at his home in England in the early days of the global pandemic, Rhodes was, like the rest of us back then, at a bit of a loose end. Recording on what would become the band’s fifteenth studio album, Future Past, had halted, and on this April afternoon, he reflected on the uncertainties of the moment.
“I mean, we're all fine, but it’s very sad to see everything that's going on,” he said. “You just feel a bit helpless, don't you, really? All locked up in your house, and don't see anyone, and not able to do much about it. It’s really, really, awful.
“It's not like anything we've seen in our lifetimes,” Rhodes added wistfully. “We're not quite sure what to make of it.”
It was, however, an opportune time to delve into the subject of drum machines—something that has been near and dear to Rhodes’s heart since the earliest days of Duran Duran. In this first part of a two-part interview, Rhodes cast his memory back to the days of browsing Birmingham music shops with bandmate John Taylor, his earliest drum machines, and the first person (besides himself) to program a rhythm box on a DD album. (It’s probably not who you might expect!)
Thanks first of all for being willing to talk about drum machines!
It's a pleasure. I actually think it's a really interesting idea. Rhythm boxes, for sure, have been my great friend for many, many years, and I think that the impact they've had on music has been extraordinary. And it's somewhat of an untold story, so I think it's a good choice.
I’m hoping that will turn out to be the case, at least.
Yeah, I know I've not seen anything about it. Obviously there's a lot written about them in technical magazines and articles when new ones come out, or on what the great vintage drum machines are, but I don't know that anyone's plotted out the history of what records they were on, and how they changed the sound of music. And how some of them later just exploded—like the TR 808 for example.
Tell me, what do you want to know?
I was trying to remember where I had seen the make and model of the first drum machine you used in Duran Duran, and last night I finally figured it out: in John [Taylor]’s autobiography, he mentions that it was a Kay rhythm box that he says cost 15 pounds, and which you bought around the same time as the famous Wasp synth.
So I wondered if that recollection is accurate, in your memory—and if so, if you remember the model. I was thinking it must have been a Kay R-12?
No, no, it wasn't the R-12. It was the Kay R-8—the Rhythmer. It had wood grain. It was a small unit, which really, I think probably it would have usually integrated into some sort of home organ at that time in the Seventies. But I found it in a music shop in Birmingham when we were just starting out, and John and I were hunting for electronic gear that we could afford. We didn't have a lot of money at that time and 15 pounds for a K rhythm unit seemed like a bargain even then.
We bought it, and it had very simple rhythms on it, things like fox trot and slow rock and samba and things that you find on those early rhythm units that pretty much did originate from organs. But it had a fantastic sound! It was used on all our early live shows with Steven Duffy, and I still had it when we made the first album. In fact, I'm pretty sure that “Girls on Film” used that Rhythmer unit in it, but I'd have to check. I haven't played with one of those for years, sadly, but you know, I think “Girls on Film” was taken from that, and that's probably the one thing that survived on the record.
But from that date when I first pushed a button on there, I loved it. I thought, “Oh okay, interesting. That means we don't need a drummer at the moment!” Or at least in our first lineup, we didn't have a drummer. I was playing synthesizers, and primarily a Wasp, and later I got a Crumar Strings Synthesizer, the Performer. But the other big thing was the Rhythmer unit, which gave us our track for every song we had.
And interestingly, you didn't have exact tempos on those early rhythm units at all, so I had to guess or mark with a pen where the tempos were for all the different songs. I mean, variably, it was never quite the same every night, but I think that made it more interesting.
Were there other bands using drum machines at the time who inspired you? I’m thinking specifically of Ultravox, who had used a Roland TR-77 on “Hiroshima Mon Amour” at that point.
Oh, I loved the TR-77, that's one of my favorite rhythm units of all, I've used that on a lot of things, so yes, “Hiroshima” was of course one of my favorite songs of that whole period. I'm a big fan of John Foxx's Ultravox, and I think their first three albums were absolutely seminal in the development of music during that period, undoubtably. They really were one of the first acts to blend and merge together the sound of rock music with electronic music, and they were futuristic and surreal and actually pretty powerful too.
So I think those albums are very important, and the TR-77, that was my [favorite] in that period, that or perhaps even the TR-66, which was the former one, which was a little more simplistic. The TR 77, I used that one on a lot of different records. It’s in the background on a bunch of different Duran Duran things.
I’m jumping ahead quite a bit here, but I was listening to the Devils record, which you made with Stephen Duffy in 2002, and I know the brief was to use vintage gear. Do you recall the drum machines you used, or sampled, on that album?
Yes, I used the TR-77 the Devils album, the one with Stephen Duffy. It’s on nearly all those tracks because it was the closest thing I had at that time to the Kay unit, which is what we would have used in the first place. They sound very, very similar, [from] that same late Seventies period, and I really do love that—I love the touch bar on there where you can just start it and stop it. That was really quite a good feature to have, and the way that you can mix all the rhythms together, too, and really create some different effects. It’s a very special machine.
