No. It's me, the drummer from Dodgy, and Maurice Bacon, the drummer in The Love Affair, so we've got the 1960s and 1990s angles covered and everything in between. The show's tagline is "a journey through the music industry as viewed from the back se
at".
So you're the backseat drivers of your respective bands? Yeah, and we've both got lots of stories about the people we've worked with.
You've been in something of a media storm lately…Yeah. As we were devising the show there's been all this press about a thing called the Clem Burke project. A guy called Dr Marcus Smith at Chichester University has done eight years of research on Blondie drummer Clem Burke, proving that drummers are as fit as premiership footballers.
Is that in spite of all the sex drugs and rock'n'roll? Well that's why we do all those things, to offset the fitness. This debate has been raging on the Guardian letters page ever since. There's like a drummer joke every day. We actually wrote a letter saying "look, it's hard enough for us drummers to remember the script we've rehearsed without this new wealth of material. Will you please stop? And they printed that as well.
There is a serious side to all this though, because drummers do get taken for granted sometimes. That's what we're trying to explore a little bit. The drummer always has a wry look at things. Everyone's got a place in their heart for a drummer, so we explore that in the show. And we have a different view of the music industry compared to f****ing bass players.
Is it true Phil Collins might be a guest on your show? Yeah, part of the show is that we're trying to get our drumming heroes on to the show. They all seem to be on holiday because it's August, but Phil Collins genuinely got back to us. He sent us a couple of e-mails and he called me up. He was a big fan of The Love Affair when he was a kid and he was also a big fan of Dodgy and he loves the idea of us trying to make drummers look intelligent. He can't come for the first two weeks, but he's not ruling out the third.
• Two Drummers Drumming is at the Bongo Club, 4:30pm, until 24 August.
The full article contains 422 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
