Bad Company circa 1999 (from left) Boz Burrell, Paul Rodgers, Mick Ralphs and Simon Kirke. Photo courtesy Elektra Records.

By Mike Greenblatt

Simon Kirke has rocked stages for decades as drummer for Free and Bad Company. On his new solo album, “Filling The Void,” he plays piano, bass, guitar and drums. He also sings his own songs (quite nicely, thank you) — songs filled with regret and humor, blunt honesty and wistful ruminations of the lessons he’s learned. Don’t expect any macho blustering. He doesn’t ‘Feel Like Makin’ Love.’ Not right now, anyway.

The last time I saw you was at Yankee Stadium when you and I went with [musician] Ricky Byrd. It was your first baseball game!
Simon Kirke: Yeah, I remember that. I play a lot of golf, but that was my first and only time seeing baseball. I seem to remember yelling at the umpire a lot that night.

“Filling The Void” is beautiful. There’s blues, jazz and rock ’n’ roll, but a majority of it is in the serious singer-songwriter confessional zone. When did you turn into Joni Mitchell?
Kirke: Hey, Duke Ellington said there’s only two types of music: good and bad. I like all styles. I’ve been singing and playing guitar for 45 years and have always written songs. It’s just something most people don’t associate with me. I’ve contributed the odd song with Free and Bad Company. I co-wrote the song “Bad Company” with Paul Rodgers, in fact. A lot of my songs were not suited to that style, and they’d get put on the back burner. I love James Taylor. I love Joni. Dylan, too. I love Jackson Browne and Leonard Cohen. I’ve accumulated over 30 songs.

This album has exorcized some of your demons, hasn’t it? Lyrically, you’ve dug deep and personal. The title track, about your addiction, is quite profound.
Kirke: Well, yeah, I don’t mind saying I’ve been in several rehabs. I’ve had trouble with substance abuse over the years. One of the counselors recommended I write songs about it as part of my therapy. It’s not meant to be embarrassing or make people squirm. It’s just telling it like it is. Addiction doesn’t carry the stigma that it used to. If I can help someone by telling them about it, then all well and good.

You’re right in line with many recovering addicts and alcoholics who want to take the anonymous part away from people in recovery. They say disclosure will do more good.
Kirke: I agree. Look, the guy who started me and a lot of other people down the road to sobriety is Eric Clapton, whether he knows it or not. He was one of the first guys to go public. Elton John and Alice Cooper, too. Alice, actually, might’ve been the very first guy in our business who threw up his hands and said, “I’m a drunk and I’m trying to get better.” Had they kept it secret, I think a lot of people might not have realized it about themselves.

Wasn’t it, ultimately, the rock-star lifestyle? Or is that too simplistic?
Kirke: It’s a case of growing up. Some people have addictive personalities, and they cannot stop. There are friends of mine who shall remain nameless who gave it all up. They had their 10 years of frolicking and carousing, and now they lead normal lives. Others don’t make it. They can’t stop. They die. Period. My drug use and drinking was highest when Bad Company was at its highest. We could do no wrong! When you bathe yourself in that applause night after night, and women are hurling themselves at you, and men are offering you all sorts of substances, and you’re getting first-class treatment wherever you go, you develop a false sense of grandiosity and self-worth. It’s a dream/nightmare. You never want it to end. I’m lucky to be alive.

“Message From The Lost” recounts your experiences as a driver for the Red Cross in New York City for six weeks after 9/11.
Kirke: You never forget. I saw relatives of those who were killed, and those images stayed with me ever since.

I had no idea you were such a good singer.
Kirke: When you’re in a band with Paul Rodgers, you don’t really have much of a chance. He’s so wonderful. The whole Bad Company sound was based around his singing, so the limited vocals I did were back-up harmony. I’ve always loved to sing. Now, I do shows where I play piano and guitar and get to sing for an hour and a half and I love it!

by  Martin Popoff

As a bonus to our coverage of the Thin Lizzy archival live recording Still Dangerous, we thought we’d get drummer Brian Downey to weigh in on the happy occasion …

“Well, the mood was very buoyant at that time,” recalls Downey, looking back to this captured gig, taking place just before Bad Reputation was to hit the shelves. “Because we were on the road for quite a few years — Scott Gorham, Brian Robertson, Phil and me — and we’d obviously had problems before that with guitar players leaving, so when we got Brian and Scott in, it stabilized the band. And we were playing a lot of gigs in the U.K. and Ireland and all of Europe, a lot of really good gigs under our belt. But yeah, we felt very confident playing.”

And no question, Lizzy had the fire power, from those signature twin leads to Phil’s vocals and lyrics. But Still Dangerous is also a bold testament to Phil and Brian as a crack rhythm section. According to Brian, in Lizzy’s case, the drum-and-bass portion of the show was cut from a somewhat different cloth than is the case in most bands.

“Phil’s a brilliant bass player to play with,” explains Downey, “but the funny thing is, Phil didn’t have much experience in Thin Lizzy playing bass. In fact, when the band formed, with Eric Bell, Phil was a singer — he wasn’t playing bass when the band initially formed. It took him maybe a few months, taking lessons from his friend Brush Shields, who he played with in Skid Row; it took him maybe four or five months to become really proficient on the bass. And then when Thin Lizzy formed, we wanted to play as many live gigs as possible to make Phil comfortable playing the bass because he just didn’t have any experience playing live, and he just took to it like a duck to water; he was just fantastic.