I think Roland actually realized very early on, if you look at the TR-66 or the TR-77, and then later, the CR-68, and then obviously when we started to move into the 808 and the 909—they saw something that I don't think the other companies had really taken on board. They're all extraordinary instruments in their own right, they all do something slightly different, and they've all got quirky developments in them that allowed you to do different things. They were really sophisticated. I think the Korg rhythm units sound really great too, but the Roland ones always led the way for me.
Speaking of “quirky developments,” one thing I’ve heard other early drum machine users say is that variations in timing were one of those quirks. Especially when you were trying to control the tempo with a knob, instead of a digital readout.
(Laughs) Even if you marked it, you'd take it to the mark and you'd say, "That doesn't sound quite right. It’s slowed down a bit today.” They're quirky, that's the thing I love about analog gear generally, because obviously, while you can synchronize with a rhythm unit, it’s [still] sort of got a heartbeat of its own. It breathes, sort of; you have to wrestle control of it to try and tame the beast to get it to do what you want to do.
Those synthesizers and rhythm units, honestly, they were never quite the same. Sometimes they would make noise and crackle because of the pots on them being dirty, or…well, I don't know why they speed up and slow down on the tempo knob.
To go back for a moment to Duran Duran’s early days: the Wasp, I think, was a monophonic synth, and the Kay rhythm box used presets. Still, you must have had your hands full onstage operating this stuff.
Oh yeah. You're almost changing every second on the Wasp; it always got much worse. The other thing I had was a mixing desk, and I had a reel-to-reel tape recorder, on which I'd just record very random things—church bells, or people walking upstairs, or, you know, conversations of people at parties. And I'd just fade them in and out in songs, whenever I thought they might sound good.
So, it was a very, very odd setup. And actually, the sound we made at that time, I think I'm safe in saying, was pretty avant garde. Because we had a clarinet player who doubled on bass (Simon Colley) and then Stephen Duffy singing. He was also on bass on some of those songs, so there was two basses in some of them.
And then we had John Taylor on electric guitar, which he certainly hadn't mastered at that time, and thankfully we made the decision for him to change to bass guitar a little later. But he used to make the most extraordinary noises with it. He had a load of effects pedals—Electro-Harmonix, MXRs—sort of pedals. And it was just really about making a wall of sound to support Stephen’s, sort of F. Scott Fitzgerald-type poetry.
By the turn of the decade, there are quite a few records that have been hits which feature a drum machine. Do you remember hearing any particular song and liking it for its drum machine or programming?
There were a lot of great songs with units on them from that period. To me, most notably, the Kraftwerk songs, on which a lot of it is played with electronic drums that they had together. And Jean-Michel Jarre. I just completely fell in love with that sound. It was very, very modern.
But I think it was used a lot in disco records, and what's that great George McCrae record? “Rock Your Baby.” That one's great—the rhythm box on it is so loud! So, there were things out that different people were using rhythm boxes in different ways, and then by the late Seventies into the early Eighties, so many great usages—Blondie, “Heart of Glass”—I think that is a fantastic use of a rhythm box.
And another one of my favorite songs with a rhythm box on it of all time is “In Time” by Sly Stone, which is just spectacular, it’s on the Fresh album, I can't remember exactly what year that was {Editor’s note: 1973. There’s more about this song from drummer Andy Newmark in Chapter Four of Dancing to the Drum Machine], but that really is a wonderful early use of a rhythm box
At some point in 1979 or 1980, Roger Taylor joins Duran Duran, and the focus in the band shifts to live drumming. Do you remember the next drum machine you bought, though, and how you used it?
Well, the next one that I actually bought would have been the TR-808. I probably used a bunch of things in between it and the TR-77. Even though it’s a much earlier rhythm box, I actually bought it more like the mid-Eighties. But around ’81, whenever it came out, it was brand new, I bought the TR-808.
It was hugely appealing, because I'd already sort of formed a good bond with the Roland units, and I found it very intuitive to use. And the idea of having a rhythm box that I could sync with my synthesizers, and that I could also use to program different patterns, if I wanted to, for different parts, was enormously appealing.
And it also had a lot of cool sounds on it—more than the earlier rhythm boxes, because what you tended to get until the very late Seventies was simple rhythms. You press the buttons and that's what you get. But then when people started to suspect that maybe you just wanted to have the snare drum and the percussion, or maybe you just wanted to use the hand clap and the bass drum, that's when things started to get really interesting. And the TR-808 was my first real experience with that, followed by the LinnDrum.
We actually had a Linn 2 [the LinnDrum] not a Linn 1 [the LM-1]. The Linn 1 is fantastic—I think, in many ways, a better-sounding machine. So actually, it was quite a big jump for me between rhythm boxes. Since then I've bought many, many, many of them. I must have, I don't know, at least ten of them, I should think.
There are songs where it has been speculated a drum machine played some role in the sound on record, even with live drums. “Hungry Like the Wolf,” for example, allegedly has a Roland 808 on it. And are those Simmons toms, or a drum machine?
Yup, it's on that. That's correct. What I used on it was the high hat from the 808, and I flanged it, with an MXR flanger—I just wanted something that would do what a rhythm unit did, but sort of sound a little bit more like a synthesizer. And the white noise and the percussion element that I wanted from it, rather than an actual rhythm maker, would serve the part. That runs, I think, from the second verse through most of the rest of the song, not all of it. And the other thing that I did is I managed to sync it up with the arpeggio from the Jupiter 8, which was half the fun of doing it.
The toms, yeah, they're a Simmons kit. That was the latest Simmons model that I think you'll find on an awful lot of records at that point. You had those, sort of, really high disco syn-drums on records at the end of the Seventies and then, I guess, the early Eighties was represented by the introduction of Simmons. And it's on quite a few of our tracks, but most notable for sure, “Hungry Like the Wolf.” And those were all played live by Roger. We didn't really program those at that point—it would be just a live instrument.
“The Chauffer” also sounds like an 808 with some live overdubs — is that correct?
The 808 is the very heart of “The Chauffer.” That's how I built the track up from the very bottom with the 808. And then, again, I synced the sequence into another wonderful compatible Roland product. It was the CSQ-100 step sequencer, and that small black one—gosh, these numbers and names! I’ll have to refer to something to find it.
But the Roland SH-2, the CSQ-100, and the TR-808 are what formed the sequencer and the rhythm box that run throughout the entire track, what everything was built on. I literally spent several hours, figuring it all out and programing it all. It was such a thrill because this was the first time you could really sync things up more easily. To listen to early records where they tried to get sync to work, things like [Hot Butter’s] “Popcorn”—that’s one of the first songs I ever remember hearing a sequencer. But if you listen to it now...the synchronization was not their friend. (Laughs)
It was hard, really. I remember even in 1981, when I was producing some songs for Kajagoogoo, and I would have to get someone over to the studio because we were pulling our hair out, trying to get exactly this combination, this rhythm unit, to sync with a sequencer. It was a real trial. So once this happened, I guess in late ’81 or early ’82; probably ’81—it became so much easier to sync, particularly with the Roland units and some of the Korg units. Really, it was a seismic change for music, and certainly for musicians creatively
I always marvel at Kraftwerk for that very reason. Of course, a lot of it was mainly played beautifully, but if you listen to the syncopation they managed to achieve, with their sequencers and rhythms, it was very cleverly constructed.
Is it accurate to say that you did most of the drum programming for Duran Duran—either by adapting sequences from demos, or by programming in the studio?
Yes, that is true, certainly, all the way up until the Notorious album, when I actually asked [session drummer] Steve Ferrone to program a drum machine for us. He was working with us on the album, and he was undoubtably a technical monster on the drums.
And I said to him, "Have you ever programed a rhythm box?” and he said, "I don't need to do that.” And I said, ‘Well, this afternoon's the day.” (Laughs)
And he programmed it for the [LinnDrum]; he programed it on “American Science.” I wanted him to do it because I wanted it from his perspective. Because rhythmically he was way more sophisticated than I would have been, and I wanted to see what he did. I hadn't really thought about it before, because I'd already pretty much looked at it as an electronic instrument for me to use as an electronic sound.
Roger, our drummer, he was perfectly capable of programming any rhythm box, but he doesn't honestly love programming them for some reason. He’d rather play the parts, I guess, and always would say, “I was just wondering why I couldn't play that on these pads,” rather than actually get into [programming]. I think he actually found it a bit alien. So, I never, sort of, bothered to get involved with him and drum programming. He was perfectly happy for me to play on top of it. But with Steve, he's the perfect person to program a rhythm box on a Duran Duran record otherwise. And that was “American Science.”
Speaking of Roger, there’s an interview he did with Modern Drummer magazine, from around 1984 or so. The interviewer asks him about using drum machines in the band, and he mentions using a LinnDrum for a click track in the studio. But he also says this:
“The band is so synth-oriented that I think it’s important for me to retain a natural feel and a natural drum sound. It would be very easy to start using drum computers. It would have been so much easier with all the synthesizers, but we’ve always held that back because the band would have become very cold and one-dimensional if it were all computerized. So we’ve made sure that we’ve kept natural guitar, natural bass and natural drums.”
I wondered if that was actually a conscious aesthetic decision in the band’s early days?
Yeah, well, I think Roger probably still feels the same. Although we've moved now into an era where live drums are harder to fit into a lot of genres of music, we'd probably use more electronic drum sounds, even though a lot more of them are played live than we did early on.
But it was absolutely part of our thoughts from the beginning that we wanted to manage to fuse real live playing with electronics and pulses. And I do think the live drums skill add a great excitement to music. Even when we programed something on a record, and it sounds clean and tight, and obviously doesn't take up the same bandwidth as live drums when you use electronic drums. You come to play it live, and you say, “Well, shouldn't we try just live drums first?” and inevitably the track sounds great because it brings it to life and gives it a different dynamic.
There are certain pieces that you really just want that small, tight, electronic sound. But if it's a song that you want to bring extra energy to, drums are really—there’s a good reason that they play such a massive part in music, and still do. For however many years, they've been in beautiful orchestral pieces. A lot of my favorite ones are the ones where you get percussion and drums and timpani.
And [live drums] are something that, you know, made things very exciting to us within the sound of our music. As much as I love electronic drums, that combination, from early on—that still stands for what we were, and are.