“It seemed to me, this was just waiting to happen, and Phil just jumped at the chance. He realized that he wanted to be a bass player all his life, it seemed to me. And it was much, much easier … because when you have somebody who has no preconditions… I have my own style of drumming, obviously, from previous bands, but he had no preconditions at all on the bass, and so I don’t think he knew what kind of style he wanted to play. He became a very, very steady, stable bass player. These kinds of bass players are very hard to find these days, because they seem to take off on all kinds of solos. Phil had a really good ear for the bass. He laid it down when it needed to be laid down, and he took one or two little breaks here and there when it needed to happen, and it’s just fantastic to play with the guy. He’s just so solid, you know? And he never made a mistake! He was phenomenal. And he was singing as well as playing the bass. And that was kind of a hard thing to do, to actually sing and to keep the bass line going. Without thinking about it, it’s nigh-impossible, and he did it — it was just fantastic.

“It’s just fantastic that we found those tapes in pristine condition,” adds Brian, in closing. “A stroke of luck, to say the least. Because I mean, I did have a soundboard copy of it, a cassette copy of that show, for years. I always knew it was recorded, but I didn’t know that these tapes were preserved, and it was just fantastic luck to find the actual tapes.”

And Scott’s been murmuring that it looks like there is more in the vaults than he thought. “Yeah, he mentioned that to me, too. I think he’s going to have a search in the vaults over the next couple of months, to try find more stuff, which would just be great, you know?”

by  Martin Popoff

Auditions will be held Friday, April 10, in Los Angeles for drummers interested in playing with The Smashing Pumpkins in the wake of the departure of original member  Jimmy Chamberlin.

The band is taking submissions for both recording and touring drummers. Applicants should submit:

• Resume – include a list of bands, shows, awards, education
• Photograph / headshot
• Any music / audio you have showcasing your talents. Links to digital files are encouraged.
• Video links are also encouraged

To submit information, send an e-mail with resume and links attached to pumpkinsdrummer@gmail.com.

68-year-old Dewey Martin, the steady percussive hand behind the drums in Buffalo Springfield, one of the most legendary 1960s rock bands, died Feb. 1 at his Van Nuys, Calif., apartment. The cause of death, while not made public, appears to be natural.

Guitarist/singer/songwriters Steve Stills, Neil Young and Richie Furay, bassist Bruce Palmer and Martin made up the founding lineup. Conflicting artistic visions and ambitions — coupled with management problems — tore the band apart. Still, Buffalo Springfield introduced great songs like “Mr. Soul,” “Broken Arrow,” “Rock ‘N’ Roll Woman” and one enduring anthem — Stills’s “For What It’s Worth” — to the rock lexicon. It also established Stills, Young and Furay as top-rank rock musicians.

Buffalo Springfield set a new standard for rock musicianship, where bands had often left their instrumental tracks to studio pros. DJ and Hollywood insider Rodney Bingenheimer attended the Buffalo Springfield’s Los Angeles recording dates: “At the Sonny & Cher sessions and for other rock bands, I always saw studio players. But the Springfield played their own instruments. It was amazing.”

Rhythm guitarist and singer Richie Furay comments from his home in Boulder, Colorado: “As a drummer, Dewey could adapt to anything we might want to play: the country, the rock and the Memphis-style soul. He had great time and a great sense of what fit.”

The Canadian-born Martin had spent considerable time in Nashville, playing behind country singers like Patsy Cline. With singer Faron Young, the drummer eventually made his way West. In an oft-told story, Stills and Furay ran into Young and Palmer by accident one day in early 1966 on Sunset Blvd. and formed a band in short order.  They had everything but a drummer.

“Chris Hillman of The Byrds brought Dewey to us,” relates Furay. “He had been playing with The Dillards, but they had decided to go to a more traditional lineup, without drums. Chris knew we needed a drummer and suggested Dewey.”

Martin had the ability to kick the band along on the brisk “Go And Say Goodbye,” supply moodiness to “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing,” propel a shuffle beat to “Leave” and make the drums the lead instrument to “Everybody’s Wrong.”

“Dewey made it clear,” Furay states, “that he didn’t want to just play drums. He wanted to sing, too.” Martin’s unrestrained soul shouting on the Wilson Pickett-inspired “Good Time Boy” gave the Springfield yet another facet to its multi-dimensional profile.

Furay sees the beginning — May and June of 1966 — as the apex of the Springfield’s 11-month life: “The best time for the band was right at the beginning, when we were the house band at the Whisky a Go Go. We had the five original guys, and there was an undeniable magic. Whether we were the best musicians or not didn’t matter — we had magic, and we all knew it.”

Bingenheimer confirms Furays’s claim: “The Byrds had the same kind of magic, earlier at Ciro’s, when all the dancers followed them around from gig to gig. Then the Springfield played the Whisky and they had their own magic.”

While the band excited audiences, Buffalo Springfield’s eclecticism didn’t always induce handsprings from critics. John Gabree in Downbeat complained of Buffalo Springfield Again that the group “never emerges with a sound of their own. They are almost the Bobby Darin of groups … ultimately, the parts are greater than the whole and the album lacks focus.”

“The truth is,” Stills tol